The Stoplight Flyers

Here’s a blurry “The Warmth of Whiskey” Kim Evans Mark Flakne Jack Semelsberger

Yesterday we played at SHSMO. This is “Rifle,” a song I wrote about the oils shale boom and bust that took place during the oil embargo in the late 70’s and Early 80’s. During the oil shortage, President Carter opened the oil shale fields of Western Colorado to mining and incentivized the big oil companies to get involved. This created 2000 oil jobs and thousands more jobs to build the infrastructure needed to support the boom, from highways to housing and everything in between. One oil company even built an entire new town and there was a plan to pump water from the Missouri River, over the Continental Divide.

Wages were 4-5 times higher than anywhere else so workers flooded the area from all over the country, many camping by the roadside as they waited for housing to be built.

When the oil embargo ended in 1982, Exxon locked the gates to the Anvil Point mining site with no warning. Known as “Black Sunday,” the abrupt move caused a regional depression that bankrupted area businesses that had survived the Great Depression.

The displaced workers referred to Exxon as “The Double Crosses.”