2011 marks 41 years that High Country News has been in existence. While another year is certainly noteworthy, especially in this age of disappearing print publications, it won’t carry the fanfare of the past year. This last year was anything but ordinary here at High Country News. To celebrate the organization’s 40th anniversary, subscribers hosted […]
Robyn Morrison
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Cows, coyotes and a revelation
Reporting on the West’s public lands and environment can be a gloomy task. The news from four decades of High Country News – battles over massive strip mines, ancient forests decimated by greedy timber companies, the sorry state of public grazing land, gas wells popping up like a pox and recreation enthusiasts trampling the land […]
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From prom queens to dam dialogue
“She kept us out of trouble,” is how former High Country News publisher Ed Marston describes the first intern to take up the post in Paonia. Mary Moran arrived in the fall of 1983, just a month after the organization moved from rural Wyoming to rural Colorado and Ed and Betsy Marston took over as […]
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What about Watt?
Whenever the national media turns its attention to the Interior Department, I can’t help but think of James Watt. Since the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig and the ensuing gush of undersea oil, the agency has certainly been in the spotlight. As the Interior Secretary under the Reagan administration, Watt’s brash quips, unabashed partisan […]
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The summer the dam almost didn’t
“We could as well have been sticking two chewing gum companies together, or merging an anti-vivisection group with a professional society of biology teachers,” wrote the new staff in the Sept. 5, 1983 issue of High Country News, the first published from its new home in Colorado. Click for larger version Ed and Betsy Marston, […]
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Pack the truck…..we’re headed to Colorado
A rather unimpressive photo of former Democratic presidential candidate Gary Hart accompanies the headline “You gotta have Hart” in the July 8, 1983 issue of High Country News. Click for larger version Reported by then-editor Dan Whipple, the article is set in Snowmass, Colo., at the Sierra Club’s First International Assembly where presidential candidates and […]
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Psssst…everyone… jobs in North Dakota.
It’s a common theme here in the West — during boom times, more workers flood into towns than can be housed. Workers loaded with cash they’ve made in the oil and gas fields or uranium mines can’t find an apartment to rent, while hotels are booked for months, even years in advance. Many end up […]
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Out of tragedy, High Country News soldiers on
“1978, the year the Senate shortchanged Alaska?,” asked the cover headline of the Sept. 8 High Country News issue that year. The article outlined the Senate “horsetrading” over the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, the bill that in 1980 ultimately created or expanded 15 of Alaska’s national parks and preserves. The article contained only […]
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An age-old story of the high cost of coal
The news from Appalachia coal country, where at least 25 miners died and four more remain missing in a huge underground coalmine explosion earlier this week, is unimaginably grim. Not since 1984, when 27 perished in a fire at Emery Mining Corporation’s Orangeville, Utah, mine have so many died in a mine accident. It’s even […]
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Readers wield their fiery pens
High Country News readers have always been an opinionated bunch. You weigh in on whether you agree or disagree with what’s been reported, provide unique perspectives and often set us straight with additional facts and details about complicated issues. For 40 years, your letters have encouraged and inspired the staff, connected the far-flung community of […]
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Forged on a Rough Frontier
One thing is certain: High Country News founder Tom Bell wasn’t afraid of poking a finger in someone’s chest. He openly criticized Wyoming’s ranchers and industry and the politicians that looked after them. The state’s pro-development governor, Stanley K. Hathaway, was a frequent target, as were a pair of Casper-area ranchers who shot and poisoned […]
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The Crusade Continues
“Dear Mr. Bell: “I travel so much that I’m always behind in my reading. So you can well have imagined my surprise when I found out you were going to fold the paper. Well, Hell man, I don’t always agree with you, but for God’s sake let’s keep the paper going for awhile yet. Enclosed […]
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What Tom Bell Had to Say
Passionate, feisty, courageous, “just another nutty prophet of doom” — all have been used to describe Tom Bell, the Wyoming rancher and wildlife biologist who founded High Country News in 1970. High Country News’ first years were tumultuous as Bell struggled to keep it alive. Twice, he threw away the paste-up sheets for the next […]
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The First Scrappy Years
“Americans are great people. But I think the readers of High Country News are the greatest,” wrote Tom Bell in the March 5, 1971, issue. He was responding to the letters and donations that readers and subscribers had sent following a grim assessment of the paper’s future. Click for larger version Bell had been at […]
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Tom Bell, Spaghetti Westerns and HCN
“Once upon a time” is a better start to a bedtime story than it is to a retrospective of 40 years of High Country News. But have you ever watched the old movie “Once Upon a Time in the West?” It’s Italian director Sergio Leone’s best spaghetti western, a three hour epic about the struggle […]
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They say it’s your birthday
Two years ago I celebrated my 40th birthday. I wasn’t thrilled about turning 40 (who is?) and couldn’t convince myself that a celebratory shindig was a good idea (all that attention). But in her quiet way, a close friend convinced me it needed to happen. On an April evening, friends filled the upstairs of the […]
Posted inDecember 8, 2003: Riding the middle path
Riding the middle path
In Idaho’s remote Owyhee region, an effort to protect wilderness and keep ranchers in business threatens to crack under pressure, or slip into oblivion
Posted inJuly 7, 2003: Invasion of the rock jocks
Invasion of the rock jocks
Have rock climbers turned from environmental crusaders into an environmental menace?
Posted inJuly 7, 2003: Invasion of the rock jocks
Who’s managing climbers?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Invasion of the rock jocks.” Devils Tower National Monument, Wyo. Twenty-three Indian tribes claim cultural ties to this 1,200-foot volcanic butte, which, on busy summer days, crawls with upward of 120 climbers. To ease conflicts between climbers and Native Americans using the site for […]
Posted inJuly 7, 2003: Invasion of the rock jocks
One park clamps down on climbers
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Invasion of the rock jocks.” In November 1992, managers at Hueco Tanks State Historic Site were gearing up for another busy climbing season, when vandals scrawled what staffers suspected was gang-related graffiti across one of the park’s most visited rock art sites. Known as […]