Mine, of which my town is the county seat, topped the national ranking by U.S. and World Report.
My town is south of Denver. Ironically, another county north of Denver also made the top five healthiest counties. I grew up in a north suburb and what's left of my family still lives that way. Since I don't have a lot of good memories, I feel "icky" when I travel north, though it's not the region's fault.
In any case, I find it ironic that Colorado as a whole has also ranked high in male suicide deaths for a number of years, while also always ranking high in overall population health. It's like people move here so they can then make the "healthy" decision to kill themselves, lol. Actually, what probably happens is that they move here under the belief that they'll feel better. But since they have to bring themselves with them, find out that they still feel just as lousy. That would say something about feeling better or worse coming from within, and having little to do with exterior conditions.
My older brother, who was 13 months older than me, was one of those Colorado suicide deaths when he was 18yo. That was back in 1978. In fact, it was the same weekend as the Jim Jones mass suicide of 900+ people in Guyana. One has nothing to do with the other, but I always associate my family event with the international event that all the news was talking about for many days. (It really isn't accurate to call it a "family" event. We didn't experience my brother's suicide as a family, because we didn't experience anything as a family. We were individuals living under the same roof.)
Just recently, one of those survivors of Guyana, an assistant to the murdered Congressman, and who was shot five times, wrote a book about her experience. She was on Dr. Phil this past week, and he mentioned that much of the U.S. population is probably too young to have heard anything about it. I suppose that's true. Even back then, though, I was rather puzzled as to why there was such an outcry about suicide. I didn't understand why the press was horrified. I "got" suicide.
I'm not an "outdoorsy" person, but I like walks and brief bike rides, as well as country drives, so I do love all the parks and such that my region has to offer. My town has ordinances that there has to be a certain amount of open space per number of new houses built. I once went to see a client, who had a representative visiting from their home office in London. It was a Monday. The representative seemed sort of shell shocked when she said to me, "On the weekend, everyone here leaves their house and goes somewhere." In fact, one of the local guys kept apologizing for his appearance, because his face had gotten severely sunburned while skiing that weekend.
Of course, finances and education are also a big reason as to why the county ranks so high. Shortly after I moved here, I found out that the county was third highest in the country in median family income that year, with the median household earnings around $60,000. I've often wondered if I would have chosen to live here if I'd known that ahead of time. Higher education and earnings means more expensive schools and such, which in turn means higher property taxes. Now, they say income is over $100,000, but I think that was probably average income rather than median income. In any case, for my business, I've been inside a lot of million dollar homes, since moving here. I previously lived just 25 miles up the road, within the city of Denver, and it was an entirely different sort of clientele. Occasionally, I used to have a client that couldn't/wouldn't pay me. Since moving to Douglas County 14 years ago, I think that has only happened twice.
All the stats and rankings aside, it's a very nice life.
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