COLORADO COUNTY LEADS NATION IN GROWTH RATE.

Byline: Associated Press

Mini-vans and manicured lawns overtook pickup trucks and prairie to make Douglas County, Colo., the nation's fastest growing county during the first half of the 1990s.

Some 3,500 miles and a world away, the census area in the western Aleutian Islands, Alaska, lost 45 percent of its population. The decline came as the military began shutting down Adak Naval Air Station, a Cold War relic that once kept an eye on Soviet submarines.

The remote area's new population: 5,259 and falling.

The Census Bureau on Thursday released its 1995 population estimates for the nation's 3,143 counties or similar regions, and comparisons to 1990.

Los Angeles County was the largest, with 9,138,789 people, and Yellowstone National Park was the smallest, population 54.

Three of the nation's five fastest-growing counties were in Colorado, which ranks fourth among the fastest-growing states after Nevada, Idaho and Arizona.

Douglas County - home to commuters who mostly work in Denver, neighboring Arapahoe County's industrial parks, or Colorado Springs - increased 65 percent over the past five years, to a population of 99,577.

Once mostly ranch land, Douglas County has been steadily filling with planned communities for disenchanted city folks since the early 1980s. Two thinly populated counties next door - Elbert and Park - shared its growing spurt, to rank second and fourth among the nation's growth counties.

Elbert increased 51 percent, to 14,565, and Park grew 48 percent, to 10,589.

Job growth in communications and high-tech fields helped Colorado boom, bringing immigrants from California, Texas and the Midwest, said state demographer Jim Westkott.

That's raised worries about traffic, crime and other population problems, but also brought bonuses such as pro baseball and hockey teams, he said.

"Mainly, the attitude of Coloradans is while they are happy to have more jobs, they don't want more people," Westkott said.

The Census Bureau planned to issue its 1995 statistics in mid-January, but was delayed by a partial shutdown of the federal government. The bureau missed 13 days of work beginning the week before Christmas.