Artist Spotlight S a n d ra C o r t n e r C a p t u re s C re s t e d B u t t e T h ro u g h H e r Le n s By Kendra Walker
Image Courtesy of Merrick Chase and www.BackcountryPhotoCB.com
Unlike most folks who find their way to Crested Butte, it wasn’t love at first sight for Sandra Cortner. It was not love, says Sandy. “I did not come here for the skiing and fall in love the very second I drove down the hill. It was June and it was snowing when we arrived. I didn’t know how to ski. There was nobody here my age and I missed my boyfriend back home.” Sandy first came to Crested Butte in 1964 at age 17, having graduated two nights before from her high school in Tucson, Arizona. Her stepfather was attending a conference with the Law Science Academy. Her family stayed at the Academy Arms, now known as the Forest Queen Hotel, and then moved into a rental house in town for the summer. “It was going for the outrageous price of $100 bucks a week,” says Sandy. “The day we arrived at that house,” she recalls, “we found a loaf of beautiful homemade bread on the table. We learned that it was from Grama Stimac,” the woman next door who always baked bread for a new neighbor. “It really began to grow on me the fact that you could know people so easily. When I first came there was hardly anybody here, all 250 people or something. We would go to the Grubstake and we knew the owner and you just got to talking and it was easier to develop friendships with everybody.”
It didn’t take long for Sandy to warm up to Crested Butte and all it had to offer. Coming from the desert, the beauty of the mountains definitely stood out for her. “It was cool weather and there was green grass growing and there were little streams flowing and cows,” she recalls, a similar scene Gunnison Valley locals and visitors are fortunate to enjoy still to this day. During her second summer in Crested Butte, Sandy’s mother started the Village Store, which sold liquor on one side, and staple items like bread, milk, cheese, butter, and canned goods on the other side. “I would help in the store and my sisters would help and we’d take turns manning the cash register and there was hardly any business,” says Sandy. “If we did $50 bucks a day, it was a good day. We were just begging for tourists to come by and when they did you were on your best behavior.” During those first few years in Crested Butte, Sandy held several jobs around town. “I had three or four part-time jobs, working in my mom’s store, taking photos, waiting tables.” Sandy spent her college years at the University of Arizona and then transferred to the University of Colorado - CU Boulder. After graduating from CU, “I just put all my stuff in my little Volkswagon bug and drove straight to Crested Butte.”
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