Clear skies. Low 6F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph..
Clear skies. Low 6F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph.
Updated: January 14, 2025 @ 9:12 pm
Schoolchildren (including those above) enjoy Ridgway State Park each spring courtesy of a program paid for by the Friends of Ridgway State Park. (Courtesy photo)
The Friends of Ridgway State Park awarding Ridgway resident (and Cal Poly biological sciences student) Paul Steinke, above, a scholarship at the park. (Courtesy photo)
Schoolchildren (including those above) enjoy Ridgway State Park each spring courtesy of a program paid for by the Friends of Ridgway State Park. (Courtesy photo)
The Friends of Ridgway State Park awarding Ridgway resident (and Cal Poly biological sciences student) Paul Steinke, above, a scholarship at the park. (Courtesy photo)
Heads-up, college students: The Friends of Ridgway State Park wants you to know about a pair of $2,500 scholarships.
Eligible recipients have received these awards not just once, but repeatedly, according to Joan Moyer, the nonprofit’s treasurer and leader. “We’ve had a couple of gals who’ve applied and gotten a $2,500 scholarship two years in a row,” Moyer said.
The two awards are conferred annually to local high-school graduates who have completed at least one semester of post-secondary education. It doesn’t matter whether you’re enrolled in a two-year or four-year degree-granting program, Moyer said, “but you must be in college,” and enrolled in a program that leads to a degree in environmental/biological sciences “or the equivalent.” (You must have graduated from a high school in Ouray, San Miguel, Montrose, Delta or Mesa County.)
Pick up an application at Ridgway State Park, by phoning 970-626-5822, or visiting the Friends’ website, at www.rspfriends.org.
Completed applications can be mailed to FRSP, Box 149, Ridgway CO 81432 or emailed to jmoy670@gmail.com.
The deadline to apply is May 31, 2025.
The Friends of Ridgway’s mission is, as Moyer puts it, “the education and beautification of (the) state park,” and the group hopes that ideally, scholarship recipients will remain in this region. Alas, they realize the likelihood of this happening is small. While “the majority of recipients have gone on to work in conservation and biology,” Moyer acknowledged, “No one is working around here.” The reality is that there are precious few jobs in these fields in lightly-populated places, she pointed out. “And as far as (employment at) Ridgway State Park goes,” Moyer added, “most of them are rangers,” or they work for the Colorado Department of Wildlife, “which is a little different than what this scholarship helps students to go into, which promotes wildlife conservation, forestry…whatever they choose to study.”
The Friends are able to offer college scholarships and to pay for the busing of local schoolkids to the park for presentations by a naturalist each spring, as well as to help supply fishing poles, snowshoes — and even supply microscopes for the study of water at the park “that the park’s budget does not pay for,” Moyer said — through a perhaps unlikely source: the sales of firewood and bags of ice. “We have annual membership fees,” Moyer said, “but the majority of our fundraising is through the sale of wood bundles and bags of ice,” that guests can pick from camping hosts, or can be purchased at the park’s Visitors Center (winter camping is open at the park, at the Dutch Charlie Entrance, even now).
“Many parks have raised their prices on wood and bags of ice, but we’ve kept them stable,” Moyer said. “Campers pay a nightly fee to stay here and a daily visitors’ fee. The last few years have been hard times. I’m not going to have (guests) pay more for wood and ice. And you know,” Moyer added, “we’ve done alright” when it comes to funding college scholarships through such sales. The Friends of Ridgway State Park welcomes new members and donations (visit www.rspfriends.org to learn more).
Moyer did not grow up in the West, but like many who live here and work to conserve this region, she’s passionate about it. “We raised our family in Wisconsin. We did a lot of hiking and canoeing and fishing and cross-country skiing,” she said. “We moved here in 2001, and by 2002 or 2003, we’d joined the Friends. Ridgway,” Moyer said, “is the perfect spot.”
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