Dear Editor: From a sound sleep and in sudden realization in waking this morning, it hit me â April 2001, twenty years earlier, I stood in the Salida Community Center before a packed room of interested citizens and shared a vision of the Upper Arkansas Valley. In small communities like our own, the values we most cherish were quickly disappearing. Would the Upper Arkansas River Valley soon resemble the Front Range cities linked by subdivisions, strip malls, and packed highways? If so, our rural way of life characterized by ranches, abundant water, wildlife, scenic vistas and small, friendly towns will have disappeared. âWell, it does not have to be that way!â I exclaimed. Â