Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. Jerry Freeman, owner of the tiny town of Nipton, population less than 50, is one of the few residents of the East Mojave poised to benefit from a tourist economy: Jerry Freeman: “I first came out here in the 1950s to stake some claims when […]
Communities
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
The Mojave National Preserve: 1.4 million acres of contradictions
Note: this story accompanies another, similar feature story in this issue. CIMA, Calif. – Like most of her neighbors, Irene Ausmus never wanted the East Mojave Desert to become a national preserve, let alone the national park that environmentalists first wanted. “We live out here because we don’t want people bothering us,” says the 64-year-old […]
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
This rancher wants to stay
Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. Although other ranchers in the preserve have said they might sell their land and grazing allotments to a land trust or foundation, Rob Blair says he won’t. His family first settled here in 1913, and he hopes that one of his three children will someday […]
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
Paying 1 percent for place
In the ski town of Crested Butte, Colo., purchases of everything from a rack of lamb to rock-climbing hardware will now go toward buying a piece of paradise. Thanks to the efforts of a local sporting goods store, businesses this month began offering a 1 percent surcharge on all purchases for the acquisition of open […]
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
Working the Watershed
Washington’s Willapa Alliance melds science, economic development and plenty of time to plot the restoration of a battered coastal ecosystem
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
A 1,000-year plan for Willapa Bay
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Alana Probst works for the nonprofit Ecotrust and looks for ways a community can create sustainable businesses. Alana Probst: “When I worked in Eugene, Ore., in the early ’80s, I learned the hard way that recruiting industry can be a nightmare. The whole city […]
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
A newsman’s overview of Willapa
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. For five years editor Matt Winters has followed the efforts of the nonprofit Willapa Alliance for the Chinook Observer, based in Long Beach, Wash. Matt Winters: “Economic development is long-term and hard to nail down sometimes. Groups like the Willapa Alliance can work for […]
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
Defender of fish
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Les Clark has fished the lower Columbia and Willapa Bay for 52 years. He is a third-generation gillnetter and his sons are the fourth. Les Clark: “When we first moved here, paper mills dumped everything in the Columbia River. It finally got so bad […]
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
An optimistic man
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Spencer Beebe is the founder of the nonprofit Ecotrust, based in Portland, Oregon. Spencer Beebe: “To think that we can destroy the planet is a kind of backhanded pride. It reflects an inflated sense of our own importance and a contempt for the power […]
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
A Chicago bank will try to invigorate Willapa Bay
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. After spending nearly two years in the early 1990s scouting Washington’s Willapa Bay for entrepreneurs with plausible ideas for sustainable businesses, Alana Probst of Ecotrust found more than a dozen. But few local financial institutions were willing to make high-risk loans, and the chances […]
Posted inMarch 3, 1997: Hunters close ranks, and minds
Big sky or big sprawl?
Montana, the state that rejected speed limits, is heading toward a lot more traffic. According to a recent report, the number of miles traveled by car in Montana grew twice as fast as population from 1970 to 1990 and is projected to double again by 2015. With 1.7 cars per licensed driver, Montana residents already […]
Posted inMarch 3, 1997: Hunters close ranks, and minds
Severed at the hip
Western lore often portrays rural communities adjacent to public lands as joined at the hip with the federal government. Many people assume that if federal land managers reduce logging or curtail mining on public land, the tax base of the neighboring communities will plummet. Not true, says a new report by the Wilderness Society. After […]
Posted inMarch 3, 1997: Hunters close ranks, and minds
Caretakers wanted
Taking care of other people’s property for a living is taking off, says Gary Dunn, publisher of Washington state’s eight-page newsletter, The Caretaker Gazette. The bimonthly newsletter, first printed in 1983, lists some 90 caretaking opportunities in the United States and nine foreign counties. Interest is equal on either side of the equation, Dunn says: […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
Lost and found
When last summer’s fires scorched more than 4,700 acres in Colorado’s Mesa Verde National Park, one of the park’s rare petroglyph panels, Battleship Rock, was damaged beyond repair. Vegetation surrounding the site burned so hot that the rock’s surface and its 1,000-year-old pecked designs fractured and flaked off. But the fire also revealed sites park […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
Planning begins at the ballot box
Even though Wyoming locals lost a lawsuit to stop an 18-hole golf course and 600 homes near the town of Big Horn, they took revenge: They ousted one of the county commissioners who had allowed the new development. The Wyoming Supreme Court ruling concerned the Powderhorn, a golf course resort that will be built outside […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Renegade county gets a makeover
For two years, the county commissioners in Chelan County, Wash., have led the state’s property-rights movement. They thumbed their noses at Washington’s Growth Management Act, challenged its planning requirements in court and even suffered economic sanctions for ignoring them (HCN, 6/10/96). But the county’s outlaw image changed dramatically when voters threw out one of the […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
INS raid leads to lawsuit
Three people who believe they were mistreated in an immigration raid in Jackson, Wyo., last summer have filed paperwork seeking more than $1.8 million in damages from three government agencies. The first is AgustÆn Perez, a legal alien from neighoring Driggs, Idaho, who alleges that two guns were held to his head during an Aug. […]
Posted inDecember 23, 1996: El Nuevo West
An 84-year-old postal veteran
The struggle by Red Lodge, Mont., that kept alive a downtown post office may be duplicated 150 miles away in Livingston, population 7,500. Recently, 1,500 Livingston residents signed a petition calling on Postal Service officials to forego a move to spacious new quarters and retain the 84-year-old post office in the heart of town. “It’s […]
Posted inDecember 23, 1996: El Nuevo West
‘They’re good workers. And they’re all we’ve got’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Kay Humann is the office manager at High Country Linen in Jackson, Wyo. Accustomed to running the computer and the phones in the front of the building, she worked in the hot, steamy laundry 16 hours a day for a week after the Aug. […]
Posted inDecember 23, 1996: El Nuevo West
‘I don’t want to live in a community of rich white people. It’s boring’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Filmmaker Shelley Weiss moved from Los Angeles to Oakley, Utah, nine years ago. An avid swimmer, she quickly became a regular at the Park City Racquet Club. Over the past few years, she has heard racist comments there about the growing number of Mexican […]