ELKO, Nev. — It’s not often that the prospect of a humanities lecture stirs protest. But that’s what happened when former Interior Secretary Stewart Udall was invited to give the annual lecture at the 17th annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering. The Elko gathering has become the state’s premier folklore event, and it brings about 8,000 people […]
Jon Christensen
Posted inMay 22, 2000: Save Our Sagebrush
Save Our Sagebrush
In the Great Basin, fires create a chance for redemption
Posted inMay 22, 2000: Save Our Sagebrush
The weedy future of the Great Basin
Fire and cheatgrass conspire to create a weedy wasteland
Posted inNovember 22, 1999: Go tell it on the mountain
Nevadans drive out forest supervisor
RENO, Nev. – After enduring a year and a half of what she calls Nevada’s “fed bashing,” Gloria Flora couldn’t take it anymore. The supervisor of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, the largest national forest in the lower 48 states, submitted her resignation Nov. 8. But Flora didn’t go quietly. Instead, she used her resignation to […]
Posted inOctober 25, 1999: Monumental chaos
Nevada rebellion ends with a whimper
JARBIDGE, Nev. – Is this is the way a Sagebrush Rebellion ends: not with a revolution, but with one more barbecue to clean up? The latest skirmish began with great promise, at least according to organizers. More than a thousand people were supposed to show up with picks and shovels to open a washed-out Forest […]
Posted inSeptember 28, 1998: A senator for the New West in the race of his life
A senator for the New West in the race of his life
Note: two sidebar articles, one with Nevada statistics and one titled “Beyond sagebrush politics: A prospering megalopolis steers Nevada,” accompany this feature story. RENO, Nev. – In the halls of Congress, Sen. Harry Reid is proud to be known as a “Senator for the New West.” For more than a decade, the two-term, senior Democratic […]
Posted inSeptember 28, 1998: A senator for the New West in the race of his life
Beyond sagebrush politics: A prospering megalopolis steers Nevada
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Nevada doesn’t get a lot of respect. It has been called “The tag-end of Creation,” “America’s Great Mistake” and “the Rotten Borough.” John Muir said it was “irredeemable now and forever.” The Almanac of American Politics, considered by many to be the bible of […]
Posted inAugust 18, 1997: The West that was, and the West that can be
At Tahoe forum, a tribe wins a deal
LAKE TAHOE, Nev. – Washoe tribal chairman Brian Wallace says he feels “bittersweet” when he looks at what has happened to Lake Tahoe. The tribe’s name for itself – “Wa Shi Shiw” – means “the people from here.” But the Washoe haven’t felt at home at Lake Tahoe for a long time. During the California […]
Posted inJuly 7, 1997: While the New West booms, Wyoming mines, drills ... and languishes
A lot is at stake in Supreme Court case
INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. – There’s a vacant lot in this town that’s been discussed before the U.S. Supreme Court. The two-fifths-of-an-acre lot, a boggy tangle of willows and ponderosa pines beside narrow Mill Creek, is one of the few remaining undeveloped patches. Houses crowd around, all part of a subdivision built in the 1960s and […]
Posted inJune 23, 1997: On the trail of mining's corporate nomads
Las Vegas may shoot craps with its water
LAS VEGAS, Nev. – An opinionated scientist and a vocal group of senior citizens are trying to stop the juggernaut of growth here. So far, they haven’t had much effect. Las Vegas keeps on booming. But they’ve raised the specter that the city may be fouling its water supply. Larry Paulson is a biology professor […]
Posted inMay 12, 1997: Planning under the gun: Cleaning up Lake Tahoe proves to be a dirty business
The mission is simple: restore Lake Tahoe
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency was created in 1969 by a compact between California and Nevada that was ratified by Congress. The TRPA governing board is made up of 15 members: seven from California, seven from Nevada, and one non-voting presidential appointee. Six members […]
Posted inMay 12, 1997: Planning under the gun: Cleaning up Lake Tahoe proves to be a dirty business
Here come Clinton and Gore
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore are coming to Lake Tahoe in late July for a summit on the lake’s environment and development. It will be the first time that a president has ever visited the area for policy or pleasure while […]
Posted inMay 12, 1997: Planning under the gun: Cleaning up Lake Tahoe proves to be a dirty business
Planning under the gun: Cleaning up Lake Tahoe proves to be a dirty business
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – Joe Thiemann stormed out of a meeting of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) with murder in his eyes. The powerful agency had finally pushed him too far. The quick-tempered 45-year-old entrepreneur had been running cruises aboard the Tahoe Queen, a 500-passenger Mississippi-style riverboat, since he was 20. The paddle […]
Posted inApril 3, 1995: The Great Basin: America's wasteland seeks a new identity
Dave Foreman sparks wilderness drive
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, The Great Basin: America’s wasteland seeks a new identity. “The Great Basin is a landscape that has always called to my soul,” says Dave Foreman. “Nowhere do we see better classic wilderness than in the Great Basin.” A founder and leader of […]
Posted inDecember 23, 1996: El Nuevo West
The shotgun wedding of tourism and public lands
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Nev. – They came from across the country and around the West to celebrate the shotgun wedding of tourism and the public lands. The potential Lords of the New West, the bosses of tourism agencies and industry lobbying groups, and the managers of federal lands and parks, arrived in limousines and chartered […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 1996: The filthy West: Toxics pour into our air, water, land
Two reports set the stage for Sierra Nevada’s future
The Sierra Nevada is a patchwork of dwindling old growth, imperiled species and degraded lakes, streams and rivers. But the seedbeds of its salvation are still intact, according to two reports released this summer, one by a group of scientists, the other by a regional business council. Both conclude there are many reasons for hope […]
Posted inMay 13, 1996: Howdy, neighbor!
Everyone helps a California forest – except the Forest Service
Note: this article is one of several feature stories in a special issue about collaboration in the West. QUINCY, Calif. – In the context of the burned and dying forests of the West, the Quincy Library Group was supposed to be a good news story. Loggers and environmentalists sat down in the local public library […]
Posted inFebruary 5, 1996: Lack of enchantment: Santa Fe's boom goes flat
Earthtones
EARTHTONES Essayist Ann Ronald and photographer Stephen Trimble want to redeem Nevada from John Muir’s century-old slur that the state “seems one vast desert, all sage and sand, hopelessly irredeemable now and forever.” Earthtones: A Nevada Album takes readers beyond the Muir clichés, although the authors admit that the Great Basin is an acquired taste. […]
Posted inFebruary 5, 1996: Lack of enchantment: Santa Fe's boom goes flat
…and the words from the meaning on the Nevada range
“We had fed the heart on fantasies. The heart’s grown brutal from the fare.” – W.B. Yeats, Meditations in Times of Civil War “This is a war we’re in. We’re choosing up sides,” thundered Gene Gustin, chairman of the public lands advisory committee for Elko County, Nev. Shouts of approval rose from a crowd of […]
Posted inNovember 13, 1995: Seeing the forest and the trees
Guy Pence leaves Nevada
The Forest Service has ordered Guy Pence off of the front lines in Nevada. The district ranger in Carson City has been the target of two bombings this year (HCN, 10/30/95). The agency is reassigning him to a staff position at the regional office in Boise, Idaho, out of concern for his personal safety and […]