Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Unarmed but dangerous critics close in on hunting. John Stevenson, who runs Wyoming Taxidermy in Evansville, near Casper, used to mount 500 kills a year. But bad winters have taken a toll on local antelope herds, the number of hunting permits has been reduced […]
Ray Ring
Posted inSeptember 18, 1995: The West's fisheries spin out of control
The West’s fisheries spin out of control
It’s gotten to the point that even car dealers sell trout fishing. Their customers tool around the Rockies in four-wheel-drives named after a famous flyrod – the Jeep Cherokee special Orvis edition. Sticker price $33,000. All the fishing shops, from Bozeman to Taos, offer the latest gear: microporous miracle waders whose fibers somehow breathe underwater, […]
Posted inAugust 7, 1995: Fighting fires, and indignities
Denver vs. the West
Six months after its grand opening, pricey Denver International Airport continues to shake up air travel around the West (HCN, 1/23/95). First, the cost of building and doing business at the mega-airport helped persuade Continental Airlines to all but abandon the Rocky Mountains. Now, blaming the same unprofitable dynamics, the commuter airline, GP Express, is […]
Posted inAugust 7, 1995: Fighting fires, and indignities
Where the saguaros stop
WHERE THE SAGUAROS STOP We know of several copies of the seminal reference book – Biotic Communities, Southwestern United States and Northwestern Mexico – that have worn out, riding around for years on the dashboards of pickup trucks. The Boyce Thompson Southwestern Arboretum in Arizona, which published the book in 1982, sold out its stock […]
Posted inAugust 7, 1995: Fighting fires, and indignities
Heard around the West
Department of What About The Horse? Any person atop a bucking bronc in a Navajo rodeo may soon have to wear safety equipment, reports The Najavo Hopi-Observer. Injuries (to people) have been identified as a problem, so the tribe’s Injury Protection Committee wants to make all rodeo cowboys compete in “rodeo safety vests’ that are […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Utah wilderness goes coast-to-coast
Run over by a political juggernaut in their state, Utah’s environmental groups are trying to dust themselves off and sound a nationwide alarm. The state’s congressional delegation has united in pushing a bill that most environmentalists see as disastrous. It would make 1.8 million acres of Bureau of Land Management wilderness official, but release at […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Heard around the West
The National Park Service’s Park-‘N’-Drive Competition is getting intense: One tourist pulled a knife on another last fall in a fight over a Grand Canyon parking space. Already this season amid the canyon’s gridlock, a woman who boldly stood in a parking space – trying to save it for her husband and their car – […]
Posted inJune 26, 1995: Colorado's prison slayer
Heard Around the West
The Missoulian, a Montana daily, ran an intriguing Help Wanted: “Sheepherder with miniumum of 30 days’ experience. Attends sheep grazing on open range, herds sheep using trained dogs. Guards flocks from predators and from eating poisonous plants … Food, housing, tools, supplies and equipment provided. Hours variable, on call 24 hours, 7 days … One […]
Posted inMay 29, 1995: Politics 101
Heard Around the West
The House of the Utah Legislature has voted 69-2 to exempt the smoke of Native American ceremonial pipes from the state’s Clean Air Act. According to the Associated Press, one nay vote came from a “white Republican Mormon,” Gerry Adair, who won’t okay any form of smoking because his father died of emphysema. The other […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
The New West’s servant economy
(This HCN magazine cover story is accompanied by seven sidebars listed at the end.) Silverthorne, Colorado Struggling with a language that would not be his first or even his second choice, Dabo Pobot tried to explain how he and other Africans have been imported to serve ski country, USA. If I wrote it the way […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
Working 24 hours straight
(This is a sidebar to an HCN magazine cover story on the New West’s servant economy.) Copper Mountain Ski Resort, Colorado Greg Smith was a 23-year-old ski bum when he drifted into Summit County in 1983 or so. “Now it’s just the opposite,” he says. “I work a lot and don’t get much chance to […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
The Leadville-Indy 500
(This is a sidebar to an HCN magazine cover story on the New West’s servant economy.) Leadville, Colorado Dead of winter in the highest town in the nation (elevation 10,152 feet), and it’s the kind of morning that requires willpower – at 5:30 a.m., still dark and so cold that the snow squeaks under boots. […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
Ski bums wrapped in concrete
(This is a sidebar to an HCN magazine cover story on the New West’s servant economy.) Vail, Colorado Jeremy Bernier finished his ski season, working his day job and going home each night to sleep like a troll under a bridge. Instead of postcard scenery, when he woke up each morning he saw a grey […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
Pedro Lopez, entrepreneur
(This is a sidebar to an HCN magazine cover story on the New West’s servant economy.) Avon, Colorado Pedro Lopez, from Aguascalientes in central Mexico, says he’s lived for three years in esta trailer. It’s a sheet-metal shack roughly next door to the chic Beaver Creek ski resort. Duct tape holds his cracked windows together. […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
It always comes down to finding a place to live
(This is a sidebar to an HCN magazine cover story on the New West’s servant economy.) Summit County, Colo., the top ski destination in the nation, did more business last season than all the ski areas in Utah. The county’s resorts hosted more than 3 million skier visits. Neighboring Eagle County hosted another 2 million […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
He came to ski and stayed to help
(This is a sidebar to an HCN magazine cover story on the New West’s servant economy.) Roman Catholic Archbishop J. Francis Stafford sprinkled holy water around an apartment complex in the resort town of Silverthorne, Colo., last June. He was blessing the apartments, which the church had helped establish, and he blessed the poverty-stricken families […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
Seeking power, a few ski workers go union
(This is a sidebar to an HCN magazine cover story on the New West’s servant economy.) It was a gritty interruption of ski business: At the base of the main lift of the Red Lodge ski area in Montana, on a busy January Saturday, 15 lift operators staged a sit-down strike. Their starting pay was […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 1995: The wolves are back, big time
Race alarms public; methane project doesn’t
A much-hyped race through Utah’s canyon country has attracted record public comment – and exposed how difficult it is to get the public involved in managing public lands. “It’s frustrating,” says Dennis Willis, a recreation staffer in the Price, Utah, office of the Bureau of Land Management, which is doing an environmental assessment of the […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 1995: What a long strange trip it's been
Airports show difference between Denver and Utah
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, The West sings the Denver airport blues. It’ll be far more expensive for airlines to operate at Denver’s new airport than at other airports in the West – which puts the Denver hub at a new disadvantage. To recoup the higher charges, airlines are […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 1995: What a long strange trip it's been
The West sings the Denver airport blues
It was billed as a black-tie gala: Denver’s finest coming together to celebrate the grand opening of the city’s new international airport. Nearly 4,000 people were trying to breathe life into the cathedral-like terminal building, where banquet tables had been set on a granite floor meant for the footsteps of millions of air travelers. A […]