Note: a sidebar article titled “Surrounded by dogs, bikers, developers” accompanies this feature story. RIFLE, Colo. – Logging is a touchy subject with Kent Strong, owner of K & K Lumber near this Colorado River Valley town 70 miles west of the ski resort at Aspen. Ask about business and he says, “There’s no logging […]
Communities
Posted inApril 27, 1998: The old West is going under
Surrounded by dogs, bikers, developers
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories. RIFLE, Colo. – Jim Snyder wants to give a piece of his mind to every driver hurtling down Interstate 70 past his ranch seven miles east of this town. He wants to tell them that they are driving over what was some […]
Posted inApril 13, 1998: Oil clashes with elk in the Book Cliffs
A road to ruins?
New Mexico Republican Sen. Pete Domenici is trying to pave the way for a six-lane highway through the Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque (HCN, 1/20/97). In March, Domenici attached a rider to an emergency appropriations bill that allows the city to extend the Paseo del Norte road through the 8.5-acre midsection of the national monument […]
Posted inApril 13, 1998: Oil clashes with elk in the Book Cliffs
Wyoming: The last tough place
There’s a Wyoming hunter I know who lucked out one year. He’s a big man, well over six feet, who commands a room without even opening his mouth. He’s also a mule man. I’ve never seen him ride anything else. He likes wild country where grizzlies outnumber men and that’s where he likes to hunt […]
Posted inMarch 30, 1998: A bare-knuckled trio goes after the Forest Service
20 years with the Arapaho
Often photographs of Native Americans stereotype them as victims of poverty or “beads and feathers’ powwow performers, says Lander, Wyo., photographer Sara Wiles. For that reason, she photographs Arapaho people in their everyday lives, both in moments of celebration and moments unadorned. “If I wanted to pick out pictures that made Arapaho tribal members … […]
Posted inMarch 30, 1998: A bare-knuckled trio goes after the Forest Service
The Four Corners celebrated in photos
Images From an Untamed Land, an exhibit by Moab, Utah, photographer Bruce Hucko, will be at the Anasazi Heritage Center in Dolores, Colo., until May 31. Hucko’s black-and-white pictures, along with excerpts from writers Gary Snyder, Simon Ortiz, Ann Walka and others, celebrate the Four Corners region. “Since I don’t disclose locations (of the photos), […]
Posted inMarch 30, 1998: A bare-knuckled trio goes after the Forest Service
The New West spawns a new kind of range war
DURANGO, Colo. – The lawyers outnumber the sheep in the Shenandoah sheep war. It started one morning about three years ago, when Edward and Adalou Dunne woke up to find eight sheep grazing in the yard next to theirs in Shenandoah, a subdivision of large lots where green pastures roll and dirt roads unwind in […]
Posted inMarch 16, 1998: Olympic onslaught: Salt Lake City braces for the winter games
Colorado refused to play
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. In 1972, four years before Colorado was to host the world’s biggest winter sports extravaganza, the state got cold feet. Businessmen and politicians had been working to lure the winter Olympics to Colorado since the 1950s. But when the Olympic flag arrived in Denver, […]
Posted inMarch 16, 1998: Olympic onslaught: Salt Lake City braces for the winter games
The games should belong to the people
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. John Cushing just started his fifth term as the mayor of Bountiful, and his first term as the president of the Utah League of Cities and Towns: John Cushing: “Since Utah was awarded the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, we have heard a great deal […]
Posted inMarch 16, 1998: Olympic onslaught: Salt Lake City braces for the winter games
Can a ski town survive its moment of glory?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. PARK CITY, Utah – If it is true that the three keys to real estate are location, location, location, then this town is two-thirds of the way home. It is only a half-hour’s interstate drive east of Salt Lake City, with its airport, hotels […]
Posted inMarch 16, 1998: Olympic onslaught: Salt Lake City braces for the winter games
Feds will re-examine rail service in the West
The U.S. Surface Transportation Board, the federal agency that approved the 1996 coupling of the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific railroads, may take another look at that decision. In approving the 36,000-mile system that connects the Great Lakes, the Mississippi Valley and the Gulf Coast of Texas to West Coast ports from Seattle to San […]
Posted inMarch 16, 1998: Olympic onslaught: Salt Lake City braces for the winter games
Dressed for success
I can count on the fingers of one hand the new clothes I’ve bought in the past five years: insulated coveralls, underwear, felt liners for my snow boots, gloves. All the rest came from yard sales and the kind of thrift shops where you walk past the eight-track tapes and mismatched plastic plates on your […]
Posted inMarch 16, 1998: Olympic onslaught: Salt Lake City braces for the winter games
Idaho stubbornly remains what America used to be
In Coeur d’Alene, Aryan Nations’ leader Richard “I hate you” Butler and his merry band of racists make plans for a “One Hundred Man March” through the city, while the mayor wrings his hands and wonders what he should do. Kootenai County commissioners declare the county an English-only territory, then wonder why its citizens object. […]
Posted inMarch 16, 1998: Olympic onslaught: Salt Lake City braces for the winter games
Olympic onslaught: Salt Lake City braces for the winter games
Note: this front-page editor’s note introduces this issue’s feature story. If Salt Lake City were held to the same standards as cigarette manufacturers, there would be warning signs on its inbound roads: “Chaos Ahead!” and “Allow yourself an extra four hours!” Residents joke that the fastest way to get from suburban Salt Lake to the […]
Posted inMarch 16, 1998: Olympic onslaught: Salt Lake City braces for the winter games
Does Utah know what’s coming?
Note: see end of this feature story for a list of three accompanying sidebar articles. In four years, thousands of reporters and spectators will crowd hillsides and stadiums around Salt Lake City to watch the world’s top skiers, skaters, bobsledders and other athletes muscle for medals in the world’s biggest winter sporting event. Competition will […]
Posted inMarch 2, 1998: Wild horses: Do they belong in the West?
Tribes and a university improve ties
Northwest Indian tribes have an ally in Washington State University, a supporter of Native American studies since 1970. Last November, 10 tribes and the university set up an advisory board to cooperate on education and research issues, such as saving Pacific Northwest salmon, formerly a critical part of many tribal cultures. The agreement creates “a […]
Posted inMarch 2, 1998: Wild horses: Do they belong in the West?
A conservation first for Arizona
SANTA CRUZ COUNTY, Ariz. – Travelers often gasp when they reach the crest of Forest Road 58 in the Patagonia Mountains and see the San Rafael Valley spreading below to Mexico. The valley, where the musical Oklahoma was filmed years ago, is a wide bowl of grassland and gentle ridges, one of the most unbroken […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 1998: Private rights vs. public lands
From orchards to Philadelphia
Utahns who live in the booming Salt Lake City area need to manage growth now, says Baseline Scenario, a study by the nonprofit Utah Quality Growth Partnership. The partnership is a coalition of government, civic and business leaders concerned about urban sprawl in a 10-county area, including Salt Lake City. In the 1960s and “70s, […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 1998: Looking at dams in a new way
A Better West?
The Next West’s essayists tell us that natural-resource management agencies have failed to protect either public lands or local communities from the damage done by extractive industries; what’s more, Western communities still remain dependent on federal handouts. But the writers do more than carp. Editors Donald Snow and John Baden also supply alternatives – a […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 1998: Looking at dams in a new way
Use this book to get under the West’s skin
There is nothing historian Patricia Nelson Limerick dislikes more than the word frontier when used to describe the “advance of civilization” across the arid, lightly populated 19th century American West. She built her early career debunking the notion that the West was once an empty land settled by brave white men bearing democracy. Nevertheless, the […]