EAGLE MOUNTAIN, Calif. – Once home to 4,000 people and the largest iron ore mine west of the Mississippi, this desert community now features boarded-up tract homes. Yet every five blocks or so a few houses show signs of life, and down one street, prisoners in orange jumpsuits have just finished building a new playground. […]
Elizabeth Manning
Posted inJuly 7, 1997: While the New West booms, Wyoming mines, drills ... and languishes
After 120 years, the Nez Perce come home
PARADISE, Ore. – A few weeks ago, when I ran down a slippery road near here, the soggy weather seemed unfortunate. It was the day of a naming ceremony and salmon feast celebrating the return of the Nez Perce, a Northwest tribe driven from this region 120 years ago. The Nez Perce were returning as […]
Posted inMay 26, 1997: The sacred and profane collide in the West
‘There’s a notion that Indians practicing their religionsare less than religious’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Charlotte Black Elk, 45, is a spiritual and cultural leader of the Lakota Sioux tribe. She lives on the Pine Ridge Reservation, 190 miles to the east of Devils Tower, where she began leading a Sun Dance in 1985. Charlotte Black Elk: “I grew […]
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
Tribal force
Tribal Force, a new comic book created by two 28-year-old artists from Arizona, begins in the year 2006 with the usual mega-battle: Native superheroes must stop the U.S. government from bombing the Indians and confiscating their resource-rich reservation land. But the story quickly becomes both more human and contemporary. Basho Yazza, one of the comic […]
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
A miner turns host
Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. Jerry Freeman, owner of the tiny town of Nipton, population less than 50, is one of the few residents of the East Mojave poised to benefit from a tourist economy: Jerry Freeman: “I first came out here in the 1950s to stake some claims when […]
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
The Mojave National Preserve: 1.4 million acres of contradictions
Note: this story accompanies another, similar feature story in this issue. CIMA, Calif. – Like most of her neighbors, Irene Ausmus never wanted the East Mojave Desert to become a national preserve, let alone the national park that environmentalists first wanted. “We live out here because we don’t want people bothering us,” says the 64-year-old […]
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
This rancher wants to stay
Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. Although other ranchers in the preserve have said they might sell their land and grazing allotments to a land trust or foundation, Rob Blair says he won’t. His family first settled here in 1913, and he hopes that one of his three children will someday […]
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
A Chicago bank will try to invigorate Willapa Bay
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. After spending nearly two years in the early 1990s scouting Washington’s Willapa Bay for entrepreneurs with plausible ideas for sustainable businesses, Alana Probst of Ecotrust found more than a dozen. But few local financial institutions were willing to make high-risk loans, and the chances […]
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
Activist who survived bomb leaves a legacy
Judi Bari listened to a special call-in show on Mendocino County public radio Feb. 21, and said afterward that it sounded like a funeral eulogy – her own. The Earth First! activist had hosted a weekly “Punch and Judi” public affairs show at the station for years. Now, dying from inoperable breast cancer that had […]
Posted inMarch 3, 1997: Hunters close ranks, and minds
Is Hanford back in the bomb business?
With the Cold War over and plutonium production halted at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state, the federal facility seemed destined only for intensive and expensive cleanup (HCN, 1/22/96). No longer. Outgoing Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary has announced that Hanford’s research nuclear reactor, named the Fast Flux Test Facility, will remain on standby for […]
Posted inMarch 3, 1997: Hunters close ranks, and minds
The WLFA: ‘Who are these guys?’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. When Tony Jewett first heard that the late Mollie Beattie, at the time U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service director, was trying to ban hunting in the nation’s wildlife refuges, he became alarmed and outraged. The news came in a 1993 “alert” from the Wildlife […]
Posted inMarch 3, 1997: Hunters close ranks, and minds
The NRA’s powder may be getting damp
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. If the Wildlife Legislative Fund of America uses sportsmen to advance a pro-development agenda at the expense of habitat, the National Rifle Association uses them to advance a pro-gun position. But hunters are apparently wising up, at least to the NRA, and that may […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
‘Humane is what’s best for humans’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. This winter has been especially busy for Yellowstone National Park photographer Jim Peaco: Jim Peaco: “I photographed a Park Service roundup where rangers on horseback were trying to move bison back into Yellowstone Park. It can be a little scary to watch. These are […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 1997: Bees under siege
Silence wins in Colorado
Those who felt that the new rules governing flights over the Grand Canyon were too lenient now have something to cheer: On Jan. 3, the Federal Aviation Adminstration issued a separate rule banning all commercial flights over Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park. “This is fabulous news to bring in the New Year,” said Colorado Rep. […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 1997: Bees under siege
The West awakes to ‘weird’ weather
Christmas brought some of the strangest weather Westerners can remember. First came snow and ice in Idaho so heavy that power poles snapped like twigs and a gymnasium roof collapsed. Then the “pineapple express’ arrived, a blast of warm air from Hawaii that sent temperatures soaring into the 70s. That sent melting snow crashing into […]
Posted inDecember 9, 1996: Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
No name for art
-The reason I draw the designs is to make the past and present come together. It’s like mixing colors.” * Jordan Harvier, age 13 Bruce Hucko’s new book, Where There is No Name for Art: The Art of Tewa Pueblo Children, is like Harvier’s quote. It blends black-and-white photographs of young artists, interviews and colorful […]
Posted inDecember 9, 1996: Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
If off-road vehicle enthusiasts ever build a museum, a statue of former Idaho Gov. John Evans should stand out front, a scowl on his face, and his now-famous saying – “You’re politically insignificant” – on the statue’s pedestal. Evans made that remark in 1984 to Clark Collins, an electrician and avid dirt biker who wanted […]
Posted inDecember 9, 1996: Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
This machine makes trails …
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Parked in the back lot of the Forest Service office in Delta, Colo., is a skinny little bulldozer that looks almost like a toy. Designed to build trails, the Swepco 450 is tricky to maneuver since 8,000 pounds of steel balance on tracks only […]
Posted inDecember 9, 1996: Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
Can Madison Avenue tread lightly in the West?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Two men bludgeon a parked Land Rover with sledgehammers. They’re swinging as hard as they can, yet they barely make a dent. This is what Kirk Kirssin of Tread Lightly! considers a responsible television ad. Land Rover didn’t have to show a truck blazing […]
Posted inNovember 25, 1996: Pollution in paradise
Some big birds come back
It didn’t take long for wildlife biologists to swoop down after a court decision cleared the way for bringing California condors back to the Colorado Plateau. A federal judge ruled Oct. 16 that officials from San Juan County in Utah could not stop reintroduction efforts since they could not prove harm from the birds. Less […]