Colorado’s new hands-free law explained

Plus: A controversial plan to ban climbing bolts canceled, a sweet story about Enstrom’s toffee, What’s Happening this weekend and more

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Dec 19, 2024 - 10:00
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Colorado’s new hands-free law explained
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Good morning, Colorado.

Christmas could come early for Broncos fans tonight. A win over the Chargers on Thursday Night Football gets Denver into the playoffs for the first time since their Super Bowl win all the way back in 2016. In many ways that’s the last time everything felt normal, right?

Since then the Avs, Nuggets and DU hockey have helped add even more titles to Colorado’s sports legacy. But it doesn’t feel complete until the three-time champion Broncos are fully back.

While on the topic of sports, as we mentioned here yesterday Colorado is in the mix for an expansion women’s soccer team. We asked you all for suggested nicknames, and you didn’t disappoint. Here were some of our favorites:

• The Silver Plumes

• The Silverheels

• The Denver Altitude

• The Blizzards

Keep ’em coming, but for now let’s get to today’s news.

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Coloradans killed in distracted driving crashes from 2012 to 2022

Starting Jan. 1, driving with a phone in your hand in Colorado can get you a $75 fine and two points against your license. The hands-free law is aimed at boosting safety by targeting a leading cause of crashes and fatalities in Colorado and a practice more than 90% of Coloradans report doing, according to the state’s Department of Transportation. Olivia Prentzel explains the new law.

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Proposed climbing management policies by the Forest Service and National Park Service would require review of fixed anchors and bolts in wilderness areas. (Mark Reis, Special to The Colorado Sun)

A plan that would have allowed local land managers to ban climbing anchors in wilderness areas was given the kibosh by the National Park Service, Jason Blevins reports. This follows a nearly two-year process to create a policy that called on local land managers to inventory fixed climbing anchors in wild areas. Here’s why climbers and wilderness advocates cheered the sudden reversal.

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Payton Hollar, left, of Grand Junction rings up a large purchase of toffee and chocolate by Hila Seevers of Loma at the Enstrom Candies store in Grand Junction on Dec. 11. (Gretel Daugherty, Special to The Colorado Sun)

Still looking for a stocking stuffer? You’ll want to head down to the Enstrom Candies retail store in downtown Grand Junction after reading this story. But you might not have to, as Nancy Lofholm writes, since the famous toffee maker has spread its offerings to large retailers in recent years.

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A detail from “Hopi Dancers,” a lithograph print by Fritz Scholder Luiseño, on view in the Denver Art Museum’s Martin building. (Photo provided by the Denver Art Museum)

SUSTAINED! The Persistent Genius of Indigenous Art. A new exhibition in the Denver Art Museum’s Martin building celebrates 100 years of collecting Native American art and artifacts. “SUSTAINED! The Persistent Genius of Indigenous Art” presents historic and contemporary items from the DAM’s permanent collection.

In January of this year, a new set of regulations was tacked onto the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, a 33-year-old law commonly referred to as NAGPRA, that strengthened the rules around repatriation by museums to tribes. The act was originally created to prevent grave looting, and push museums to return excavated items — including human remains — to the tribes they belong to, but over the past few years, an investigative series by ProPublica exposed the loopholes that many institutions were using to get around the act’s requirements. (DAM maintains that it has always complied with NAGPRA regulations, and as an art museum has never collected human remains.)

The new regulations include mandatory consent from the items’ original community for the display of things like funerary objects and sacred items. All of this to say, the process of curation for the DAM’s new display was extensive, and included collaboration with a panel of Indigenous community members, as well as months of outreach to tribes. The resulting selections — from a collection of around 18,000 Native works — represent a wide variety of Native communities, time periods and materials. The exhibition opens Dec. 22 and will stay up “through 2025,” according to a news release.

$22-25; Dec. 22; Denver Art Museum, 100 W 14th Ave., Denver

See you tomorrow.

— Kevin & the whole staff of The Sun

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