Loss of Trinidad’s art-car parade and museum robs city of signature cultural event

In spite of desperate attempts to save Trinidad’s Artocade parade and Art Cartopia museum over the last week, the nationally renowned attractions are set to close permanently, dealing a staggering blow to the New Mexico border town’s years-long efforts to maintain a signature cultural event.

“There’s no rescue available, the board voted to do this and that’s just the reality,” said Rodney Wood, an artist and former director of the nonprofit parade and museum. “A lot of the reasons floating around for it on (social media) are fiction. I’m actually getting a T-shirt made about it that says ‘Don’t believe everything you think.’ ”

Artocade rocketed to national prominence shortly after it debuted a decade ago, becoming the nation’s second-largest art-car event after marquee gatherings in Houston and Seattle. Like the Artocade parade, the Art Cartopia museum featured hand-designed and repurposed cars made by individual artists with wacky themes and electric-powered devices. The programs brought together “kids, quilters, Christians, cops and convicts,” as Wood wrote on a past grant application.

The pitched tenor of the debate over its closure comes from the shock of losing the city’s biggest arts gathering, which was announced in late June when Wood posted about its cancellation on Artocade’s Facebook page. Some residents, both on- and offline, have laid blame for the closure on budgets, city officials, a lack of engagement, and the brutal, post-COVID environment.

The dozens of unique vehicles, some owned by national artists, will be returned to their owners, Wood said.

“As the (Facebook) post says, it’s not just money,” wrote Lafayette artist and event producer Mark Moffett. “As someone who produces many events in metro Denver, moving away from COVID (and) finding an adequate number of volunteers for anything is very difficult.”

Artcartopia, which cost between $100,000 to $150,000 to produce, provided an annual rallying point for the city of roughly 8,500. Known variously for its cannabis tourism, hard-scrabble mining history, and past reputation as the so-called sex change capital of the world, Trinidad has attracted scattered investments and start-ups that have yet to make it the must-visit enclave that boosters have envisioned on and off for decades.

“We treasure having the museum here and always look forward to the parade,” said Trinidad city manager Steve Ruger. “We definitely see it as a major tourism attraction and want to be supportive of it.”

Ruger called it a major loss to the city, but also pointed to upcoming city plans to lessen its shock and move forward. Trinidad does not have a special events manager, but in 2024 will get into the production business with at least three public programs for residents and tourists (no word on what those will be yet). City officials are working with Denver’s Greenway Foundation to design a new riverwalk corridor along 3.5 miles of Purgatoire River, and Fisher’s Peak — which opened in November and is in the middle of its first full year of welcoming hikers and bicyclists — has already asserted itself as Colorado’s second-largest state park, according to Gov. Jared Polis’ office.

Downtown Trinidad is also getting a master plan to revitalize its quiet streets, and the city’s collection of architectural jewels — including brick buildings left untouched by decades of boom and bust — are getting a facelift. However, when Artocade leaders requested help in finding a new venue for their cars, Ruger said city officials had no options to help them.

“We have the Space to Create art venue, which opened in November,” he said of the state-funded studios. “But we need to be diligent about supporting that venue as an independent space.”

Due to the numerous challenges, Wood never made much money from the parade or museum, and its closing is the direct result of a lack of resources and new blood, he said.

“I guarantee the McDonald’s manager is making significantly more than I ever did working 40 hours a week on this,” said Wood, who stepped away from Artocade and Art Cartopia in 2021 and last year moved to Hoisington, Kansas, to escape what he called increasing costs of his Trinidad gallery and building. “I mean this sincerely but: this event never should have happened. Opening the museum was brilliant and stupid all rolled into one.”

Wood’s not the only visionary in town. Front Range music-venue and bookstore owners, comedians, entrepreneurs and preservations have invested tens of millions of dollars to fix up parts of Trinidad over the last decade in the hopes of snagging hipsters, artists and tourists along the I-25 corridor between Santa Fe and Fort Collins.

But since the city of Trinidad does not organize its own events, officials rely on private organizations to provide fairs, festivals and summer markets for residents. Another former signature event, the Trinidaddio Blues music festival, is not returning this year either, organizers wrote in February.

That leaves it up to event producers such as Wally Wallace, Trinidad’s former economic development manager who still runs the city’s modest Chief Comedy Festival. He marshaled the Colorado stand-up scene for the Chief fest, but instead of importing an outside theme, he used the fact that Trinidad is the halfway point between Chicago and Los Angeles on the still-running Southwest Chief passenger rail line (comics even performed on the trains running into town from those cities).

Anchoring an event in Trinidad is not the same as running one in Seattle, which has a similar art-car scene.

“Apples and kumquats,” Wood said of the comparison on Facebook. “The Seattle area has a (metro area) population of 3.5 million-plus. Trinidad has less than 8,500 and the nearest large city is 2 hours away.”