David O. Williams is an award-winning freelance reporter based in the Vail Valley of Colorado, writing on health care, immigration, politics, the environment, energy, public lands, outdoor recreation and sports. His work has appeared in 5280 Magazine, American Way Magazine (American Airlines), the Anchorage Daily News (Alaska), Aspen Daily News, the Aspen Times, Beaver Creek Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, the Colorado Independent, Colorado Politics formerly the Colorado Statesman), Colorado Public News, the Colorado Springs Gazette, the Colorado Independent (formerly Colorado Confidential), the Colorado Springs Independent, the Colorado Statesman (now Colorado Politics), the Daily Trail (Vail), the Denver Daily News, the Denver Post, the Durango Herald, the Eagle Valley Enterprise, the Eastside Journal (Bellevue, Washington), ESPN.com, the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent, the Greeley Tribune, the Huffington Post, the King County Journal (Seattle, Washington), KUNC.org (northern Colorado), LA Weekly, the London Daily Mirror, the Montgomery Journal (Maryland), The New York Times, the Parent’s Handbook, Peaks Magazine (now Epic Life), People Magazine, Powder Magazine, the Pueblo Chieftain, PT Magazine, Rocky Mountain Golf Magazine, the Rocky Mountain News, Atlantic Media's RouteFifty.com (formerly Government Executive State and Local), SKI Magazine, Ski Area Management, SKIING Magazine, the Summit Daily News, United Hemispheres (United Airlines), Vail/Beaver Creek Magazine, Vail en Español, Vail Valley Magazine, the Vail Daily, the Vail Trail and Westword (Denver). Williams is also the founder, publisher and editor of RealVail.com and RockyMountainPost.com.
Western history washes up against modern reality in good, old-fashioned water war
Homestake Creek wetlands (photo by John Fielder). Mark Twain may or may not have actually said it first – “Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting!” – but even…
Glenwood Springs, ‘poster child for climate change,’ digs in to battle barrage of oil trains
Elected officials in Glenwood Springs are quite certain of two realities facing the largest town between the Denver metro area and Grand Junction on Union Pacific’s Central Corridor rail line:…
Opponents of Utah oil trains look to expiring Colorado railroad tunnel lease for leverage
State officials since last spring have quietly been reaching out to communities along Colorado’s main east-west rail line to gauge local sentiment as the state negotiates a new lease with…
BLM blasted for fast-tracking oil loading facility in Utah to up production stalled by rail battle
A proposal to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to expand the capacity of an oil transport facility on federal land west of Price, Utah, has caught the attention of…
Billionaire who kicked off a railroad war says he’s no longer interested in dormant line over Colorado Rockies
MINTURN, Colo. — A billionaire New York developer and Colorado agricultural landowner who launched a full-blown railroad war in his pursuit of Union Pacific’s dormant Tennessee Pass rail line from Pueblo to…
Colorado lawmaker grew up in mobile home parks she’s now fighting for in water-quality bill
EDWARDS, Colo. — When Elizabeth Velasco first moved to Colorado from San Francisco del Rincón, Mexico, she was a teenager living in a series of aging mobile home parks in…
Lawmakers point to East Palestine rail disaster in bid to block federal approval of Utah oil trains
U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse of Colorado on Monday wrote a letter to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack urging him to formally suspend federal authorization of…
Learning from tragedy in Colorado backcountry
On Tuesday, Dec. 27, my wife and I and two of our three sons took an all-day avy prep course with Apex Mountain School in EagleVail. It was a morning of…
Billionaire trying to revive Tennessee Pass rail line acquires another railroad in southern Colorado
Stefan Soloviev, the billionaire New York developer and Colorado agricultural landowner who first revived interest in the dormant Tennessee Pass rail line through Eagle County in 2018, is on the…
Ute battles past, present linger as Biden designates Camp Hale National Monument
PANDO VALLEY, Colo. – On his way to Wednesday’s signing ceremony to designate the new 53,800-acre Camp Hale-Continental Divide National Monument, President Joe Biden and his motorcade passed over 9,267-foot…
Follow Us!