The Colorado Department of Transportation is saying goodbye to a key member of its Glenwood Springs office. Engineer Joe Elsen is retiring at the end of June, after working on some of the biggest highway projects in the Roaring Fork Valley area. Those include Interstate 70 through Glenwood Canyon, Snowmass Canyon on Highway 82, and now the Grand Avenue Bridge replacement in Glenwood Springs.
If you spend some time with Elsen, you’ll hear stories that start off like this:
“So here we are back in, I think it’s 1988 or ‘89, and we had a feature out on I-70 in Glenwood Canyon where we’re going to have to blast a four story building off the side of the canyon wall...”
The tale ends with Elsen piloting a speedboat down the Colorado River with a woman who’s in labor. Now that he’s on his way out, Elsen sat down with Aspen Public Radio’s Elise Thatcher.
