Aspen is home to 6,000 souls who, more often than not, just happen to be fabulously wealthy. Photograph by Joel Sartore

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By Bill Bryson

In the event that you have been looking to settle in a community with clear air, big skies, sumptuous mountains, and a Hard Rock Cafe, and that you have, oh, let us say, three million dollars burning a hole in your valise, then I have just the spot for you: Aspen, Colorado.

Polo matches draw celebrities and less famous folk, who find a mountain playground in Aspen. Photograph by Joel Sartore

Aspen, as everyone knows, is not like other communities, which is probably a good thing, or we should all have to ask for a very large raise. This is a place where you can spend [U.S.] $4 on a cup of coffee or $9,000 on a knickknack for the den, where a log cabin on a modest lot can set you back 2.95 million dollars, and a $200,000 house is considered a “teardown”—worth buying only for the land it stands on.

Alternatively, if that is a little rich for your blood, you can do as I did and just spend a few happy days wandering around seeing how the other 0.02 percent live. The days were happy because Aspen seems to have avoided some of the development mistakes you can find elsewhere in the Rockies. What you get here is a handsome and affectionately maintained little town with a good deal of history, 24 parks and playgrounds, oodles of culture, exquisite skiing in season, a symphony of mountains all around, air of head-lightening purity, preposterously overindulgent shopping, and the chance to rub shoulders with the rich and famous.

Get the complete story in the September 1999 issue of TRAVELER.