Rocky Mountain West Under Threat Of 'Californication'

"Complaining about Californians is an old tradition in the Rockies; but it is reaching a new intensity. Five million people who were born in California now live outside the state. They are America's second-biggest domestic diaspora, after New Yorkers, and the most noticeable. California is by far the most populous state in the West-and still growing rapidly. It has become a demographic machine, drawing in foreigners while disgorging its own population across the deserts and mountains. In the process, it transforms those areas."

"The exiles' most obvious impact is on housing. 'People from California, who pay a fortune for tiny places, find this to be an appealing market,' says Rocky Anderson, the mayor of Salt Lake City...In Daybreak, a development south of Salt Lake City, many of the big houses are sold not to local Mormons (who have the largest families) but to new arrivals from the west."

"[And] although Denver does not have a Crenshaw Boulevard, it has a Crenshaw Mafia gang, which is named after a street in Los Angeles."