Westward ho! Amish escaping crowds, prices in East

WESTCLIFFE, Colo. (AP) — A new road sign cautions drivers to watch for Amish horse-drawn carriages in the valley beneath Colorado’s Sangre de Cristo mountains. Highway pull-offs and dedicated horse-and-buggy paths are in the works.

Amid the serenity and isolation of southern Colorado, hamlets such as Westcliffe, La Jara and Monte Vista are welcoming Amish families who are moving West to escape high land prices and community overcrowding back East in Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

“The reason we moved out West is the farmland is a little bit cheaper and it’s not as heavily populated, a little more open space and a little more opportunity for young people to get started with their own farms,” said Ben Coblentz, a 47-year-old alfalfa farmer from Indiana.

Of an estimated 231,000 Amish nationwide, more than 60 percent still live in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana.

But from 2002 to 2008, Colorado’s Amish population went from zero to more than 400, according to the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Pennsylvania’s Elizabethtown College. Montana, with an estimated 540 Amish, and Colorado now have the westernmost Amish settlements in the U.S. Colorado ranks seventh in the nation in Amish immigration, according to the Young Center.

The Amish are a Christian denomination who trace their roots to the Protestant Reformation in 16th-century Europe and migrated to North America in the 18th and 19th centuries. Over the last century, many have turned to nonfarm work such as family-owned shops.