Spanish-speaking, often underestimated immigrant workers keep the West’s ski resorts running in the face of INS raids, discrimination and other trials.
Four reasons why environmentalists fail
FOUR REASONS WHY ENVIRONMENTALISTS FAIL Dear HCN, Jon Margolis’ column on voting trends in the West (HCN, 11/25/96) should be stapled to the forehead of every environmental activist in the Northern Rockies. The fact is, he’s right: People around here do tend to respond more positively to environmental issues than they do to the environmentalists…
An 84-year-old postal veteran
The struggle by Red Lodge, Mont., that kept alive a downtown post office may be duplicated 150 miles away in Livingston, population 7,500. Recently, 1,500 Livingston residents signed a petition calling on Postal Service officials to forego a move to spacious new quarters and retain the 84-year-old post office in the heart of town. “It’s…
Glen Canyon team dismantled
The man who oversaw the research that led to the historic “man-made” flood in the Grand Canyon last spring has resigned. River ecologist Dave Wegner quit after Interior Department officials closed down his Glen Canyon Environmental Studies office and replaced it with a research center headed by a biologist with little experience in river management.…
Parks want “drug-free’ river guides
The job description for a professional river guide might read like this: Must possess John Wesley Powell’s fearlessness, Julia Child’s culinary skills and the patience of Job. Now, add another requirement: Must pass a drug test. Periodic drug testing began this past season for outfitters licensed in Grand Canyon National Park and may soon be…
Judge kicks out cows
After nearly five years of haggling over how many cows should be allowed on the Diamond Bar grazing allotment in New Mexico, U.S. District Judge Howard Bratton ordered Dec. 4 that all 863 cows belonging to ranchers Kit and Sherry Laney must leave national forest land. The Laneys had sued last spring when Forest Service…
Profound noise reigns
Three decades ago, says musician Paul Winter, solitude was easy to find in and around Grand Canyon. Some of his award-winning recordings feature wind, ravens and other natural sounds from the national park. Not these days. When Winter and guide Fran Joseph of the Grand Canyon Trust went to a spot this fall where the…
Denying the warts on the West’s service economy
Once upon a time, in 18th-century France, the king and his court had pet economists known as “physiocrats.” The nobility liked their physiocrats very much. Not only did they bow and scrape in a very respectful way, but they told the king and counts and dukes that all wealth comes from the ground. The aristocracy…
El Nuevo West
The region’s new pioneers buoy the economy and live on the edge
‘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…
Heard around the West
You can be feminine and far fetched, or is it petite and a patriot? The shy editor of a newsletter called Marilyn the Patriot Matchmaker, admits, “I’ve always liked the kind of guys who’ll get me shot.” Enter this female foe of the New World Order, Marilyn, no last name given, who wants to link…
‘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.…
Keeping the heart in the center of town
The residents of very small Red Lodge, Mont., struck a blow, this month, for keeping their town a town. The forces for sprawling suburbanization are still all there: rising real estate prices, a major expansion at Red Lodge Mountain ski resort, and an influx of amenity-seeking newcomers attracted to the town’s setting, 60 twisting miles…
‘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…
‘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…
Amen!
La Iglesia in Emma offers Latinos a home in a foreign land
Dear friends
Digging in Winter finally fell on Paonia after fooling us for so many weeks with sunny days and skittish snow. The ski areas are happy about their feet-thick bases, and local water supplies, though still in snowpack, seem robust. But it isn’t cold yet, with that dry, biting cold we’ve come to expect in December.…
Rain and clearcuts make fatal brew
UMPQUA, Ore. – In their octagonal house on a remote forested slope 30 miles northwest of Roseburg, Rick and Susan Moon and their next-door neighbor, Sharon Marvin, sat in the path of disaster Nov. 18. Above them in the gathering dark, curtains of rain were working away at the mountain, swelling a small creek and…
Cow coup: Wyoming governor usurps federal grazing group
CASPER, Wyo. – It was not yet high noon, but the showdown over grazing between Wyoming’s governor and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt had begun to unfold. Around a table sat the 15 members of Wyoming’s Resource Advisory Council. They were the very same ranchers, industry representatives and conservationists who had been meeting for over a…
Wildlife plan teams with controversy
WASHINGTON, D.C. – About a decade ago, wildlife officials in Idaho began to realize that there were more wolverines in the Sawtooth Mountain area than they had thought. How many more and how should they be managed? Well, that would take some study, which costs money. And as is the case in many states, Idaho’s…
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…