Known as Ski Town, U.S.A., for its deep powder and its growing crop of winter Olympians, Steamboat Springs was named nearly two centuries ago by French trappers. Hearing the "chug, chug" of one of many hot springs, they supposed they had reached navigable waters. For centuries, the area's abundant fish, game, and mineral springs drew the Yampatika, a Ute subtribe. In the 1870s, a rush of settlers came, first for precious metals, followed by more renewable riches--the lush summer pastures--and next the extraction of carbonized forests (coal) millions of years old. Ironically, real wealth...