In Las Vegas, strong unions help service workers achieve the kind of prosperity and security seldom reached by the working-class people of the West’s non-union resort towns.
Dear Friends
It’s sprung Apricot, peach and apple trees are blooming – perhaps unwisely – in western Colorado. Recently, we received a welcome to spring from Greg Hobbs, a reader of High Country News and a Colorado Supreme Court Justice. He calls his poem “Right Equipment,” and it punctuates the longed-for change in season: The urban West…
Fish find friends in farmers
WASHINGTON Protecting threatened salmon in the Northwest has become everybody’s business, with Washington’s farmers the newest group to enter the fray. Now, farmers are under the gun: In the next 18 months, they must make sure their standards are compatible with habitat conservation guidelines published by federal agencies overseeing salmon recovery. If farmers are not…
Heard around the West
“Quirky” is how the American Journalism Review describes the mottos of many newspapers, and in the West, one of the longer missions is stated by Washington’s Wenatchee World: “Published in the apple capital of the world and the buckle of the power belt of the great Northwest.” An in-your-face message comes from the Aspen Daily…
SUWA goes national
From redrock canyons to sagebrush prairies, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) administers 177 million acres in the lower 48 states. About 5 million acres – or 3 percent – are currently protected as wilderness. The National BLM Wilderness Campaign, a new project of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA), is lobbying the administration to…
Tough but threatened
The ironwood tree, long a symbol of desert abundance, may soon be protected by a new national monument in southern Arizona. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt toured an ironwood forest near Tucson in mid-March, and expressed interest in protecting about 71,000 acres of BLM land. A recent report by the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson says…
Backpacks and quacks
Sporting highly sophisticated “backpacks’ that are really 20-gram satellite transmitters, 50 female pintail ducks are flying north from the Central Valley in California this spring. The ducks are the focus of Discovery for Recovery, a four-year study by Ducks Unlimited, the U.S. Geological Survey and the California Waterfowl Association. Its object is determining pintail migration…
Ludlow Massacre memorialized
In 1914, near Trinidad, Colo., coal miners from the southern coal fields of Colorado tried to organize a union to improve working conditions, enforce the eight-hour work day, have the right to select their own boarding places, doctors and grocery stores, and decrease the high death toll of miners. Their struggle made history on April…
Escalante Wilderness Action Gathering
Environmentalists wanting to hear and discuss everything from grazing on public lands to Glen Canyon restoration will convene at the Escalante Wilderness Action Gathering near Escalante, Utah, May 19-21. Camping and a $20 donation are encouraged for the outdoor event which includes community meals. Call Tori Woodard or Patrick Diehl for information and directions at…
Management plan for the Yellowstone grizzly
The Fish and Wildlife Service released its management plan for the Yellowstone grizzly, a requirement before the bear is taken off the endangered species list. View the plan at www.r6.fws.gov/endspp or obtain a copy from local libraries in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. Address comments to Grizzly Bear Recovery Coordinator, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, University…
Water and Growth in the West
The University of Colorado School of Law’s summer conference, Water and Growth in the West in Boulder, Colo., June 7-9, will feature a barbecue on Flagstaff Mountain and case studies from around the region. Contact Natural Resources Law Center, University of Colorado School of Law, Campus Box 401, Boulder, CO 80309-0401, 303/492-1272, e-mail: NRLC@spot.colorado.edu, or…
The Wayward West
Two packs of Mexican wolves are getting a second chance in the wild. Several months ago, the packs were recaptured after conflicts with people and livestock in Arizona’s Apache National Forest (HCN, 1/31/00: Yellowstone wolves are here to stay). The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided that the remote Gila Wilderness in New Mexico would…
Biographical profiles of American envirommentalists
The editor of a reference book/CD ROM seeks contributors to write 700-1,400-word biographical profiles of American environmentalists. Contributors may choose their subjects from the editor’s list, and must be able to submit profiles via e-mail, and agree to make revisions. Pay is $50 per entry; write to (e-mail address removed by request). This article appeared…
Then and Now, 1870-2000: The Jackson/Fielder Photos
An ongoing exhibit at the Colorado History Museum in Denver, Colo., Then and Now, 1870-2000: The Jackson/Fielder Photos, showcases the works of two renowned Western photographers through Aug. 6. John Fielder photographs the same landscapes William Henry Jackson first captured over a century ago. Admission is $3 for adults. Call 303/866-3682 for more information. This…
Grass roots keeps town tiny
WASHINGTON Nestled in a narrow valley at the remote north end of Lake Chelan, Wash., there’s a tiny town that can only be reached by boat, float plane, or a hike over the North Cascade mountains. Now it will stay that way. For nearly seven years, a developer threatened to boom Stehekin’s size by almost…
Make mine a double cone
Dear HCN, As a recent graduate of Utah State University in Logan, Utah, I must report my bewilderment upon reading your characterization of my former home: “Nowadays, Logan is a smaller version of Boulder, Colo. Trophy homes glisten along the foothills of the Wasatch Range; students buy double lattés before class, and go jogging on…
Pump failure pummels salmon
OREGON A southern Oregon hatchery’s salmon stock was devastated when a pump failure killed nearly 1.4 million baby chinook. But no one is pointing fingers. When the Army Corps of Engineers shut off power to do some routine maintenance at the Cole M. Rivers Hatchery on the Rogue River, it was business as usual. “They…
Besieged river
Dear HCN, Alan S. Kesselheim’s lead story on the Yellowstone River hits the nail on the head (HCN, 3/27/00: The last wild river). A classic, one-of-a-kind, free-flowing river gets ruined because of greed and stupidity. The fact that anyone can build anything in a 100-year floodplain is insane. Look at the Mississippi if you want…
Do we really need the rural West?
