A Fight Over Buc-ee’s and for the Soul of the American West

0:05If you've driven through Texas, you may have stopped at a Bucky's. It's a gas station chain. But it is so, so much more than that. For its superfans, Bucky's isn't just a stop along the journey. It's the destination. Bucky's! We finna go to Bucky's! Money can't buy happiness, but Bucky's sure can rent it. A build-your-own coffee bar with literally, like, all the fixings you could ever want. This was my dream. And then the barbecue. I drove four hours to a Bucky's, and it's 4 a.m. because I wanted a brisket sandwich. I love Buc-ee's! Buc-ee's are huge, with dozens of gas pumps, and stores filled with food and merch featuring the chain's mascot, a smiling beaver in a red baseball cap.

0:54Our colleague Jim Carlton recently visited the Buc-ee's for the first time. You know, for research. What's it look like when you first drive up? I was driving by 25, and you can kind of see it from a distance. You can see the beaver logo, a grinning beaver with the big teeth. You get off, and you're usually following a lot of other people. Inside, Jim discovered what draws people into the cult of Bucky's. They might come for the clean bathrooms, but they stay for the beaver nuggets, which are sweet, crunchy corn puffs, and for the brisket sandwiches. Did you try the brisket sandwich? I did try the brisket sandwich.

1:35It was pretty legit, actually. I'm from Texas early on, and it was Texas-style, and it's kind of hard to get that. So I thought they nailed it, yeah. Then there's all the beaver merch. There's, like, kids with, like, beaver costumes. There's beaver dolls. Everything's like this big, happy, like a theme park. It's like a gas station theme park. Like a road stop Chuck E. Cheese. Exactly. That's a good way of putting it. Jim gets the beaver fever. But recently, he's been talking to a lot of people who are decidedly not fans of Buc-ee's. He's been reporting on a showdown, one that's pitting the rest stop and its dreams of westward expansion against one small rural town.

2:19We don't want your Buc-ee's. We don't need your Buc-ee's. We don't desire your people.

2:29Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Annie Minhoff. It's Tuesday, July 22nd.

2:43Coming up on the show, a fight over Buc-ee's and for the soul of the American West.

3:03Most Buc-ee's locations are in Texas, where the company's based. But lately, Buc-ee's has been moving westward. Last year, it opened its first location in Colorado, north of Denver. Now, Buc-ee's wants to expand to a second location in the state. And it's got its eyes on a spot along I-25, between Denver and Colorado Springs. What are the plants? What would this Buc-ee's look like? So I took a walking tour of the property. It's been zoned commercial since 1955, surprisingly, and nothing's ever been built on it because the development's just reached there. It's a few pine trees, some sage. There's a gate there.

3:46The proposed Buckees would be built on 41 acres. The problem? The area is so rural, it's not even part of a town. In order for the Buckees to get hooked up to municipal services, like water, it would need to get annexed, meaning a town in the area would need to expand its limits to include the new Buckees in its services. So last year, Buckees reached out to a local, Mark Waller, a lawyer and political lobbyist. The company wanted to see if any local towns might be interested. He had a meeting with the Buckees people at a place called Rosie's Diner. And then they took out a map in the meeting.

4:26It was over breakfast. And you could see that Palmer Lake is two miles away. So that's how Palmer Lake got on the map on this story.

4:37Palmer Lake is a town of 2 ,500 people. And unlike other nearby towns, which have embraced cookie-cutter subdivisions and big box stores, Palmer Lake has preserved its rural character. Some of its roads aren't even paved. It's right at the base of the Rocky Mountains. The foothills of the Rockies really start right there. I was driving around, and you're in the forest. You can see out over the prairies starting to the east. You can see some buttes and sagebrush, that kind of thing, but it's very rugged. And how did Buc-ee's approach city officials in Palmer Lake? What was their pitch to them? So Buc-ee's did a presentation to the Palmer Lake Town Board of Trustees.

5:20And they basically showed how much traffic would go through that store. And they said, you'll get about a million dollars a year in extra tax revenues for this town. And that's significant. And Palmer Lake has been struggling with its budget, like a lot of other small cities. They have a water system which is outmoded. They need to upgrade it. And they need millions for that and other infrastructure work. And so the officials in Palmer Lake were very excited about this. Very excited. While town officials were excited about the new Buc-ee's, some locals were less than enthused. Buc-ee's are huge, Texas-sized, and they run 24-7.

