Because of a late plane coming from Denver International Airport, a standing-room-only crowd of 150 waited nearly two hours at an air summit meeting in Grand Junction, Colo., for DIA officials to show. Once over the Rockies, DIA reps heard a list of woes from regional airport managers: sky-high fares, unreliable service and bumped ticket-holders […]
Betsy Marston
Posted inAugust 21, 1995: HCN's founder fights his last fight, yet again
The little paper that could
Like one of those gravity-defying trees that grows horizontally out of a rocky mountainside, High Country News has found its niche. Its beat is 10 Western states – the 1 million square miles where so many of the nation’s wild things live on mostly public lands. How do you cover this world from a small, […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
Outdoor museum preserved for now
OUTDOOR MUSEUM PRESERVED FOR NOW Two geologists working for the Bureau of Land Management in Boise, Idaho, began documenting a treasure trove four years ago: the carved bedrock of the Big Wood River, some 12 miles north of Shoshone. Terry Maley and Peter Oberlindacher were fascinated by the complex shapes that turbulent water, beginning some […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Tales from the West
The in-laws are a steady, insistent, increasingly frantic chorus of disapproval over her plans. But, Mary! How can you expect to go to college and take good care of a husband and a baby? Finally, We’re going to put our foot down! She knows that somehow she has got to extricate herself from these sappy […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Dams were built on breathless prose
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The fight for Reclamation. To have a deep blue lake Where no lake was before Seems to bring man A little closer to God. A sweet breeze Across deep water The campfire’s glow Day’s end Peace – From Lake Powell: Jewel of the […]
Posted inMarch 6, 1995: The fires next time
Dear Friends
Odds and ends The Feb. 20, 1995, essay by Jon Margolis – -Waaaaaaaah! The West refuses to be weaned’ – set the telephone to ringing and filled P.O. Box 1090. Rancher Sid Goodloe of Capitan, N.M., argued that it “didn’t have enough class to make the wastebasket beside your desk, much less the back page […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 1995: No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
Enjoyment enough to kill
My first view of the High Sierra, first view looking down into Yosemite, the death song of Yosemite Creek, and its flight over the vast cliff, each one of these is of itself enough for a great life-long landscape fortune – a most memorable of days – enjoyment enough to kill if that were possible […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 1995: No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
Dear Friends
Now playing at the Cheyenne Opera HCN poetry editor Chip Rawlins recently traveled from his home in the small town of Boulder, Wyo., to the Wyoming Capitol to take a peek at his tax dollars at work. To his amazement, Chip found himself watching an opera he thinks was called The Merchants of Menace. He […]
Posted inDecember 26, 1994: Albuquerque learns it really is a desert town
The education of a scientist
Edmund Wilson tells us he wrote his autobiography, Naturalist, to learn more fully “why I now think the way I do … and perhaps, to persuade.” The Harvard University professor, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, can’t really convey what made him a consummate biologist who taught the world the significance of biodiversity. But he can […]
Posted inNovember 28, 1994: Beauty eludes the beast
The valley around us is deep
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Beauty eludes the beast. Close to the Canadian border, Washington’s Methow Valley startles visitors with its wild 8,000-foot peaks and lively weather: sunshine one minute, boiling clouds the next. What words could do justice to its stark beauty, seen by visitors during an hour and […]
Posted inNovember 14, 1994: Land grant universities
Dear friends
Another special issue It must be something about the fall that brings to culmination many months of research and interviews. On Sept. 4 we published a special, 24-page issue called Grappling with Growth, which has just gone to a third printing to accommodate requests for copies. With this issue we offer the first of several […]
Posted inOctober 31, 1994: Water for the taking
For the full scolding
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Water for the taking. The Bureau of Reclamation has a new role in the West, and it’s high time the agency focused on management, not development, concludes an Interior Department audit on the unauthorized diversion of water. The July 1994 audit, Irrigation of Ineligible […]
Posted inOctober 31, 1994: Water for the taking
Dear friends
Dead deer come to town Hunting season has begun with a bang, so to speak, in the mountains that surround Paonia. Staffers have had to compete for parking on Grand Avenue with vehicles festooned by dead deer, and out one office window which faces a very busy meat packing plant, we can see a procession […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
Dear friends
On the green beat When journalists who cover the environment get together as 450 did Oct. 6-9 in Provo and Sundance, Utah, they tend to talk like underdogs. They tell how frustrating it is to sell complex green-beat stories to editors who ask for 12 inches of copy, or how tough it is to compete […]
Posted inMay 30, 1994: Can mining come clean?
Dear friends
Good news Congratulations to former HCN intern Zaz Hollander, who was hired recently by the Daily Astorian. Zaz will cover environmental issues on the Oregon coast. Congratulations as well to HCN’s Great Basin editor, Jon Christensen. His lead story in the Aug. 9, 1993, issue of HCN on the Diamond Springs Ranch in Nevada headlined, […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
No change on the range
When you’re right, you’re right, and when Philip Fradkin worked for the Los Angeles Times from 1964-1975 as that paper’s first environmental reporter, and for Audubon from 1976-81 as that magazine’s first Western editor, he often batted 1,000. Fradkin recalls those days in his book of collected essays, Wanderings of an Environmental Journalist: In Alaska […]
Posted inMarch 7, 1994: Pay as you waste, says EPA
Dear friends
Commuting hell For many people in this town of 1,400, commuting to work means a hike, a bicycle ride or short trip by pickup. But for Chris Manning, who works in the Aspen post office, going to work means traveling over McClure Pass, a two-hour slog each way. Tough, but worth it for Manning and […]
Posted inFebruary 21, 1994: Draining the budget to desalt the Colorado
Dear friends
Odds and ends HCN couldn’t live without the U.S. Postal Service, but at times we wonder if we can live with it. On Dec. 26, 1993, we mailed notes, via Third Class mail, to readers in Boulder, 250 miles away, inviting them to the Jan. 21 potluck. Bill Doud of Boulder tells us that his […]
Posted inJanuary 24, 1994: Turmoil on the range
The new West is as restless as the old
The new West is as restless as the old Most people move to the rural West in search of community, says sociology professor Pat Jobes, who teaches at Montana State University in Bozeman. What they find rarely measures up to their enthusiasm and optimism. “It’s a predictable, unchanging pattern,” says Jobes, who has studied migration […]
Posted inJune 14, 1993: Oregon's Trojan horse
Farmers outgunned by the oil and gas industry
The Colorado Legislature guts a bill protecting farmers’ interests against the oil and gas industry. To read this article, download this HCN issue in PDF format. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Farmers outgunned by the oil and gas industry.