In early June, Congressman Scott McInnis, a Republican from Colorado, materialized at the Interior Department building in Washington, D.C., and demanded immediate entrance. Unfortunately for the course of history, he had forgotten his photo I.D. and it took him and the reporter he had in tow 10 minutes to get past the guards. (His forgetfulness […]
Ed Marston
Posted inJune 12, 1995: The Southwest's last real river: Will it flow on?
Deconstructing the rural West
Patrick Jobes has written a profoundly pessimistic analysis of the fate of the West’s attractive, or amenity, towns in the April/May 1995 issue of Western Planner. Fortunately, the article by the Montana State University sociologist is so densely written that its full, depressing impact may hit only those who reread it several times. Based on […]
Posted inMay 29, 1995: Politics 101
Just a moment! Can we learn from a bogus book?
A Moment on the Earth: The Coming Age of Environmental Optimism, by Gregg Easterbrook, 745 pages, $27.95; cloth, Viking. At no extra charge, you get with Gregg Easterbrook’s 745-page, $27.95 book, A Moment on the Earth, an erratum. Easterbrook had incorrectly written that the Environmental Defense Fund had sold, instead of given, its advice to […]
Posted inMay 15, 1995: Dog and pony show about salmon and owls
Heard Around the West
The terms of the engagement are clearly expressed in the West’s local papers, especially in the Casper Star-Tribune. This small but extraordinary daily, which tries to cover all 97,000 square miles of Wyoming, gives enormous space to local news, and at times, fills two or three broadsheet pages with letters to the editor. If the […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
It’s deja vu yet again, says Bruce Babbitt
Washington, D.C. – On Dec. 24, 1992, while most Americans were eating Christmas Eve dinner, the four Marstons were listening to All Things Considered on National Public Radio. The occasion was Bill Clinton’s nomination of Bruce Babbitt to be secretary of Interior. To be honest, the occasion was NPR reporter John Nielson’s taped interview of […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Heard around the West
The Montana legislature is determined to take that state’s clean water. It passed two bills that allow degradation of Montana’s streams and lakes. The bills were pushed by mining, ranching, logging and real estate. Developers succeeded in loosening septic tank standards for new homes. That could spell death for the purity of Montana’s immense Flathead […]
Posted inApril 3, 1995: The Great Basin: America's wasteland seeks a new identity
Unlikely reformer: Can sinful Las Vegas help change the West?
The way people gamble, it’s no wonder casino owners in Las Vegas build thousands of new hotel rooms a year. Take the man next to me at the roulette wheel in a run-down casino whose three-story marquee announced, “Where the locals play.” He was betting his Social Security check on a system based on his […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Forest’s real estate urge goes year-round
The Gunnison National Forest in western Colorado is involved in another hot access question. The last access dispute – with developer Tom Chapman – resulted in a land trade that thus far has given Chapman a $2 million profit (HCN, 1/23/95). That trade was made over strenuous objections from residents of the ski town of […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 1995: What a long strange trip it's been
Dear friends
A special issue Usually, 16 pages every other week is all it takes to report the news from our million-square-mile West, this being the sleepy region it is. But because we skipped an issue, and because writer Ray Ring has a lengthy report on Denver International Airport, and because of what we call the “wolf […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 1995: What a long strange trip it's been
An ersatz democracy gets what it deserves
In the late 1980s, the city and county of Denver chose to look away from a deteriorating public school system, dirty air, traffic jams and inadequate public transportation, to pour $10 billion into 53 square miles of prairie out toward Kansas. As this special issue shows, the decision to build Denver International Airport was made […]
Posted inDecember 26, 1994: Albuquerque learns it really is a desert town
Grim reading
A consortium of six scientific groups reports that the Eastside forests of Washington and Oregon are in perilous ecological shape. According to the scientists, who did their work at the request of seven U.S. representatives, the forests are almost completely fragmented or debased, and streams are in such bad shape that “large numbers of fish […]
Posted inDecember 26, 1994: Albuquerque learns it really is a desert town
We can’t save the land without first saving the West
Once a month I spend several hours with what I affectionately call my “wise-use” group. It’s not really a wise-use group but at first glance it resembles one. Members include the six county commissioners from Delta and Montrose counties here in western Colorado, a rancher, a timber mill employee, a coal miner, a banker, and […]
Posted inDecember 12, 1994: Shrink to fit
For the white and well-to-do
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Shrink to fit. If Karl Hess has his way, the nation’s parks will become less commercial, less crowded and pricier, as visitors are asked to pay the true costs of operating the parks. But raising entrance fees could run directly into another priority: the […]
Posted inDecember 12, 1994: Shrink to fit
A trial run at Glacier
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Shrink to fit. In the late 1980s, Republican Rep. Ron Marlenee came over from his eastern Montana district to make speeches in the Flathead Basin. In those speeches, he demanded that Gil Lusk get back inside Glacier National Park. At the time, Lusk had […]
Posted inDecember 12, 1994: Shrink to fit
Who will run the new Park Service?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Shrink to fit. When and if the National Park Service is allowed by the Congress to reorganize itself, it will still have 366 Park Service units and close to 300 million visitors a year. But the management of those parks and visitors and how […]
Posted inNovember 28, 1994: Beauty eludes the beast
Dear friends
Good news, bad news This column is usually free of the “issues” that permeate the rest of the paper. The “Dear friends” column is HCN’s version of a small-town cafe’s liars’ table. It is here that we gossip, remark on who got married or had a child, and welcome visitors. But this fortnight’s mix of […]
Posted inNovember 14, 1994: Land grant universities
Land-grant universities
Their roots loosen as the Westchanges beneath them
Posted inNovember 14, 1994: Land grant universities
On campus: A department head tries to change the academic culture
Note: this feature article is one of several in a special issue about land grant universities in the West. If the West’s land-grant universities are to evolve, faculty like Glen Whipple are keys to that evolution. Whipple is head of the Agricultural Economics Department at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. Just as important, he […]
Posted inOctober 31, 1994: Water for the taking
Ripples grow when a dam dies
Four years after the defeat of Denver’s proposed Two Forks Dam, water development in Colorado has changed drastically. No longer is Denver the imperialistic leader of Front Range urban development. And no longer are environmentalists a fringe influence, forever fighting the good fight against dams and forever losing. The change is visible at three major […]
Posted inOctober 31, 1994: Water for the taking
On Friday, the fish took some of it back
Note: This article is a sidebar to the essay titled “Ripples grow when a dam dies“ Chips Barry, who heads the Denver Water Department, says his major responsibility is not the acquisition of new water supplies. “It’s to hang on to what we’ve got in the face of instream flow and endangered species and interstate […]