Carbondale
About the Roaring Fork Valley and Carbondale
The Roaring Fork Valley is a geographically large area, covering thousands of acres of pristine forest and riparian landscapes over several counties. You’ll find bustling cosmopolitan towns like Carbondale, Glenwood Springs and Aspen wedged in between the mountains and rivers. Our RE/MAX Mountain West office is centrally located in Carbondale, with easy access to Glenwood Springs, but we serve towns as far south as Marble and Redstone, as far west as De Beque and Parachute, and as far east as Basalt, Snowmass and Aspen.
Carbondale takes its name from Carbondale, Pennsylvania, the hometown of Carbondale’s first settlers. The legacy of their settlement lives on in Potato Days Festival, an annual fall parade and cookout in Sopris Park. Until the late 1980s Carbondale’s economy was helped by coal operations in the Crystal River Valley, but by 1991 the mines closed permanently. Since the early 1990s, Carbondale has served as a mid-point destination between Aspen and Glenwood Springs and is home to a significant portion of the population of Garfield County.
If you head south out of Carbondale, you will travel on curvy roads bordered with red-colored cliffs and the Crystal River until you arrive at historic Redstone and then Marble, both small, frequently-visited towns. Redstone offers cute cottages, bed and breakfasts, and unlimited hiking opportunities right out the front door into the White River National Forest. Marble is famous for its, well…marble! It’s quarried just outside town and has been used for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. as well as many sculptures which can be found throughout the town and in artisan shops. Travelling farther south will take you over stunning McClure Pass, not to be missed in the fall with millions of bright yellow aspen trees quaking in the breeze.
Glenwood Springs, to the north of Carbondale and sitting alongside Highway I-70, has a population close to 10,000 residents. A busy place, you can find several relaxing hot springs facilities, mountaintop tourism attractions, and big box retailers. This area is a perfect central location for visitors to use while exploring the area, whether hiking beloved Hanging Lake or the Maroon Bells formation, whitewater rafting on the Colorado River, or downhill skiing in resort towns like Aspen or Snowmass.
If you follow I-70 to the west of Glenwood Springs you will enter an area that is rich with jobs in petroleum extraction businesses, and steeped in cattle ranching history. Small growing towns like De Beque, Silt, and Parachute as well as the larger towns of New Castle and Rifle are family-friendly, environmentally aware, with comfortable suburban neighborhoods and large ranches just out of town. This corridor sits entirely within Garfield County and is a perfect jumping-off point to access the Flat Tops Wilderness and Routt National Forest, or to hop in the car and be at the airport in Grand Junction in about an hour.
The Roaring Fork Valley is one of the most affluent and diverse areas in all of Colorado. Whether you are interested in a town with nightlife, fine dining and tourism, if you need a family home in a small, tight-knit community, or you want to escape to a rustic mountain town without one stop sign, you can find it all right here! Contact our RE/MAX Mountain West office in Carbondale for more information today!