One hundred and ninety million years ago, give or take a few millennia, a meat-eating dinosaur walked to an oasis in a place now close to Vernal, Utah, and bent down for a drink. The 12-foot-tall beast was heavy, and its clawed, three-toed feet sank deeply into what is now wonderfully preserved sandstone rock. Scores […]
Communities
Posted inAugust 13, 2001: No refuge in the Klamath Basin
Disappearing cowboys get exposure
Each spring, photographer Adam Jahiel leaves his home in northeast Wyoming and treks to the remotest corners of the Great Basin to photograph cowboys on their annual roundups. The seasonal journey has become a 10-year personal quest. Jahiel, whose photos have appeared in The New York Times and National Geographic among others, says he is […]
Posted inAugust 13, 2001: No refuge in the Klamath Basin
Heard around the West
Oh, Smokey Bear, what have they done to you now? Smokey has a new day job. If you visit the lobby of the Forest Service’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., you can see the agency’s famous spokesbear, looking, perhaps, like one of the bureaucrats upstairs. The plump bear lounges at a rolltop desk, his feet crossed […]
Posted inJuly 30, 2001: Not in our back yard
Heard around the West
Washington, D.C., satirist Mark Russell came to Cody, Wyo., for a fund raiser recently and found so much to poke fun at, he had 700 people in tears from laughing so hard, says Buzzy Hassrick in the Cody Enterprise. All of his material, Russell swore, came from reading the weekly Enterprise, an effort that took […]
Posted inJuly 30, 2001: Not in our back yard
Out of the woods, blithe spirit
Oh my! Oh dear! Imagine … 20,000 hippies. Not doing a lick of work. Messing up meadows like animals. Befouling streams like animals. Eating, sleeping, defecating like animals. Fornicating like bunny animals, thumping bongos, tooting flutes, gang-singing old Donovan songs, dancing around without a care in their heads like Jenna Bush in a cowboy bar, […]
Posted inJuly 2, 2001: Can Nevada bury Yucca Mountain?
Luxury homes torched in Tucson
The fires follow a string of similar arsons in Phoenix
Posted inJuly 2, 2001: Can Nevada bury Yucca Mountain?
A maverick mayor takes on sprawl
Salt Lake’s Rocky Anderson fights the ‘highways first’ establishment
Posted inJuly 2, 2001: Can Nevada bury Yucca Mountain?
Heard around the West
With fast-growing lawns in the West sucking down immense amounts of water, Andrew McKean of Helena, Mont., passes on two apropos comments. The first is from University of Utah political scientist Daniel McCool: “Utah doesn’t have a water problem; Utah has a Kentucky bluegrass problem.” The second comes from the side of a bus spotted […]
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
University wolf study raises hackles
UTAH The Utah Farm Bureau Federation has a bone to pick with Robert Schmidt’s wildlife management class at Utah State University. The class recently studied the biological and economic effects of a hypothetical wolf population in Utah. But when the class took its findings public, the Bureau accused the students of being “pro-wolf” and said […]
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
Indian rock art under the drill?
MONTANA Crow Indian historian Howard Boggess believes the rock art that graces the sandstone cliffs of Weatherman Draw marks the historic “Valley of the Shields” as a “place of peace” where chiefs and warriors retreated for vision quests. The art likely represents a multitude of ethnic groups who traveled through this historic migratory corridor in […]
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
Surprise! Boise votes for open space
Support for tax levy breaks an Idaho tradition
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
A seminal sprawl fight ends in compromise
A historic Arizona ranch will become a retirement community
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
Heard around the West
Redi Kilowatt has seen the light – and it’s a green one. Once the hyper-kinetic spokesbolt for the electric utility industry, Redi recently preached to the Los Angeles Times. Though still flashing a happy-face grin, these days Redi is decidedly cranky. The power mascot says he was forced to come out of retirement at age […]
Posted inJune 4, 2001: Tribal links
A sand-brown world
… and the tourists in the curio shop not knowing what to say for once in their lives, but feeling the ground rolling beneath them, experience something most of them won’t see in a lifetime, up on the shelf the kachina dolls, those little gods of beneficence who’ve stood there so long they’re mad about […]
Posted inJune 4, 2001: Tribal links
Takings legislation cracks Oregon’s green foundation
Rural landowners say government is regulating them to death
Posted inJune 4, 2001: Tribal links
Heard around the West
James Watt is positively basking in nostalgia these days. For those who don’t recall his bumpy years in Washington, D.C., Watt was the former Interior Department secretary under President Reagan, who pushed for energetic energy development on all public lands. When The Denver Post caught up with Watt recently, he was delighted to talk about […]
Posted inMay 21, 2001: Quenching the big thirst
Finding home
We were all outside watching the sunset from the casita, which had a high view of the city. From there, the “big picture” was not abstract. It was real, tangible, visible – we could just make out the Burger King sign towering beyond the border fence. The sun was blood red, and then the whole […]
Posted inMay 21, 2001: Quenching the big thirst
Heard around the West
Our hearts go out to that beloved icon of the Forest Service, Smokey Bear. Anxiously, perhaps, the big bear awaits his new makeover. Sure, he’ll still be pot-bellied, furry and sport a forest ranger hat. But it’s a safe bet he will no longer deliver the message: “Only you can prevent forest fires.” The spokesbear […]
Posted inMay 7, 2001: Back into the woods
Fruita draws the line against sprawl
Rural town takes a page from ritzy mountain enclaves
Posted inMay 7, 2001: Back into the woods
Heard around the West
Somewhat of a ham when it comes to boosting Idaho’s agriculture or timber industry, Idaho Sen. Larry Craig has obligingly posed for photos standing next to a large person peering out from a bulging potato costume. But his Web site, www.senate.gov/~craig/frontpage.htm, recently featured the beaming Republican senator showing off his perky six-month-old West Highland terrier. […]