WESTCLIFFE, Colo. (AP) -- Some Amish families in Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania are moving west to small towns in Colorado, seeking to escape high land prices and crowded communities back East. Of an estimated 231,000 Amish nationwide, more than 60 percent still live in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana. But from 2002 to 2008, Colorado's Amish population went from zero to more than 400.Montana, with an estimated 540 Amish, and Colorado now have the westernmost Amish settlements in the U.S. Colorado ranks seventh in the nation in Amish immigration.
Cropland is worth an average $1,400 per acre in Colorado, compared with $6,000 in Pennsylvania and about $4,000 in Ohio and Indiana, according to a 2007 census by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
I have a semi-irrational fear of the Amish. Call me crazy, but I tend to shy away from hypocrisy in mass quantities passed down through generations. Ah, but that reasoning might be too political for this blog. I don't really like to start conversations here, so I'm gonna go ahead and give a simpler explanation for my fear of the Amish: I am afraid of beards.
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