Note: this article is accompanied by another article in this issue, “Yes, we need the rural West.” Dan Dagget, the well-known authority on Western livestock grazing and a seemingly mild-mannered guy, lost his cool and fairly screamed at me: “Why don’t all of you go back to the cities back East you came from and…
At your service
Unions help some Western workers serve themselves
Wildcat subdivisions fuel fight over sprawl
Arizona argues over how to rein in runaway development
Yes, we need the rural West
Note: this article accompanies another article in this issue, “Do we really need the rural West?“ Hal Rothman is normally a very cool guy – a history professor fascinated by the culture and economy of his hometown of Las Vegas. But he recently went to a conference about the rural Northern Rockies, and after sitting…
The drive to organize
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. “In solidarity we will survive.” The slogan is splashed in red paint across the white and blue cement walls of the Culinary Workers’ Union hall, an unimpressive building in the older part of town. Inside, I meet with Geoconda “Geo” Arguello-Kline, a small woman…
Tug-of-war continues over trust lands
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news article, “Wildcat subdivisions fuel fight over sprawl.” In the summer of 1998, Arizona Republican Gov. Jane Hull pulled together 15 conservationists, business leaders and state legislators and formed the Growing Smarter Commission. Their task would be to ward…
‘Women are the backbone of the union’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Peggy Pierce works at The Desert Inn as a banquet server: “I think Las Vegas is just like every other town. People go to work, they take care of their families, they do pretty much normal things. We don’t spend money differently. We also…
An unruly river
In Rivers of Empire, historian Donald Worster argued that the West’s dams and irrigation systems and hydroelectric facilities were imposed on the region by an all-powerful water elite. The elite built a hydraulic empire, which thwarts democracy and subjects most of us to a peasant existence. Now comes historian Robert Kelley Schneiders with a different…
‘Ain’t no sucha thing as you can’t’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Bernice Thomas runs the maids’ training school for the Culinary Workers Union in Las Vegas. A mother of eight, she moved there with her husband from Tallulah, Louisiana, 25 years ago. Bernice Thomas: “We train 33 students every two weeks with a full class.…
A norteno champions a local environmental ethic
Many here in “New” Mexico have not forgotten that the United States violated the 150-year-old Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo by asserting ownership of community ejidos – common lands under the historic land-grant system. Today, those lands make up national forests and land managed by the Bureau of Land Management. In this contested landscape, environmentalists and…
Unions take a gamble on California tribes
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. While unions may not spring up soon in the Intermountain West, California recently approved a constitutional amendment that opens the door to union organizing in 58 Indian-owned casinos. Proposition 1A, which passed on March 7 by nearly two-thirds of California voters, legalizes Indian casinos…
‘There are no support networks here’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Aldona Sobiecki moved to Chicago from Warsaw, Poland, 18 years ago, then traveled farther west to Breckenridge, Colo., in 1996. Six months ago, she opened a deli that features Polish food. Aldona Sobiecki: “For me, since I open here, it’s hard to find help.…
‘It’s my dream’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Elena Bernlohr, who works in Breckenridge, Colo., is from Khimky, a suburb of Moscow, Russia: “I am three-quarters Jewish, but my mother gave me her last name so that I wasn’t discriminated against in school. My father was a very important scientist in Moscow,…
Flashpoint in the Northern Rockies
Burned huts symbolize tension between skiers and snowmobiles
Dust settles in Owens Valley
Los Angeles vows to return some water to a parched lakebed
One dam, two rallies
A protest draws demonstrators who want to drain Lake Powell, and those who love it
Down under: Arizona boasts the ‘show cave of the century’
“I love caves.” Just a whisper in the dim light of the cavern, and not addressed to me, but to a husband from his wife. I almost turned and said, “Me too,” then remembered we were on a cave tour – everyone on it probably loved caves. Until that tour of Kartchner Caverns State Park,…
The U.S. isn’t dead yet
WASHINGTON, D.C. – On the first day of the first spring of the millennium, one of the world’s largest and most powerful global corporations did as it was told. Parke-Davis, a division of the multibillion-dollar Warner-Lambert Company, announced that it was withdrawing the diabetes drug Rezulin from the market, as directed by the Food and…
Locked out of the public lands
Rich folks are blocking the public domain, say hunters and ORV riders