Note: A front-page editor’s note and a sidebar titled “A banker battles to hold the government accountable” accompany this feature story. FORT HALL, Idaho – The councilman’s voice drones through the microphone, echoing off walls lined with nickel slots and joker poker games. The Shoshone and Bannock people file into the bingo hall slowly, some […]
Greg Hanscom
Greg Hanscom is the publisher and executive director for High Country News. Email him at greg.hanscom@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor.
Posted inAugust 3, 1998: Tribes reclaim stolen lands
A banker battles to hold the government accountable
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. BROWNING, Mont. – Until recently, Browning, a dusty settlement on the Blackfeet Indian reservation in northern Montana, was known more for its bar fights than its financial enterprise. But thanks to the small town’s banker, Elouise Cobell, Browning is becoming known for something else. […]
Posted inApril 27, 1998: The old West is going under
The Wayward West
Don’t expect to hear Utah environmentalists crying for 5.7 million acres of wilderness, says Kevin Walker of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (HCN, 8/4/97). SUWA and other groups are almost finished with a two-year “re-inventory” of the state’s wild lands. Since the first inventory, new trails, roads and mines have knocked some areas out of […]
Posted inMarch 30, 1998: A bare-knuckled trio goes after the Forest Service
River heritage plan sent downstream
PAONIA, Colo. – When water engineer Jeff Crane learned about a new program called the American Heritage Rivers Initiative, he thought he’d found something his community could rally behind. Over the past three years, Crane has been working to build consensus among landowners, fruit farmers and gravel miners along western Colorado’s North Fork of the […]
Posted inMarch 30, 1998: A bare-knuckled trio goes after the Forest Service
Some tourists opt for a dose of reality
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news article,”‘Ecotourism’ – a gold mine for ailing agencies?“ While many of us bolt to the beach or head for the hills when vacation time rolls around, a few groups around the West have discovered that some crave a […]
Posted inMarch 16, 1998: Olympic onslaught: Salt Lake City braces for the winter games
Can a ski town survive its moment of glory?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. PARK CITY, Utah – If it is true that the three keys to real estate are location, location, location, then this town is two-thirds of the way home. It is only a half-hour’s interstate drive east of Salt Lake City, with its airport, hotels […]
Posted inMarch 16, 1998: Olympic onslaught: Salt Lake City braces for the winter games
Does Utah know what’s coming?
Note: see end of this feature story for a list of three accompanying sidebar articles. In four years, thousands of reporters and spectators will crowd hillsides and stadiums around Salt Lake City to watch the world’s top skiers, skaters, bobsledders and other athletes muscle for medals in the world’s biggest winter sporting event. Competition will […]
Posted inMarch 16, 1998: Olympic onslaught: Salt Lake City braces for the winter games
The games should belong to the people
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. John Cushing just started his fifth term as the mayor of Bountiful, and his first term as the president of the Utah League of Cities and Towns: John Cushing: “Since Utah was awarded the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, we have heard a great deal […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 1998: Looking at dams in a new way
The Wayward West
Pilots of “personal watercraft” such as Wavejammers and WetJets may get reined in at Lake Powell. The National Park Service is considering making parts of the reservoir “Jet Ski free,” because of increasing complaints – many from houseboaters calling from cell phones. A federal rule is expected soon allowing all national park superintendents to restrict […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 1998: After the gold rush
A road to nowhere?
For more than two decades, the Utah Department of Transportation has planned to widen the two-lane road that winds through narrow Provo Canyon. Best known as the site of Sundance, a resort founded by actor Robert Redford, the canyon is one of the most spectacular in the Wasatch Mountains. One-third of the “road-improvement” project is […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 1998: After the gold rush
Haggling over the Grand Staircase-Escalante
Conoco has turned its back on an oil well in Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. In December, Conoco engineers “packed up their oil rig and they are out of there,” says Bureau of Land Management spokesman Don Banks. “The hole has been capped without a blade of monument grass or a dollar of taxpayer green […]
Posted inDecember 8, 1997: Mono Lake: Victory over Los Angeles turns into local controversy
Salvage law haunts Utah
Salvage law haunts Utah When Forest Supervisor Janette Kaiser announced plans for a huge salvage timber sale on central Utah’s Manti-La Sal National Forest in August, environmentalists thought they’d seen a ghost. The sale was approved under a law they thought long dead: the salvage logging rider. Now, they hope a recent agency decision will […]
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
Greens differ over plan to expand national park
Anyone who has wandered the convoluted canyons of Arches National Park knows this landscape doesn’t lend itself to ruler-straight boundaries. But find the park on a map and you’ll see a stair-stepped outline that cuts across canyons and over mesas. Walt Dabney, the outspoken superintendent of both Arches and Canyonlands national parks, has been trying […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Reclaiming a lost canyon
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – The first time Phil Pennington saw Glen Canyon was in June of 1961, from the window of a search plane. A graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, Pennington and a handful of university hiking club members had come to southern Utah to backpack in the canyonlands. A few […]
Posted inOctober 27, 1997: Deconstructing the age of dams
Tooele sputters through first year
-You don’t start a $500 million piece of equipment and expect it to hum like a jewel the first time you turn it over. It’s gonna have bugs in it,” says Gary Griffith, a county commissioner in Tooele County, Utah. He’s talking about the Army’s chemical weapons incinerator 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, […]
Posted inOctober 13, 1997: The land is still public, but it's no longer free
Mountain bikers in Moab pay to ride
MOAB, Utah – Mountain bike pilgrims who come to ride Moab’s Slickrock trail find something new these days: a tollbooth. Next to the booth, a sign reads: “Welcome to Sand Flats. All fees are used here for improvements.” A visit to this mecca of mountain biking now costs $1 per person if you’re walking or […]
Posted inOctober 13, 1997: The land is still public, but it's no longer free
No cheap thrills in the Grand Canyon
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. For years, rafters and kayakers have paid to float the muddy Colorado River through Grand Canyon National Park. Typically, the trip cost private boating groups about $130. When the price jumped to around $1,500 per group for the trip last spring, boaters were shocked. […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
The drilling proceeds
The Bureau of Land Management has given Conoco Inc. the go-ahead to drill for oil in southern Utah’s new Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Agency officials say finding oil is a long shot, and Conoco will probably abandon the area. Environmentalists retort that the BLM is playing dangerous games with a national jewel. Earlier this month, […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
Trees refuse to croak
When Forest Service officials approved logging on 10,000 acres of Idaho’s Payette National Forest under the salvage logging rider in 1995, they said the trees had been killed by a 1994 wildfire or bark beetles. Now, they admit “dead” was an overstatement. “People may see what appear to be green, healthy trees removed from the […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
‘Greens’ bulldoze a conservation effort
Karla Player has seen a lot of changes in the eight years she’s lived in Springdale, Utah. Each summer, more than 2 million people pass through this dusty gateway town of 300 on their way to Zion National Park. Most visitors spend just a few hours here, though lately, people are coming to stay. “You […]