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Show PART II DESCRIPTION OF REGION Extensive outdoor recreational use is made of "both public and pri- vate lands year-round. Recreational areas available to the public in- clude the national forests, national parks and monuments, wilderness or primitive areas, and public domain lands as well as many state, local, and private developments. The People The Upper Colorado Region is sparsely populated. In 1965 the popu- lation of the economic subregions was about 337^000 and the average den- sity was about three persons per square mile compared with a national average of 6k. On the basis of estimates for 1965 only two communities of the re- gion have populations of more than 20,000-Grand Junction, Colorado, with 22,400 and Farmington, New Mexico, with 21,000. The next largest towns are Durango, Colorado, with a population of 11,200 and Rock Springs, Wyo- ming, with 10,300. All of the other communities have populations of less than 10,000. Only about 37 percent of the residents live in towns with populations of more than 2,500 inhabitants and the remainder are in rural areas. In i960 males outnumbered females in every age group except 20 to 39* Forty-eight percent of the people were age 20 to 6h. At the extremes of the range were kh percent of the population under 19 years of age with 8 percent of the population 65 a*id older. Educational attainment of the people age 25 and over compared quite favorably with that of their counterparts in the Nation at large. In each subregion for both 1950 and i960 the median number of school years com- pleted by both males and females exceeded the national levels of accom- plishment. Approximately 69>000 Apache, Navajo, and Ute Indians reside in the region. 22 |