The region’s new pioneers buoy the economy and live on the edge
Lisa Jones
Posted inDecember 23, 1996: El Nuevo West
‘The way they treated me, I don’t like it at all’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Thirty-one-year-old Agustin Perez of Driggs, Idaho, came to the United States in 1982 to make $4.50 an hour working for a potato farmer in nearby Ashton. He got his green card in 1990. When we interviewed him he was in the midst of remodeling […]
Posted inDecember 23, 1996: El Nuevo West
‘They’re good workers. And they’re all we’ve got’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Kay Humann is the office manager at High Country Linen in Jackson, Wyo. Accustomed to running the computer and the phones in the front of the building, she worked in the hot, steamy laundry 16 hours a day for a week after the Aug. […]
Posted inDecember 23, 1996: El Nuevo West
‘I don’t want to live in a community of rich white people. It’s boring’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Filmmaker Shelley Weiss moved from Los Angeles to Oakley, Utah, nine years ago. An avid swimmer, she quickly became a regular at the Park City Racquet Club. Over the past few years, she has heard racist comments there about the growing number of Mexican […]
Posted inDecember 23, 1996: El Nuevo West
‘I have a 1996 Dodge Caravan … I’m a family guy’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Standing in the waiting room of the INS building in Denver, the federal official read the names of the newest citizens of the United States – Irene Lopez Fernandez, José Chavez Flores, Arturo Ramirez Mendoza. They were all pleased, but no one smiled wider […]
Posted inDecember 9, 1996: Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
Heard around the West
Did you think intellectual activity at the Forest Service is strangled with red tape? Then you’ve never heard them on the subject of wilderness golf. Forest Service employee Wendy Keeler recently sent an e-mail about her encounter with a group of families in the midst of a friendly golf tournament in the middle of a […]
Posted inNovember 25, 1996: Pollution in paradise
Heard around the West
Visitors to one of north Idaho’s most popular spots – the 200-acre “Samowen” campground on the shores of Lake Pend Oreille – have often been stumped by its Polynesian-sounding name. ” ‘Can you tell me about Samoan campground?’ they ask,” Idaho Panhandle National Forest spokeswoman Judy York told the Spokane Spokesman-Review. Now the area has […]
Posted inNovember 11, 1996: Cease-fire called on the Animas-La Plata front
Agriculture, education key to Indian prosperity
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to another news article, “Native Soil: Lakotas garden for health and independence.” In 1994, only one Native American received a doctorate in agricultural science. It’s not as if the country’s Indian reservations couldn’t use the expertise. They encompass 54.5 million acres […]
Posted inNovember 11, 1996: Cease-fire called on the Animas-La Plata front
Native Soil: Lakotas garden for health and independence
PINE RIDGE, S.D. – One morning in May 1988, Leonard Little Finger woke up with a slight pain in his chest. But he went to his job as an administrator at the local hospital, and made only a casual mention of it to a doctor there. A quickly administered electrocardiogram revealed a predictable diagnosis for […]
Posted inOctober 28, 1996: Has big money doomed direct democracy?
Heard around the West
At a pizzeria in Telluride, we recently overheard a couple of shopping-bag laden tourists discuss their vacation. “It’s like Switzerland,” one sighed happily, “only cheaper.” But Colorado is not Switzerland, despite the best efforts of Telluride and Vail. The chocolate here is not nearly as good; our passenger train system is just about nonexistent, and […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
A daunting, beautiful place
Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. Covering an area larger than the state of Delaware, the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument encompasses some of the wildest, most desolate land in the country. The expanse of canyons, bluffs, grasslands, cliffs is dotted with fossils and Native American archaeological sites. If you stand on […]
Posted inAugust 5, 1996: Disappearing railroad blues
Heard around the West
Congregational minister Glover Wagner of Bozeman, Mont., recently reported on his drive home from Madison, Wis.: “I walked into an interstate cafe somewhere in North Dakota,” he wrote in the pamphlet he regularly distributes to his congregation. “Next to me on the stool sat a toothless man banging on the counter. I couldn’t tell what […]
Posted inJuly 22, 1996: Glen Canyon: Using a dam to heal a river
Drought cuts to the bone on Southwest range
RESERVE, N.M. – To hear Ed Werheim tell it, 1993 was a lifetime ago. That’s when he took out a mortgage on a ranch in the mountains of southern New Mexico. The range was wet, cattle prices were high and the 57-year-old cabinet maker was looking forward to running cattle on the Gila National Forest […]
Posted inJuly 22, 1996: Glen Canyon: Using a dam to heal a river
The art of control
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories: Drought cuts to the bone on Southwest range Jim Winder ranches near Hatch, N.M. He rotates his cattle through 62 fenced pastures on an 18,300-acre BLM allotment. When the customary winter rains didn’t fall in January, he started looking for lusher pastures for […]
Posted inJuly 22, 1996: Glen Canyon: Using a dam to heal a river
Droughts come, droughts go
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories: Drought cuts to the bone on Southwest range Quentin Hulse moved onto his ranch on Canyon Creek in the Gila National Forest in 1933, when he was 7 years old. He still lives there. We asked him how his cattle did in the […]
Posted inJune 24, 1996: Catron County's politics heat up as its land goes bankrupt
Ranger charges ranchers with assault
When Chuck Oliver’s job with the Forest Service in Montana fell victim to an agency consolidation three years ago, he seized the chance to return to his native New Mexico. But Oliver, a range conservationist on the Gila National Forest in Catron County, found that public-lands grazing was much more contentious in the Southwest than […]
Posted inJune 24, 1996: Catron County's politics heat up as its land goes bankrupt
The Psychologist
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story: Catron County’s politics heat up as its land goes bankrupt Melinda Garcia of Albuquerque has been a clinical and community psychologist for 25 years. She has led three day-long sessions in Catron County for Forest Service employees and their families: one on the high […]
Posted inJune 24, 1996: Catron County's politics heat up as its land goes bankrupt
The Country Doctor
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story: Catron County’s politics heat up as its land goes bankrupt Mark Unverzagt, a doctor in Reserve, N.M., took up Melinda Garcia’s challenge and became key to the formation of Concerned Citizens for Catron County. The group, comprised of some 18 ranchers, local politicians, Forest […]
Posted inJune 24, 1996: Catron County's politics heat up as its land goes bankrupt
Heard around the West
At least once a day, High Country News is mistaken for the local High Country Shopper. In the Shopper you can find goats, chain-link fence, slightly used wedding dresses and the like for bargain prices. Depending on your blood sugar level, the headlines for ads in the Shopper can seem anything from commonplace to hallucinatory […]
Posted inJune 24, 1996: Catron County's politics heat up as its land goes bankrupt
The County Attorney
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story: Catron County’s politics heat up as its land goes bankrupt Jim Catron is a fourth-generation New Mexican and a distant relative of Thomas Benton Catron, the land baron for whom Catron County is named. He lives in La Joya, N.M., and is county attorney […]