This article features Naturita Community Library (NCL), winner of "LJ"'s 2011 Best Small Library in America Award, sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The library is the largest straw bale library in America. It sits on the western slope of the Rockies, across the Uncompahgre Plateau from the county seat in Montrose,…

Beyond the sprawling Denver International Airport, there's little to put Adams County, Colorado, on the map. The region's light rail only stretches south, so Adams County, a mostly working-class zone to the northeast, has come late to growth. There's no central city; the community is dominated by strip malls, big-box stores, and new developments.…

On June 4, 2004, a crazed man rammed an unstoppable, armor-plated bulldozer into eight buildings in Granby, Colorado. The library was one of them. Three days later, Cindy Eubank and other volunteers salvaged what they could from the wrecked building. The collection had also suffered rain damage, so this was a grubby labor of love for the…