This summer, every town big enough to boast a high school, and more than a few that have trouble keeping a post office in business, hosted a festival. Even though these small-town celebrations go by different names – Wild West Days, Gold Rush Days, Pioneer Weekend, Founders’ Day, Old West Festival – they hold much […]
Communities
Posted inAugust 30, 1999: Who's stopping sprawl?
In the new West, we’re all tourists
In Wyoming, they say, “We don’t want to become like Jackson.” In Colorado, “We don’t want to become like Aspen.” In Utah, more fervently, “We don’t want to become another Moab.” Yet these same people never say, “I don’t want to be a Julia Roberts or Brad Pitt.” Hal K. Rothman, who is a history […]
Posted inAugust 16, 1999: Standing up for the underdog
Taylor Ranch sells
A land deal in southern Colorado has added another chapter to the tumultuous history of the Taylor Ranch. In the final days of July, owner Zachary Taylor sold the final 54,000 acres of the ranch to Western Properties Investors for $13 million. The ranch has been embroiled in a bitter land dispute since 1960, when […]
Posted inAugust 16, 1999: Standing up for the underdog
Making the land pay
Farmers and ranchers can supplement their incomes by putting tourists to work as “hands’ and allowing camping and hiking. That’s a way to make land pay and stave off selling out to developers, according to a new report about protecting wildlife habitat around Yellowstone National Park. The Greater Yellowstone Coalition, the Environmental Defense Fund and […]
Posted inJuly 5, 1999: The new faces of the West
Free market solutions to environmental problems
The Political Economy Research Center offers fellowships to graduate and law students interested in free market solutions to environmental problems. Three-month fellowships offer a monthly stipend of $1,200; applications are due July 15. Contact Clay J. Landry, PERC, 502 S. 19th Ave., Ste. 211, Bozeman, MT 59718 (406/587-9591); www.perc.org/students.htm. This article appeared in the print […]
Posted inJuly 5, 1999: The new faces of the West
‘Over the River’ not yet through the woods
Controversy and art often go hand in hand, and the proposed “Over The River” project in central Colorado is no exception. In this case, it’s the medium rather than the messagethat has people up in arms. The artists, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, who use only single names, are known for large-scale temporary exhibits spanning natural or […]
Posted inJuly 5, 1999: The new faces of the West
The new faces of the West
Note: this front-page essay introduces this issue’s feature stories. Now that small towns are disappearing from America, we visit Disney theme parks designed to remind us of them. Or we crowd into the first small town we can find and set about changing it into the suburb we came from. This is the last of […]
Posted inJuly 5, 1999: The new faces of the West
Out of the fields: South Idaho’s Hispanics create acommunity
Note: a sidebar article, “Inspired by Cesar Chavez,” accompanies this feature story. “We did not cross the border, the border crossed us.” –Erasmo Gamboa CALDWELL, Idaho – The front room of Manuel Garcia’s tiny apartment at the Farmway Village labor camp resembles a flea-market booth. Stacked from floor to ceiling are toys, dolls, blankets, model […]
Posted inJuly 5, 1999: The new faces of the West
Inspired by Cesar Chavez
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories. Maria Gonzales Mabbutt nurses her four-month-old daughter Marisa in her Canyon County home while she tells her story. She is 43 and grew up as many Hispanics in her generation did: migrating. From the Rio Grande Valley town of Elsa, Texas, Mabbutt […]
Posted inJuly 5, 1999: The new faces of the West
Who loses when a city neighborhood goes upscale?
PORTLAND, Ore. – In Northeast Portland, you can get culture shock just by crossing the street. Near the corner of Alberta Street and 28th Avenue, a no-frills tacqueria called La Sirenita sells fish tacos to a long line of customers for little more than a dollar apiece. On the other side of Alberta, Bernie’s Southern […]
Posted inJuly 5, 1999: The new faces of the West
Low-paid service workers get squeezed in a booming Montana resort town
WHITEFISH, Mont. – After working his $7-an-hour job at the Grouse Mountain Lodge, Jerry Wheeler doesn’t hang out in this picturesque town in western Montana. He drives 20 miles south to a modest home on the outskirts of Kalispell, the mercantile center of the Flathead Valley. Wheeler says he is one of the few Grouse […]
Posted inJuly 5, 1999: The new faces of the West
Seeking justice for all on the Colorado Plateau
Charles Wilkinson’s “Fire on the Plateau …” is a tribute to the land and people of the Colorado Plateau, especially the tribes
Posted inJune 21, 1999: The disappearing farm
Dreaming the prairie back to life
Even though the second-highest point in North Dakota lies just a few miles from the dwindling town of Regent, you probably wouldn’t know that if you saw it. At 3,468 feet, Black Butte rises from rolling wheat fields like a bump under a rug. But to Gary Greff it looks like the ideal spot for […]
Posted inJune 21, 1999: The disappearing farm
Cattlemen make use of a conservation tool
GUNNISON, Colo. – Frost gilds the branches of the elder and cottonwood trees bordering the Redden family’s pastureland as Brett Redden climbs into a tractor at dawn and delivers hay to 300 cattle. Then he goes to his “regular” job with the fire and rescue crew at Gunnison Airport. Some months he’ll pick up extra […]
Posted inJune 21, 1999: The disappearing farm
Can poverty protect the last, best place?
All who care about the non-metropolitan West should be grateful to Montanans. Within the generous confines of that 145,000 square-mile state, they are asking, in the closing days of the 20th century, whether the good life can be disconnected from the economy. They are testing whether a place that in 50 years has plunged from […]
Posted inJune 7, 1999: Mining the past
Tragedy on the border
Charles Bowden’s recent book Juarez: The Laboratory of Our Future chronicled, in vivid words and photographs, the violent restlessness of sprawling Ciudad Juarez (HCN, 9/14/98). Among the most horrifying, and unforgettable, images were those of the bodies of several young women, all murdered on their way home from low-paying jobs at the U.S.-owned factories on […]
Posted inJune 7, 1999: Mining the past
A park all their own
HOLBROOK, Ariz. – When seasoned businessman Marvin Hatch bought a northern Arizona ranch, he and business partner Terrence “Shorty” Reidhead knew the land would yield more than just hamburger. The 60,000-acre, $3.3 million Paulsell Ranch is littered with Indian ruins, artifacts and petroglyphs. The ranch’s resources are so important that its neighbor, Petrified Forest National […]
Posted inJune 7, 1999: Mining the past
‘Petroglyph police’ try to save the art of the ancients
ZION NATIONAL PARK, Utah – A prehistoric petroglyph, chipped out of red sandstone to resemble a fat sheep, contends with a crude contemporary scrawl about a foot away. The scrawl looks roughly like a circle, scratched out with a sharp stick – the mark of an unsupervised child, or a thoughtless adult. When Sharon and […]
Posted inMay 24, 1999: The last weird place
Settlement reached in Tahoe takings case
In 1989, Bernadine Suitum had planned to build a retirement home on a plot of land near Lake Tahoe (HCN, 7/7/97). But instead of breaking ground, Suitum found herself deep in a ferocious legal battle with the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, the bistate office charged with overseeing development around the lake. Now, a decade later, […]
Posted inMay 24, 1999: The last weird place
Not just sheepherders
A Travel Guide to Basque America – Families, Feasts and Festivals, by journalist Nancy Zubiri, is a passionate and well-researched guide to the Great Basin country of the West. Zubiri traces Basque culture from its origins in the Pyrenees to strongholds today in southern Idaho, northern Nevada and California’s Central Valley and Sierra Nevada. Along […]