ROARING FORK BROADCASTING COMPANY
Jeffrey Evans, a fierce and vocal advocate for four-laning the entrance to Aspen and a sharp-tongued critic of local government, died recently as a result of head injuries from a skiing accident. He was 72.
Evans, a Basalt resident, was skiing March 24 on the west side of Buttermilk and took a fall, said his partner, Courtney Keller. He was hospitalized in Grand Junction the day of the accident, she said. He died there on March 27.
After more than two decades away from skiing, Evans returned to the sport in January, she said. A bad right knee limited his control on skis and he had taken a few falls in recent weeks, Keller said.
“We were skiing twice a week but only on green runs like Buttermilk West and Assay Hill at Snowmass, but he kept falling down,” Keller said Friday.
Evans underwent emergency surgery on March 24 for the removal of blood after doctors diagnosed him with a hematoma, she said. He did not regain consciousness.
“I think when he fell he probably already had a concussion because he was complaining of a headache, which in 25 years was the first I heard him complain of a headache,” she said.
A lover of music and travel, Evans had trips planned to Texas to see the solar eclipse on Monday and to Louisiana for the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in late April and early May. An obituary for Evans that’s running in the upcoming Aspen Sunday News said, “Above all, Jeffrey loved every type of music, from classical to jazz to Zouk, and he traveled the world to enjoy its music. His was a life of exploration and adventure.”
“And we had a safari planned for October,” Keller said. “He had plans; he wasn’t ready to give up just yet.”
Evans and Keller met around 2002 and were together ever since. They did not have children but Evans adored his nieces in Salt Lake City, she said. He also planned to bring them this fall on their trip to Africa, Keller said.
Details on a memorial service or celebration of life this summer will be forthcoming, Keller said.
“I might scatter some ashes on the roundabout when nobody’s looking,” she laughed.
It’s arguably an appropriate place, actually. Evans, a limo and cab driver, had been negotiating the roundabout — where traffic moves, often sluggishly, in and out via Highway 82, Castle Creek Road and Maroon Creek Road — for decades. He also was entrenched in the seemingly endless debate over the entrance to Aspen, dismissing a possible light rail linking Aspen and Glenwood as an exercise in inefficiency and government waste.
In February 2023, Evans, flanked by piles of documents on the subject, gave what could be called a master’s lecture on the entrance to Aspen’s history as seen through election results, city and county board decisions, and legal outcomes. He made a call on YouTube, as an intro to his talk at the Wheeler Opera House, for residents to think about the entrance to Aspen when they vote in the May 2024 municipal election.
Evans hitched a ride into Aspen in a VW bus over Independence Pass in 1970 and would build a home in Redstone. His letters to the editor would end with his trademark address of “Up the Crystal,” referring to the river cutting through the valley where he lived.
He was the founder of the Common Sense Alliance issues committee with a greater mission to fight light rail; Evans also tangled with Democrat politician Mick Ireland when he held political power as a county commissioner.
Evans’ last dive into local politics was in 2022 when he ran for Pitkin County’s District 5 seat on the Board of County Commissioners. Evans ran unaffiliated, getting 27.67% of the votes cast to Democrat Francie Jacober’s 72.33%.
“He said there’s no way you can be elected in Aspen if there’s not a ‘D’ next to your name,” Keller said. “But his main thing was to fix the road, the highway. People accused him of being on the payroll of the asphalt companies and all he wanted to do was stop the traffic jams, which is environmentally beneficial on its own. ... And being a driver, you don’t want congestion every time, up and down.”
Evans was not politically affiliated but he spoke in charged rhetoric about individual choice and independence and cast a suspicious and critical eye on the government.
“He was libertarian in spirit,” Keller said. “I don’t think he liked to be associated with any party. He definitely wasn’t a Democrat and denied being a Republican, and I think his leanings were almost exclusively libertarian.”
His website for his 2020 campaign summed up his political experience and also showed his humorous side.
“Jeffrey Evans is a 50 year resident of Pitkin County who previously ran for county commissioner in 1978 (he thinks, maybe). Although active in local politics for much of the first 30 years, Jeffrey is coming off a twenty year pause. He met a nice lady twenty (+) years ago who seems to like him most of the time, and loves to travel too, so recent decades have been devoted to visiting some of the world’s most spectacular places.”
Aside from his archive of all-things-entrance-to-Aspen documents, which are memorialized on a website he created, Evans had a massive collection of LP records — 7,000 of them, all with protective covers, Keller said.
In an election campaign questionnaire posed by The Aspen Times to county commissioner candidates in the November 2020 election, Evans was asked what the county’s biggest problem was. His response: “The biggest problem in Pitkin County is the same as the nation. We are reluctant to either defend traditional principles or propose original solutions — for fear of attack. To increase my chances of being elected, I should have used the past four days to say: We need stricter growth controls and more affordable housing; to protect the Earth we must all stop driving; and people who live in big houses are insecure narcissists. Instead, I have questioned the COVID-19 orthodoxy, argued that the airport plan has a major flaw, pointed out the mess at the Entrance to Aspen as our biggest transportation problem, and embraced a couple of other classic local heresies. I registered to vote in Pitkin County as an independent in 1976. That has provided me with 44 years of non-partisan bliss, and I can serve by example if you would like to escape the toxic atmosphere between the major political parties.”