We Just Love You to Death

Congratulations, Driggs, Idaho, for being selected the best place to live in America by this month’s Men’s Journal. Condolences too. Now that Driggs has been discovered, its ruin is assured. Wealthy Californians and others will swoop in, buy up all the choice property, build million-dollar mansions and drive Driggs’ hapless 941 current residents out of their own housing market. Next will come chi-chi spas, chain boutiques and a faux Alpine village at the ski resort. Gone will be Driggs’ wonderful combination bookstore and stained glass place and maybe even Mike’s Diner, featured in a full-page photo.

It’s been happening for years. A sleepy town in an idyllic natural setting gets “discovered” by Outside, Men’s Journal or some other outdoor recreation and adventure magazine. The resulting rush overwhelms all the amenities that made it so livable in the first place. Consider Aspen and Vail and Driggs’ cousin just across the Tetons, Jackson, Wyo. It long ago happened to Lake Tahoe.

“The 50 Best Places to Live” in the March Men’s Journal dealt only with towns of fewer than 50,000 population, locales considered to be the healthiest, safest, most fun in America. Familiar California names are present: No. 3, Mammoth Lakes; No. 17, Santa Cruz, and No. 23, Truckee.

And a new name appears at No. 40: Lone Pine, the 1,818-resident burg astride U.S. 395 at the south end of the Owens Valley, gateway to Mt. Whitney, an unpretentious place in an Ansel Adams setting, a good lunch stop on the way to Mammoth and Sierra trout streams. A delighted Lone Pine Chamber of Commerce official told the Owens Valley newspaper he was surprised by the honor. Maybe it will boost business a bit, he said. That would be fine. But, Lone Pine, be careful what you wish for. We like you the way you are, the way you were described in Men’s Journal: “The anti-Los Angeles, with lots of climbers.”

Actually, more climbers congregate around Bishop, another hour or two up 395. Strangely, Bishop, “discovered” several years ago, did not make the journal’s 50. Or does that snubbing make our point?