Aspen is so high and so far away from reality, you just might confuse it with heaven. Surrounded by mammoth peaks, the town is home to renowned skiing and extreme sports, and famous for haute shopping, designer dining and celebrities on holiday.

When Walter Paepcke and Friedl Pfeifer wandered into Aspen in the mid-1940s, the town was barely more than a green patch on a map. The boom of mining was a distant echo, and what was left of the early town had become a sleepy agricultural and ranching community. That quickly changed when Pfeifer, a veteran of the military ski unit, 10th Mountain Division, transformed the face of Aspen Mountain (Ajax) into a world-class ski area. In the meantime, Paepcke was conjuring the "Aspen Idea" a utopic vision that would create a setting for high culture in the Rocky Mountains; a place where great thinkers could congregate, rejuvenate and trade ideas like baseball cards. Paepcke, however, only saw the beginnings of his ambitions take shape (he passed away in the early 1960s). But under Pfeifer's watchful eye, Aspen became a celebrated, albeit quirky, resort town with a brain.

Today, Aspen is not only a bit off center, it is in a world all its own. Tucked away at the southeast end of the Roaring Fork Valley, surrounded by the towering Elk Mountains, Collegiate Peaks and White River National Forest, Aspen even feels far away. Maybe that is why the characters that make up the population are so diverse and interesting. Or maybe it is because of a common love for skiing that you can enter a coffee shop on Hopkins Avenue and hear “Hey, Dude” in just about every accent. Aspen is one of the few places you can see dot.com billionaires and hard-core snowboarders both decked out in the latest baggy and saggy street fashions. It is also where breakfast might bring together miners and ranchers sitting down to a slab of meat, while tree huggers with hefty bank accounts ponder over what to put sprouts on, and the educated-sort try to break down the chemical compounds of an organic muffin. It is likewise with fur coat shoppers at Gucci, while cowboys next door pick out new Stetsons and belt buckles the size of small serving trays. It is a town of anomalous diversity, a town of lofty erudition and extreme sport.

The rich and famous see Aspen as a playground. They flock to the resort, while multitudes of star struck tourists fly in behind them hoping to catch a quick glimpse of a celebrity. But if your star search is running cold you can get a glimpse of celebrity by heading up Aspen Mountain and checking out the shrines to Jerry Garcia, Elvis and Marilyn Monroe. If you cannot find the shrines, just look towards Red Mountain (south) and you can see from a distance where all of the celebrities live. Mammoth mansions litter the mountainside, many of which sit empty a good portion of the year and some are as large as the town of Aspen itself. Perhaps the most famous spread is the Peak House, which sits near the summit of Red Mountain. The house sprawls some 23,000 feet and is worth a tidy $27 million. But if you would rather just rent the house, it will set you back $200,000 per month, or $17,500 per night.

But although the beautiful people propel Aspen's celebrity status, it is the community of locals, and the perfect mix of sport and culture that make the small town worth visiting. Aspen, however, is not without its problems. Commercial development and urban sprawl are issues of constant concern. Traffic congestion stifles the roads during peak seasons. Almost 70 percent of the workforce cannot live within the city limits due to a severe lack of affordable housing. And housing prices hover around two-million dollars a home, many of which are relatively small. But the area is working hard to tackle these problems, while trying to keep the “Aspen Idea” strong, with a viable interaction between the town's dueling personalities as a community and a resort.