6:00For many, it seemed like a blight on the idyllic Western landscape. So I moved here to get away from the crowd a little bit. That's Buc-ee's opponent, Jonathan Flanner. Jim spoke to him and his wife, Cheryl. And so now when they put a Buc-ee's there, at night all I'm going to see is this glowing white light. Lots of traffic. There's going to be a lot of traffic. It's just going to change the flavor of the community. I mean, in their minds, it's like a very garish theme park. And then there's some residents of Palmer Lake who are also thinking, wait a second. Okay, it's going to be two miles away, but we're going to see like this giant alien spaceship.

6:36We're going to see the glow. The glowing light of the Buc-ee's in the distance at night. Right, the glowing light of the Buc-ee's in the distance at night. And this is a place cherished for its night stars. You know, they're worried about the traffic. It's going to ruin the whole area, and it's going to bring in more stores, more development. I just think there's some areas that should be left alone for recreation, for people to have a little more peace and get away from the city and enjoy the wilderness, as I think most people here enjoy the quietness and the scenery. Buc-ee's would eventually hire Mark Waller, that lawyer that the company met with at the diner, to represent them.

7:11Waller said that the lights at the new Buc-ee's would point downward to minimize the glow.

7:19So the residents kind of banded together, and they actually started a resistance group. It's kind of like, hell no, we don't want Buc-ee's. Move it somewhere else. And then the word spread in Palmer Lake. Several residents of the Palmer Lake area near Monument not too happy about a new location being proposed there. The Buc-ee's resistance grew. People started holding protests and speaking at town hall meetings. At one meeting in December, Buc-ee's developers laid out their plans for the new location. Hundreds of people came out. People want students to come in here to get in your face and talk down to you and tell you what your community needs.

8:05Am I ready? Nevertheless, in May, Palmer Lake's board of trustees voted to allow the Buckees' annexation to move forward, prompting even more backlash from residents. And voting against the people is not just bad leadership, it's betrayal of our democracy. You were elected to serve us, not to serve your own special interests.

8:29Things got increasingly ugly. Insults flew on social media. Some city officials alleged that their car tires had been slashed. And then there was the texting scandal. Palmer Lake Mayor Glanthavenar is resigning from her post effective tomorrow. Palmer Lake's mayor resigned after it was discovered that she disparaged some anti-Bucky's residents over text, calling them, quote, fat ass and terrorists. Were you surprised by the level of vitriol? I mean, we're talking about a rest stop. I think my jaw is on the ground. When I started to do this story, I knew it was going to be controversial, but I've done a lot of stories.

9:10But this one, the level of just like personal insults and fighting like this, you know, took the cake. I think part of it is a lot of people say things on text that aren't meant for public. And, you know, this became public.

9:25The fight in Palmer Lake might have gotten unusually vicious, but the issues at play aren't unique. Fights over land development have been cropping up across the West. I've seen this play out in many other parts of the West. I was in Moab, Utah. Earlier this year, there was a fight about development in the Colorado River floodplain, for example. — The West is this storied, mythical place of grand landscapes and values, and it's getting smaller. — Across the West, wide-open spaces that used to be devoted to ranching or farming are being developed. Between 2017 and 2022, the American West lost 6.6 million acres of farm and ranch land.

10:12That's an area the size of Massachusetts. And no state has lost more of that land than Colorado. This is a story about buckies, a fight over buckies, but it's really about land development in the American West. Colorado is one of the fastest growing states. And along the Colorado Front Range, it's just, you know, the land that used to be wide open is being covered by shopping malls, outlet malls, gas stations, homes, subdivisions. It's this urban sprawl. So, yeah, I mean, what was triggered by Buc-ee's is a familiar battle, but it was kind of larger than life. And in this battle, anti-Buc-ee's residents have a local hero.

10:55Someone who's vowed to fight for them. The Cable Cowboy. That's next.

11:16The cable cowboy is actually from Connecticut. His name is John Malone, and he's a billionaire telecommunications magnate. He found it in co-chairs Liberty Media, which owns SiriusXM, Live Nation Entertainment, and Formula One Racing. You can hear him on CNBC talking about stuff like streaming profits. You know, streaming just isn't working for most of the players that are trying it. It's not being the successor, profitable, cash-flowing service for most of the players that they were hoping it would be. But Malone also has another passion. You talked to the Cable Cowboy for this story. What's he like?

