Years ago, I wrote a little essay that appeared in The Sun. The title of the essay was “Being Wrong.” I wrote about all the mistakes I had made in my life. I said I was tired of looking back and feeling embarrassed and angry with myself for having been so wrong in the past. […]
Communities
Posted inAugust 18, 1997: The West that was, and the West that can be
If a town is more dead than alive, it’s the Old West
ANACONDA, Mont. – The gravestones stand in ranks on the hills above this old smelter town, providing hard statistics. By the 1890s, when Anaconda was only a few years old, people of European descent were already dying here. McGinty, Deslauriers, Nitschke, Dadasovich and other names of the dead indicate epic journeys. One stone, for the […]
Posted inAugust 18, 1997: The West that was, and the West that can be
Jell-O and suicides
Note: in the print edition of this issue, this article appears as a sidebar to an essay, “If a town is more dead than alive, it’s the Old West.” Various statistics describe different aspects of the West today. For instance, Salt Lake City leads the nation in per capita Jell-O consumption, while Nevada leads in […]
Posted inJuly 7, 1997: While the New West booms, Wyoming mines, drills ... and languishes
Petroglyphs and pavement collide
A proposed road through Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque continues to be paved with controversy. The latest round features a standoff between Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and Pueblo Indian leaders. Domenici, who met recently with the Pueblos for the first time since proposing the bill in April, says the road would reduce traffic congestion around […]
Posted inJuly 7, 1997: While the New West booms, Wyoming mines, drills ... and languishes
The Bear Essential
Attention writers: The free magazine, The Bear Essential, is holding its first annual Edward Abbey short fiction contest, deadline Sept. 2. Editor Tom Webb tells us judges want unpublished “quality work with a Western environmental aspect” and that winners receive $100 to $500. For more information, write The Bear Essential, P.O. Box 10342, Portland, OR […]
Posted inJuly 7, 1997: While the New West booms, Wyoming mines, drills ... and languishes
Riches and Regrets
In 1990, Colorado voters approved limited-stakes casino gambling in the three old mining towns of Central City, Black Hawk and Cripple Creek. Riches and Regrets: Betting On Gambling in Two Colorado Mountain Towns explains why. Gambling was promoted as a way to save towns, but it became a way to shred communities. After gambling arrived, […]
Posted inJuly 7, 1997: While the New West booms, Wyoming mines, drills ... and languishes
While the New West booms, Wyoming mines, drills … and languishes
CASPER, Wyo. – In 1984 an ambitious young legislator from southwestern Wyoming made a startling statement. Ford Bussart was on everybody’s short list as Democratic candidate for governor in 1986. The Democrats, though a distinct minority in Wyoming, had held the governorship for 12 years under Ed Herschler, and they saw Bussart as his likely […]
Posted inJuly 7, 1997: While the New West booms, Wyoming mines, drills ... and languishes
Wyoming is “open for business”
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. That’s the theme pushed by Gov. Jim Geringer, a Republican elected in 1994. It’s been used before, and it hasn’t worked. Nor have these other themes: Wyoming is a good place to raise families; Wyoming has an educated workforce; companies will thrive in Wyoming […]
Posted inJuly 7, 1997: While the New West booms, Wyoming mines, drills ... and languishes
A Wyoming coal town comes of age
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. WRIGHT, Wyo. – Sometime this fall, a trickle of construction workers should begin arriving in this town of 1,300 tucked on the southern edge of Wyoming’s coal-rich Powder River Basin. By next summer, their ranks will swell to about 850, most living in temporary […]
Posted inJuly 7, 1997: While the New West booms, Wyoming mines, drills ... and languishes
Sensory deprivation on the High Plains
Note: this story is one of three feature stories in this issue about Wyoming’s boom and bust economy. I’m always searching for omens, like any fool. As we left Missoula, Mont., in 1995 for Campbell County, Wyo., and as our moving van came into the orbit of Gillette, I fiddled with the radio dial and […]
Posted inJuly 7, 1997: While the New West booms, Wyoming mines, drills ... and languishes
Taxing the wrong side of the tracks
Note: this story is one of three feature stories in this issue about Wyoming’s boom and bust economy. In every discussion about taxes in Wyoming, some ominous voice notes that mineral revenues are in decline. Sooner or later, the voice warns, the tax base is going to have to be diversified – code for shifting […]
Posted inJuly 7, 1997: While the New West booms, Wyoming mines, drills ... and languishes
A lot is at stake in Supreme Court case
INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. – There’s a vacant lot in this town that’s been discussed before the U.S. Supreme Court. The two-fifths-of-an-acre lot, a boggy tangle of willows and ponderosa pines beside narrow Mill Creek, is one of the few remaining undeveloped patches. Houses crowd around, all part of a subdivision built in the 1960s and […]
Posted inJune 23, 1997: On the trail of mining's corporate nomads
Did ranchers fire a university president?
When New Mexico State University’s president, J. Michael Orenduff, was fired last month, the university’s Board of Regents said it was because he had pushed the school’s athletic program $1 million in the red. Now it appears his removal may have been punishment for offending the state’s traditional ranching interests. The story is rooted in […]
Posted inJune 9, 1997: Chaos comes to Costilla County
Rising From Tradition
The work of nine Native American artists from Idaho, Oregon and Washington will be on display at the High Desert Museum in Bend, Ore., for the next nine months. The show, called Rising From Tradition: Contemporary Native Art from the Plateau, features traditional work such as coiled baskets and woven cornhusk belts and pouches, but […]
Posted inJune 9, 1997: Chaos comes to Costilla County
The road to no sprawl
It’s going to take more than a few isolated individuals to put the squeeze on suburban sprawl, according to Colorado Commons, a nonprofit think tank based in Longmont. With that in mind, the group brings together policymakers, environmentalists, developers and academics to address the state’s urban growth problems. They recently sent the first issue of […]
Posted inJune 9, 1997: Chaos comes to Costilla County
Lessons from a rampaging river
It’s obvious from news photos that the city of Grand Forks, N.D., will never be the same after this year’s cataclysmic flood and fire. What’s not so obvious in the scenes of washed-out and burned-out buildings is that the landscape is not all that has changed. Mike Jacobs, editor of the Grand Forks Herald, calls […]
Posted inJune 9, 1997: Chaos comes to Costilla County
Chaos comes to Costilla County
SAN LUIS, Colo. – For now, the mornings are quiet again in this oldest of Colorado towns. The air is clear, and the jagged Sangre de Cristo Mountains seem to leap from the 8,000-foot valley floor. But just a few weeks ago, this isolated small town, which boasts three restaurants, a gas station, church, bar […]
Posted inJune 9, 1997: Chaos comes to Costilla County
‘I saved Jack Taylor’s life’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Among other things, the mayor of San Luis, Colo., runs a bar he named after himself. Joe Espinoza: “Did you know I am the oldest mayor in Colorado and this is the oldest town in the state … how old do you think I […]
Posted inJune 9, 1997: Chaos comes to Costilla County
The last undiscovered place in Colorado
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Twenty minutes south of San Luis, Colo., large road signs tell you Wild Horse Mesa is nearby. Evan Melby is the owner of 25,000 acres here; his billboards announce you can buy a five-acre lot for $4,990, or $750 down and monthly payments of […]
Posted inMay 26, 1997: The sacred and profane collide in the West
For urban dropouts
John Clayton, who lived in the Boston area before moving to rural Montana, has written a no-nonsense book that could help disgruntled urbanites make an informed decision before hitting the highway. The title says it all: Small Town Bound: Your guide to small-town living, from determining if life in the country lane is for you, […]