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 […]
Communities
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 […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 1998: Looking at dams in a new way
We have no elders, we have no leaders
Being aggressively into kick-boxing and martial arts, of course I couldn’t resist responding to letter writer C.S. Heller’s taunt about my youth and his convenient implication that I am naive when I insist that the American bison be again allowed their inherent, native and ancient right to be a free-roaming, wild species (HCN, 10/27/97). Age […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 1998: Looking at dams in a new way
Iconoclast to the end: A New West son regards his father
It was my father who gave me the Clearwater River. It was an accidental gift delivered on a hot July day in Idaho. I can remember the van ride along the river on Highway 12; I was 14 and we were on our way to put in for a river trip down the Salmon River, […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 1998: Looking at dams in a new way
The bison are coming
In the December 1987 issue of Planning, we wrote what we thought was an innocuous article on land use in the Great Plains. The piece explored the state of the short-grass, semi-arid region between the 98th meridian and the Rockies, a sixth of the Lower 48. The most rural parts of the Plains faced long- […]
Posted inDecember 22, 1997: Gold Rush: Mining seeks to tighten its grip on the 'last, best place'
A rural county says no to pork
GUNNISON, Colo. – On a brilliant fall day in central Colorado, Federal Highway Administration engineer Mark Taylor offered Gunnison County commissioners $38 million. The money would pay to reroute, widen and pave the road connecting the small town of Buena Vista, pop. 2,141, to the even smaller town of Almont, pop. 300. The 35-mile road […]
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
Patience runs out in San Luis
After more than four years of work, the Sangre de Cristo Land Grant Commission voted Oct. 27 to end negotiations with Zachary Taylor, owner of the Taylor Ranch near San Luis, Colo. The commission agreed to remain in existence in case Taylor ever makes a reasonable sales offer, but “the state is fed up,” said […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Rail merger brings delays, derailments
Last year’s merger between the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific railroads was supposed to create a 35,000-mile transportation system with greatly improved service west of the Mississippi River (HCN, 8/5/96). But shippers are complaining that they’re losing millions of dollars because of bad service from UP, now the nation’s largest railroad. Service is so bad […]
Posted inOctober 13, 1997: The land is still public, but it's no longer free
The more remote, the better
Residents of isolated Stehekin Valley, Wash., population 70, believe their community is frozen in time, and they want to keep it that way. On the northeast end of Lake Chelan, bordering North Cascades National Park and within the Lake Chelan Recreation Area, the town features a post office, hotel and bakery. But there are no […]
Posted inOctober 13, 1997: The land is still public, but it's no longer free
Leaning Into the Wind: Women Write from the Heart of the West
Whenever I fill out a form that asks me to list my occupation, I put down “farmer,” the same word I use when I’m asked my husband’s occupation. The following is a true story: The man reading the form says, “Your husband is a farmer?” “Yes, my husband and I are farmers,” I reply. “You […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
Keeping rural American rural
City sprawl has swallowed up rural communities; a revised edition of Saving America’s Countryside: A Guide to Rural Conservation shows how local action can stave off urbanization. Written by Samuel N. Stokes, A. Elizabeth Watson, and Shelley S. Mastran, the book offers everything from well-honed ideas for organizing residents to sample drafts of easements designed […]