11:58Very folksy. I talked to him over Zoom. I was in San Francisco in my home. He was in one of his homes in Ireland. And he was just talking about his love of the West. Malone loves the open range. So much so that he's been buying it up on a massive scale. He's currently the second largest private landowner in the country, with ranches in Colorado, Wyoming, and New Mexico. Right now, he owns 2.2 million acres in the United States. And he wants to see it preserved. His city especially wants to preserve the Western rustic lifestyle, where you've got the ranch or farm, and then you've got the little town that depends on the ranch that sells the John Deere tractors and the horse feed.

12:47And he just loves that part of the American Western culture. When you go north of Denver toward Boulder and Fort Collins, there really is no open space left. It's all developed, so there's not even a hint of what we moved to Colorado for. Malone owns 17 ,000 acres near Palmer Lake, the town debating the new Buc-ee's. His land is flush with greenery and wildlife, and still managed by cowboys. Jim made a visit. I rode with a cowboy named Josh. You got on a horse for this story? No, I was in his pickup truck. But we were on the range. We saw a herd of elk. There are bighorn sheep here. They actually have big game hunting.

13:39You can go big game hunting on this ranch. So Malone really wanted to preserve all this. And as we drove to the side of the ranch where you can see Bucky's, you can see the place where it would be. And so Malone's people were saying, just imagine a spaceship there, just this giant mall right there. It's just going to ruin the whole look and feel of this place. It is really like these two visions of the West are just cheek by jowl here. The part of it that's developing and growing and the part of it that wants that kind of old feel, that old West to remain. They're right up next to each other. Exactly.

14:14And that's the problem. That's the problem. We have two competing views of the Old West.

14:23Malone really didn't want the new Buc-ee's. He co-wrote a newspaper editorial, which called the Buc-ee's beaver, quote, an invasive species from Texas. And he didn't stop there. Malone, he's got a guy named Rye Austin, is his head of land preservation. And Rye called, actually, Mark Waller. Waller, the lawyer hired by Buc-ee's. And said, we want to let you know that Mr. Malone doesn't like the development. And there's some dispute about exactly what happened next. Walter says that Rye kind of semi-threatened said, and he's prepared to use his vast resources to stop it. In other words, this town ain't big enough for the both of us?

15:05Pretty much, pretty much. And so Rye said that's not the way it happened. You know, he did convey Malone's displeasure, but he didn't say there was any threat. So anyway, that's in dispute right now. So anyway, now we've got John Malone, the cable cowboy involved in the fight. So now we're really off to the races. How could Malone prevent this development? I mean, what can he kind of tangibly do to support the anti-Buc-ee's effort? Well, what he told me is that he's already offered to buy that land. So the land, the 41 acres, is under contract of Buc-ee's. I mean, Buc-ee's doesn't actually own it yet.

15:38It's under contract. And so Malone said, I'll buy it. And he said, and I'm prepared to help back a legal battle. He'll help support a lawsuit. Is the anti-Bucky's camp kind of fighting the inevitable? I mean, places change, you know, more people want to live out west, the population is growing. Can you roll that back? I was actually surprised at the intensity of opposition because you're right. I mean, the interesting thing about this fight is this is on Interstate 25. There's so many people, millions of people on that highway. And if you're going towards Colorado Springs, the very next exit is like a strip shopping center.

16:17There's a McDonald's. Suburbia is right there. It's right around the corner.

16:23After Palmer Lake's Board of Trustees voted to move forward with annexation last May, the town's planning commission began preparing a report on what it would take to build the new Buc-ee's. Officials are now waiting for that report and expect to vote later this summer on whether or not to move forward. The new mayor said they plan to probably take a vote fairly quickly after that report. So things are kind of coming to a head on Buc-ee's. But with all the guns in this fight, I have no idea whether it's going to be built or not. I have this mental image of, like, you know, the cowboys, like, emerging from all the saloons, guns drawn, and who's going to be left standing at the end of the shootout.

17:09We have a high noon showdown coming, Annie. High noon showdown.

17:39Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.