Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “A New Dialogue for Idaho.” For wilderness advocates: If passed, the Central Idaho Economic Development Act would create two new wilderness areas in the Boulder-White Cloud mountains, separated only by a narrow dirt-bike trail. The Ernest Hemingway/Jerry Peak Wilderness, above the famous writer’s old home […]
Ray Ring
Posted inFebruary 1, 1999: Saving the Platte
Saving the Platte
On one of the most spoken-for rivers in the West, environmentalists, irrigators and state and federal governments thread their way through a tenuous agreement
Posted inJanuary 19, 1998: After the gold rush
After the gold rush
Note: see the end of this feature story for a list of several accompanying sidebar articles. NEW WORLD MINING DISTRICT, MONTANA The landmarks here are about what you’d find in many of the other hundreds of thousands of abandoned or inactive mines in the West. Old pits, collapsed tunnels and piles of waste rock cling […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 1998: After the gold rush
This heavy-metal collection includes a shovel that dug the Panama Canal
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. SILVER STAR, Mont. – When you drive Montana Highway 41 past Lloyd Harkins’ yard, here in the heart of mining country, you can’t help noticing that Harkins has a peculiar idea of mine reclamation. Right next to the highway Harkins has stood a humongous […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 1998: After the gold rush
A few plants love mine waste
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Gazing around old diggings just outside Yellowstone National Park, Ray Brown says, “The ecosystem hasn’t been damaged, it’s been destroyed. It’s typical on these sites.” Yet he points to a small grasslike plant and says enthusiastically, “This is the miracle!’ Brown is a plant […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 1998: After the gold rush
Turning the Old West into the New West
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. ANACONDA, Mont. – Until this town got involved, mine reclamation was fairly dull. You could say, reclamation lacked imagination. No flair. Then Anaconda, a town that rose and fell on the smelting of ore from the mines in nearby Butte, got the idea of […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 1998: After the gold rush
Summitville: an expensive lesson
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. In mine reclamation, lessons are learned through failure. Nowhere has the failure been more spectacular than at the Summitville Gold Mine in southern Colorado. The mine is being reclaimed now, but at a huge cost, borne almost entirely by people and companies that had […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 1998: After the gold rush
Can tailings piles be historic artifacts?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. LEADVILLE, Colo. – Here below a ring of magnificent peaks, the scenery features a maze of tailings piles and the decaying architecture of mines, mills and smelters that outsiders might see as ugly and meaningless. But locals like Carl Miller enjoy the sight of […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 1998: After the gold rush
A radical approach to mine reclamation
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. SILVERTON, Colo. – The Sunnyside Mine near here is an odd place for marking progress. The mine offers gold, silver, copper, lead and zinc, but has a treacherous history. Different companies have tried to make it work since 1874 and have shut it down […]
Posted inAugust 18, 1997: The West that was, and the West that can be
If a town is more dead than alive, it’s the Old West
ANACONDA, Mont. – The gravestones stand in ranks on the hills above this old smelter town, providing hard statistics. By the 1890s, when Anaconda was only a few years old, people of European descent were already dying here. McGinty, Deslauriers, Nitschke, Dadasovich and other names of the dead indicate epic journeys. One stone, for the […]
Posted inAugust 18, 1997: The West that was, and the West that can be
Jell-O and suicides
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to an essay, “If a town is more dead than alive, it’s the Old West.” Various statistics describe different aspects of the West today. For instance, Salt Lake City leads the nation in per capita Jell-O consumption, while Nevada leads in […]
Posted inMarch 31, 1997: Big Sky, big mess in Montana
Armies of skiers are coming to Yellowstone
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Among the many pressures on Yellowstone National Park’s ecosystem, downhill skiing is coming on strong. Seven ski resorts, including Big Sky, ring the park in a wide radius – and all the resorts plan major expansions. Here’s a partial list, in round numbers: * […]
Posted inMarch 31, 1997: Big Sky, big mess in Montana
Chet Huntley’s legacy includes suppression of a free press
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. BIG SKY, Mont. – When John Kircher, the most powerful person in this resort town, loaded a box of iced ocean lobster and some friends into a helicopter and flew into a national-forest wilderness for a picnic, newspapers around Montana reported the spectacular trespass. […]
Posted inMarch 31, 1997: Big Sky, big mess in Montana
Big Sky, big mess in Montana
Note this story package includes five related stories: – Chet Huntley’s legacy includes suppression of a free press – Big Sky above, private land below – How Huntley sold Big Sky to Montana – Touring the future on Insta-Teller Road – Armies of skiers are coming to Yellowstone — BIG SKY, Mont. – Twenty-seven years […]
Posted inMarch 31, 1997: Big Sky, big mess in Montana
Big Sky above, private land below
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. J.C. Knaub has lived in Big Sky since the ski mountain opened in 1973. He worked as a ski patrolman, got fired, sued for wrongful discharge, and in 1984 a jury ordered the resort to pay him more than a quarter million dollars. Knaub, […]
Posted inMarch 31, 1997: Big Sky, big mess in Montana
How Huntley sold Big Sky to Montana
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Chet Huntley did some horseback-riding and occasional cross-country skiing – but ironically not much downhill. He made his reputation as a television newsman on both urban coasts, including 14 years on the Huntley-Brinkley nightly news on NBC. But he had a rugged look and […]
Posted inMarch 31, 1997: Big Sky, big mess in Montana
Touring the future on Insta-Teller Road
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. This gate shows what the future might be like around the West. The gate is operated by a computerized keypad, something like an insta-teller. And it’s all about money. So call the 10-mile-long gravel road beyond the gate Insta-Teller Road. It’s a shortcut to […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
The bigger the mine, the better the deal
BOZEMAN, Mont. – The way things are going around here lately, we should change Montana’s nickname from the Big Sky Country to the Big Swap Country: Let’s make a deal! No doubt it’s a form of progress. So were the 1872 Mining Law and the railroad land grants in their day. But qualifiers need to […]
Posted inDecember 25, 1995: Utah hearings misfire
How to influence Congress on just dollars a day
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Congress weighs the fate of Utah’s wild lands. Ray Wheeler, who has a history of determination that includes hiking nearly all the way across Utah, climbed on a jet in Salt Lake City last July 12, bound for the nation’s halls of power. […]
Posted inDecember 11, 1995: Hunting: Its place in the West comes under attack
Unarmed but dangerous critics close in on hunting
Lee Metzgar took up hunting as a youngster, as soon as he could handle a rifle. At first he hunted mostly birds; then he moved west to teach ecology at the University of Montana and, as he phrases it, his hunting got serious. For the next 22 years, stalking in the Rockies, Metzgar bagged deer, […]