Dear HCN,
While visiting our newest
national monument last weekend, we stopped at a small store in
Boulder, Utah, to buy gas, dog food and a few groceries. When we
asked if the store had a microwave and sold frozen burritos for a
quick lunch, the pleasant saleswoman replied, “Sorry, we’re not
really into fast food.” As we paid, we expressed our appreciation
of the new Escalante-Grand Staircase National Monument and she
looked doubtful. We said, “Well, we understand your county really
wanted that coal mine, but hopefully the park will be good for your
business,” and she expressed even greater doubts about that. Yet,
there we were, ready to spend more money if they had expanded their
selection and service.
This lack of
entrepreneurial spirit and the notion of coal mining as a better
route to prosperity seem at odds with Utah’s traditional values.
Brigham Young was adamant that his people resist the lure of mining
boom towns and exhorted them to establish stable communities based
on business enterprise and agriculture. Certainly Salt Lake City is
a prime example of 150 years of entrepreneurial
creativity.
It seems odd that now a small grocery
is stymied at how to capitalize on increased tourism. We hear the
repeated complaint in southern Utah that tourism provides only
minimum wage jobs. But that’s only if you don’t own your own
business. Surely there is the know-how down there to start a
hundred new outdoors-oriented businesses.
The
problem is not the lack of opportunity, but rather how one prefers
to make money – an ideological issue. Somehow coal mining is
preferable to tourism. Coal mining? Seems like coal mining has
always been associated with drudgery, disease and worker
exploitation. What images come to mind with the phrases “coal
miner’s daughter” or “Appalachian coal miner’? In fact, a number of
19th-century Mormon converts escaped the English and Welsh coal
mines for a better life in Utah.
We live in a
Colorado county with an economy based largely on recreation and
retirement living, where 80 percent of the land is in the public
domain with two federal wilderness areas. Our custom bootmaker, our
nationally known greenhouse-cactus grower and our river raft guides
would all agree that their businesses provide far more satisfaction
and personal freedom than when they kowtowed to their
production-pressured foremen before the molybdenum mine shut
down.
What’s happened to the Beehive State when
it prefers punching a multinational’s time clock to personal
enterprise?
Katherine and
Michael McCoy
Buena Vista,
Colorado
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline A recent encounter in Utah.
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