Local Legend,
Eugene Buchanan
Life Shaped by the River, the Mountains, and the People of Steamboat
On a spring day in 1992, Eugene Buchanan dropped over Rabbit Ears Pass and watched the fog as it began to lift off the valley floor. Below him, he could see glimpses of green fields with the town of Steamboat Springs appearing like an emerald tucked into the bend of a river. He and his wife had been looking for a river town with a real community, a place where mountains, water, and good people shaped the rhythm of each day.
As the fog burned off, they knew they had found it.
More than three decades later, Eugene has become one of the most recognizable voices telling Steamboat’s story to the wider world. An award-winning author and longtime outdoor journalist, he has written for national outlets such as Men’s Journal, Outside, ESPN and NBC, while serving as editor-in-chief of Paddler magazine and founding Paddling Life. His bookshelf now includes six titles with his most recent, Yampa Yearnings – set to be released soon. Each publication is an ongoing love letter to rivers, family, and life set against four seasons and surrounded by nature.
Yet if you ask Eugene what defines him, he’s less likely to talk about leading river explorations or publishing credits and more likely to talk about a raft full of kids heading home from soccer practice, the cold push of the Yampa at spring runoff, or a community that shows up when someone needs them. For him, Steamboat has always been less about postcard perfection and more about the everyday magic of a town where adventure and authenticity share the same zip code.
It’s that blend of grit, gratitude, and community that 1700 Ski Time Square seeks to honor, celebrating those who have crafted a life in Steamboat Springs, rich in meaning, adventure and connection.
Choosing a River Town on Purpose
Eugene’s path to Steamboat began with a very specific checklist. He knew his family wanted a true river community, a strong town culture, while also having easy access to the rest of the world’s adventures. The short flight out of Hayden, the drive to Denver, and nearby family on the Front Range felt right, but it was the Yampa River and the people surrounding it that sealed the deal.
Steamboat, he stated, “has everything you need or want right outside your door without losing half your day in the car.” Having the ability to sneak in a few hours of ski time, pedal out for a quick ride, or grab a sandwich during a mid-day lunch hike, everything is so convenient in each of the four seasons.
That accessibility is at the heart of Steamboat’s appeal and why so many like Eugene have created a life full of adventure by calling it home.
Raising a Family Where the River is a Backdrop
If you want to understand Eugene’s Steamboat, start with a simple image: kids clambering into a raft in their soccer cleats, shin guards still strapped on, as the Yampa glides them home after practice.
For Eugene and his wife, Steamboat became the place to raise their two daughters, grounded by strong schools and an even stronger sense of community. The river and mountains were a third place of sorts—playground, classroom, and constant companion. Together they skied, kayaked, rafted, paddle boarded, fished, and floated from season to season, providing a foundation filled with adventure, nature and an overwhelming sense of place.
The Cowboy, the Cattle, and the City Slickers
Eugene’s life is marked by the kind of stories that seem almost too cinematic to be real until you remember who’s telling them. One favorite begins in Yampa Canyon, downstream in Dinosaur National Monument—one of the premier wilderness float trips in the country.
He and a group of friends rounded a bend to find a cowboy stranded on the riverbank with his horse, his cattle trapped on the far side by floodwater. They tied the horse to a dory, ferried the cowboy across in a raft, and then spent the afternoon helping him move cattle along a cliff so the animals could leap into the river and swim back to safety. From their kayaks, Eugene and friends “yippee-ki-yay’d” the swimming herd downstream like a scene from City Slickers.
It’s a story he tells with obvious delight, not because it makes him the hero, but because it represents the intersection of Steamboat’s ranching heritage, and its modern mountain culture. Long before it was a world-class ski destination, Steamboat was a working ranch town. That history is still very much alive, from cattle drives to the local rodeo, and it informs the town’s grounded, roll-up-your-sleeves, and help your neighbors personality today.
A Community That Shows Up
Talk with Eugene for more than a few minutes and the conversation will inevitably pivot to community—not as a marketing tagline, but as lived experience.
He has spent more than 20 years on the board of Friends of the Yampa, is a longtime Rotary member, and has been involved with efforts like the Yampa River Fund, which helps keep water in the river for fish and river health during low-flow years.
For Eugene, these moments of coming together to support and celebrate each other are the heart of Steamboat: whether they’re Olympians or window washers, surgeons or ski techs, it doesn’t matter. It’s the same ethos you see on his beer-league hockey bench where a lawyer, a realtor, and a doctor all pull on the same jersey and chase the same puck.
That deep-rooted sense of connection is what Steamboat Springs has been able to nurture within its own smaller circles—creating places where families share mountain days, river stories, and long dinners, carrying forward the same “we’ve got you” mentality that defines the larger town.
Gratitude as a Way of Life
Asked to distill his Steamboat experience into a single word, Eugene doesn’t reach for “adventure,” “powder,” or “freedom,” though any of those would fit. He chooses “thankful.”
Thankful that his Datsun pickup, stacked with gear and a young family, ended up here in 1992. Thankful that his daughters grew up in a place where they could ski into their backyard and raft home from practice. Thankful that when joys and loss are experienced, the community has wrapped around his family and friends. Thankful that on any given day, he can look out at the mountains and the river and know he’s exactly where he wants to be.
That quiet gratitude is, perhaps, the most compelling part of Eugene’s story. It’s not performative. It’s baked into the way he talks about neighbors, trails, water, and work. It’s there in the way he still geeks out over the first big November storm or a particularly luminous fall afternoon fishing on the Yampa.
For future owners at 1700 Ski Time Square, Eugene’s life offers a kind of blueprint for what’s possible here. Yes, these homes are luxurious—thoughtfully designed spaces where extended family and friends can gather in comfort. But luxury, in the Steamboat sense, isn’t only about finishes and fixtures. It’s about waking up genuinely thrilled with where you live. It’s about having world-class skiing, a wild river, and a tight-knit town all within easy reach. It’s about being grateful—not just for the view out the window, but for the community beyond it.
A Living Story, Still Being Written
Eugene Buchanan would be the first to say that he’s just one character in Steamboat’s ongoing story. There are countless others—ranchers, shop owners, teachers, Olympians, guides, line cooks, and entrepreneurs—who weave their own arcs through this valley. But his life here captures something essential about what makes this place special: a willingness to chase adventure, a commitment to community, and a deep sense of gratitude for the chance to do both in the same town.
In the end, Eugene’s greatest contribution to Steamboat may not be any single book, article, or board position. It might simply be the way he keeps saying “yes”—to rivers, to ski days, to helping neighbors, to telling the stories that remind all of us why this corner of Colorado feels like home. And for those who will someday call 1700 home, that’s the spirit waiting just outside the front door: a town where adventure is a given, community is a promise, and gratitude is the view you wake up to every day.
