Aspen

The City of Aspen is a Home Rule Municipality that is the county seat and the most populous city of Pitkin County, Colorado.  The United States Census Bureau placed the city’s population at 6,658 in 2010.

Founded as a mining camp in the Colorado Silver Boom and named because of the abundance of aspen trees in the area, the city is now a ski resort and an upscale tourist center. Aspen is home to three renowned institutions that have international importance: the Aspen Music Festival and School, the Aspen Institute, and the Aspen Center for Physics. The Maroon-Snowmass Wilderness, the Hunter-Frying Pan Wilderness, and the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness are nearby.   In the late 20th century, the city developed as a popular destination for celebrities, attracting people like Charlie Sheen, Hunter S. Thompson, and John Denver, the latter having written several songs about the town, including “Aspenglow” and “Starwood in Aspen”.

Aspen boasts the most expensive real estate prices in the United States. Aspen is a mixture of high-end luxury estates and condos intermixed with single-family homes and mobile home parks. As of March 2011, the lowest-priced single-family home on the market was a trailer for $559,000. The median listing price for homes or condos for sale in Aspen is $4,229,558 according to Trulia. It is not uncommon to see listing prices reaching the mid-eight figures.

The median income for a household in the city was $60,418, and the median income for a family was $70,300. Males had a median income of $41,011 versus $32,023 for females. The per capita income for the city was $40,680. About 3.6% of families and 8.2% of the population were below the poverty line, including 4.4% of those under age 18 and 2.6% of those age 65 or over.

For more local information, visit…

Aspen Chamber of Commerce