How one rural town without a pharmacy is crowdsourcing to get meds

The building that once housed the last drugstore in Walden, Colorado—a town of fewer than 600—is now a barbecue restaurant, where pit boss Larry Holtman dishes out smoked brisket and pulled pork across the same counter where pharmacists dispensed vital medications more than 30 years ago.

It’s an hourlong drive over treacherous mountain passes to Laramie, Wyoming, or Granby or Steamboat Springs, Colorado—and the nearest pharmacies. The routes out of the valley in which Walden lies are regularly closed by heavy winter snows, keeping residents in and medications out.

Walden has suffered the fate of many small towns across the United States, as the economics of the pharmacy business have made it difficult for community drugstores to survive. With large pharmacy chains buying up independent drugstores and increasingly controlling the supply chain, towns such as Walden have too few residents to attract a chain drugstore and no great appeal for pharmacists willing to strike out on their own.