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Kirsten Laraby, left, who works for a local developer, went to Fraser Trustee Joyce Burford with an idea to change the town motto to change Fraser's image.

Fraser - It can't be blamed on global warming, but temperatures are rising here, as officials ponder scrapping the town's venerable "Icebox of the Nation" nickname.

First suggested by a resident who wanted to entice outsiders and developers with an updated, inviting town logo, the move has angered some old-timers, who see the motto as a badge of honor.

"It's an emotional thing. A lot of people think it makes Fraser Fraser," Town Manager Jeff Durbin said.

The Grand County town, which boasts an average annual temperature of 34.8 degrees and routinely hits lows of minus-40 in the winter, gained its moniker in the 1950s when it regularly made the evening news as the coldest spot in the country.

The 30-year-old town logo, featuring a horse-drawn logging wagon, was updated a few years ago with the whimsical addition of sunglasses on one of the lead steeds, but resident Kirsten Laraby suggested that the fast- growing resort area needs a new identity - minus the icebox tagline.

"I think there are a lot better amenities that highlight the area rather than 'It's cold,"' said Laraby, who works for a development company building new luxury homes in Fraser.

She approached town Trustee Joyce Burford, who also serves as the marketing director for the Winter Park/Fraser Chamber of Commerce, with the idea of creating a new logo, and an informal contest was launched.

The town board will discuss the matter and review five designs Wednesday but is not bound to act on the proposal.

"I felt like the timing was right and it was worth considering," Burford said. "If they don't want to change it, that's fine."

Although the matter so far has sparked little discussion among residents, that could change if the tagline is removed, said town Trustee Eric Hoyhtya, who is firmly against any change.

"You hear the development community saying, 'Aw, you're killing us with that,' but this is a source of pride," he said. "I don't think it's a good idea to chuck away your history."

With an average of only 19 frost-free days each year and a record low set in 1962 of minus- 53, Fraser long has held a reputation as one of the country's coldest spots. Fraser is in a mountain valley where cold air settles.

U.S. 40 through town was named Zerex Avenue after that company supplied residents with free antifreeze one winter; Goodyear once equipped every vehicle in town with studded snow tires.

Other towns have contested the "icebox" claim to fame, however, including Big Piney, Wyo.

In the late 1980s, Fraser filed for a copyright on the icebox tagline, sparking a furor in International Falls, Minn., where a lucrative cold-weather testing industry had sprouted.

But before the dispute over the right to use the name went to a hearing before the U.S. Trademark Trail and Appeals Board, Fraser officials backed down and agreed to use the icebox motto only in Colorado.

"Cold-weather testing is more important to their economy than it is to ours," Clay Brown, then the Fraser town manager, told The Washington Post at the time. "We feel we have plenty of other assets."

Locals have continued calling the town "the icebox," and signs at the town limit still proudly boast the motto.

These days, Vesta Shapiro continues to sell T-shirts at her gift shop that read: "Fraser, Colorado - Still the icebox of the nation," an act of defiance that is one of her best-sellers.

"The developers are pretty much running our lives, and they don't think it's helping their marketing. It's to their advantage to change it to something insipid and user-friendly," said Shapiro, a Fraser native who is also a trustee.

Even proponents of the motto change are not aware of any developers struggling to sell property in the hot market of the icebox, and they acknowledge that the area's legendary dry powder snow still drives the winter economy. 

"It's just that when you consider that we're competing against places like Breckenridge and Vail, people are making the choice: It's a Victorian town or Colorado's playground or the 'Icebox of the Nation,"' Laraby said.

Third-generation Fraser native Connie Clayton - who considers the weather "cold" only when the temperature drops below minus-35 - argues that stripping the motto won't make the area any warmer and instead would just mean another piece of history forgotten.

"When they moved here, it was the Icebox of the Nation," she groused of the relative newcomers favoring the change such as Laraby, who moved to the area more than a decade ago from Montana. "If they didn't like it, they never should have moved here."

Besides, she and many other locals note, nearby Tabernash is actually even colder.
