A new documentary, Making Sense of Place: Phoenix, the Urban Desert, uses the Arizona megalopolis to illustrate what happens when suburban sprawl goes unchecked. Historical and current footage shows how cheap land and even cheaper water have encouraged Phoenix to sprawl over more than 1,700 square miles of Sonoran desert. But the resulting generic suburbs, […]
Communities
Posted inSeptember 13, 2004: When a Boom is a Bust
Heard around the West
UTAH The Davis County Library in Layton has a neurotically uptight patron, reports the Salt Lake Tribune. The unknown reader has been changing every “hell” and “damn” in certain mystery novels to “heck” and “darn,” doing the deed with a purple pen. So far, only books based on the Murder, She Wrote TV series have […]
Posted inSeptember 13, 2004: When a Boom is a Bust
When a Boom is a Bust
Natural gas has pumped money and workers into Wamsutter, Wyoming. But the town struggles to be anything more than a barracks for industry.
Posted inSeptember 13, 2004: When a Boom is a Bust
Communities search for a safer way to kill mosquitoes
West Nile virus brings a long-simmering controversy to a boil
Posted inSeptember 13, 2004: When a Boom is a Bust
Composing the new Western: Calexico
NEW YORK CITY, New York — Joey Burns, the guitarist and singer of the rock band Calexico, is sitting just a few blocks from Ground Zero, looking across the water at the Statue of Liberty. It is the Fourth of July. He assesses the situation with rock ’n’ roll profundity: “It’s a trip, man — […]
Posted inAugust 30, 2004: How Long Will it Flow?
Ancient archaeological secret is revealed
Over the years, rancher Waldo Wilcox had told very few people about the well-preserved Fremont Indian settlement on his land in eastern Utah’s Range Creek Canyon. The site, which includes a thousand-year-old treasure trove of pottery, arrowheads and cliff dwellings, is one of Utah’s most dramatic archaeological finds. But in the late 1990s, when Wilcox […]
Posted inWotr
Sometimes, it takes a tourist
One day early in the summer, my husband, Mike, and I were working on our place, a few irrigated acres carved from Wyoming’s high desert. Tree limbs lay scattered from a recent tree trimming, manure was heaped in the corral. The last thing we needed was a telephone call from a stranger. He spoke with […]
Posted inAugust 30, 2004: How Long Will it Flow?
Remembering those forgotten in the desert
Every year, hundreds of Mexican immigrants die in the Arizona desert. This year will be no different. Their deaths generally receive little more then a mention in some local papers. But author and poet Luis Alberto Urrea is trying to change that. In The Devil’s Highway, Urrea chronicles the ill-fated journey of a group of […]
Posted inAugust 30, 2004: How Long Will it Flow?
A Thirst for Growth
For decades, Sierra Vista, Arizona, has pumped groundwater like there’s no tomorrow. Now, to save the Southwest’s last free-flowing river, the city’s leaders must confront an age of limits.
Posted inAugust 30, 2004: How Long Will it Flow?
Heard around the West
MONTANA Artist Phil Kunz recalls seeing a vending machine filled with tiny art a few years ago, and the vision stayed with him; now, he’s created one for the former mining town of Butte. Kunz first had to track down an out-of-date cigarette vending machine; then, he enticed fellow artists to help decorate it to […]
Posted inWotr
How a resort town loses its soul
If not paradise, Aspen during the summer comes close. The mountains are dazzling, the gussied-up Victorian homes beguiling. The musical menu is rich, and a Nobel or Pulitzer prize-winner lectures nearly every evening. Everywhere are trails. It’s a heaven for tourists. But Aspen is no longer a tourist town in the conventional sense. A new […]
Posted inAugust 16, 2004: Journey of Rediscovery
The living, breathing natives who made Lewis and Clark
The most widely held and deeply ingrained popular image of Lewis and Clark also happens to be the most serious misconception of their expedition. In that image, they cross North America on their own at the start of the 19th century, somehow finding their way through an uninhabited wilderness and blazing a trail where no […]
Posted inWotr
At least life on the frontier wasn’t boring
I began thinking about the phenomenon we call boredom while watching public-television reruns of a provocative series called Frontier House. Its creators took three American families and placed them in the Montana wilderness for five months, from late spring to early fall. Then the families pretended it was 1883. They built log cabins and corrals, […]
Posted inAugust 16, 2004: Journey of Rediscovery
Heard around the West
ARIZONA Maybe it was amazement and disbelief that caused a motorist to call the cops: The white car ahead of her had the words “U.S. Forest Service” emblazoned on its side, but the driver was throwing lighted cigarette butts out the window in the middle of a hectic fire season. The driver turned out to […]
Posted inWotr
A Utah rancher’s secret was a gift to us
Trying to keep a secret is almost impossible these days, but rancher Waldo Wilcox kept a good one for half a century. Last month, when his secret was finally revealed, it became the second biggest global, online news story of the day. Here’s what it was: Since 1951, Wilcox has protected one of the most […]
Posted inWotr
The last best-paid place in the West
Every winter my brother Tom goes to a muzzleloader shoot in central Oregon, where he camps out in a large tent, dons his feathered hat and buckskin leggings and fringed jacket, and shoots his black powder rifle at targets tucked away in the junipers and sagebrush. He usually calls me in Idaho after he returns […]
Posted inAugust 2, 2004: The Greening of the Plains
A new twist on urbanism
Few people would connect “New Urbanism” — dense, mixed-use buildings and public transit in pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods — with the Latino barrios of Western cities. One Southern California-based group, however, sees this planning movement and Latino culture as nothing but simpatico. The Transportation and Land Use Collaborative has organized an annual conference and a series of […]
Posted inWotr
Bumper stickers and the politics of rage
“You’ll be lucky to get out of South Dakota alive,” the professor said, looking at one of my bumper stickers. He smiled, adding, “I may be kidding.” This was not my first warning that this bumper sticker might be dangerous. Leaving that small college campus, I was thoughtful. My cars have carried the same message […]
Posted inAugust 2, 2004: The Greening of the Plains
Speaking up for rural Oregonians: Judge Laura Pryor
JOHN DAY, Oregon — As hail pounds the concrete outside, more than 200 people cram into an Elks Lodge — replete with wood paneling and a smoky bar in the rear — to see Judge Laura Pryor, the chairwoman of the Gilliam County Commission and one of the rural West’s most outspoken champions. With her […]
Posted inAugust 2, 2004: The Greening of the Plains
Heard around the West
UTAH Filmmaker Michael Moore really knows how to energize people. His Bush-bashing documentary enraged so many Park City residents that a movie theater added a disclaimer, saying Fahrenheit 9/11 did not represent the views of the management. That a disclaimer was considered necessary disturbed several readers of the Park Record, who praised the film for […]