Overstaying their welcome? A hot springs near a town of 200 in southwestern New Mexico was a popular picnicking and swimming area for locals before a horde of unwelcome guests arrived. Now, campers, vans and tents colonize the area near Glenwood for weeks at a time and many of the town’s residents call it an […]
Communities
Posted inMay 15, 1995: Dog and pony show about salmon and owls
Critics attack a snow job in Utah
Even though Salt Lake City is nearing the end of a four-year, privately financed, $7 million quest to host the Winter Olympic Games for 2002, the subject has barely surfaced in Utah. Yet a decision is imminent: On June 16 the International Olympic Committee will select from four cities, and Salt Lake and Quebec appear […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
A last laugh
A Last Laugh Although environmentalists don’t have much to laugh about these days, Orlo, a Portland, Ore.-based environmental education group, wants to help lighten the mood. Its free exhibition of environmental cartoons called “The Last Laugh” is now showing at The Art Gym on Marylhurst College campus until May 20, featuring more than 150 editorial […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
A place of one’s own
A PLACE OF ONE’S OWN Are you thinking of buying a few acres of land to satisfy that pastoral desire? It may be more complicated than you think and not as much fun. That’s why Montana has published a brief booklet for small-acreage landowners called Tips on Land & Water Management for Small Farms and […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Land grants under the microscope
Scrutinized from all sides, they defend their turf and look for new ideas
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Trying to save two of the parts
Utah State University’s Lyle McNeal has spent 20 years reviving Churro sheep and Navajo agriculture
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
The gospel according to Wes Jackson
He believes we can grow food without chemicals, plows or erosion
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Starting a war at Ohio State
An untenured academic challenged his colleagues, farmers and students to think deeply about the land-grant mission
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
The Memo War: 1989-1993
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Starting a war at Ohio State. It is difficult to understand this article in this text rendition of the print original. Scanned copies of the original can be obtained from HCN. THE MEMO WAR 1989-1993 The Memo War started when Kamyar Enshayan wrote […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
An in-your-face range scientist
Note: this feature article is one of several in this special issue on the West’s land grant universities. LAS CRUCES, N.M. – In the wake of a drought that left the Southwestern range parched and degraded, scientists at New Mexico State University are busy: They’re figuring out which cattle breeds do the best in the […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Montana State University to local environmentalists: Get lost!
In an editorial in their monthly newsletter, which I’ll call the Big Sky Cow Pie, the Montana Stockgrowers Association branded me the “Ralph Nader of the West.” It was not meant as a compliment. I’m not exactly sure what set them off. Perhaps it was something I’d said while president of the National Wolf Growers […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Midnight subdividing creates unsanitary messes
DOäA ANA COUNTY, N.M. – Felix Ledesma stares out at the border shantytown where his family now lives and he shakes his head: “We moved here because New Mexico is the land of opportunity.” But Ledesma’s children play nearby in muddy pools, and around them rise an odd assortment of homes – cinder block shacks, […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
How does a boom feel?
How does a boom feel? Everyone who lives in the West is a transplant or has felt the impact of migration; few places have not experienced the region’s booms and busts. What makes urbanites pull up stakes, and how is the latest influx affecting Western land and communities? Academics such as geography professor Bill Riebsame […]
Posted inApril 3, 1995: The Great Basin: America's wasteland seeks a new identity
In their footprints
In their footprints When they mysteriously disappeared from the Southwest some 700 years ago, Anasazi Indians left behind intricate ruins and painted or pecked designs on rock as powerful testimony to their civilization. The desert also preserved a more fragile reminder – sandals woven from yucca leaves, in which the footprints of the wearers are […]
Posted inApril 3, 1995: The Great Basin: America's wasteland seeks a new identity
Learning from Las Vegas
Note: this feature article is one of several in this special issue about the Great Basin. Time magazine ran a cover story last year hailing Las Vegas as “The New All-American city.” The benediction signaled transformation for what, after all, had been considered Sin City only a few decades ago. In 1994, Las Vegas also […]
Posted inApril 3, 1995: The Great Basin: America's wasteland seeks a new identity
Salt Lake City: Is this still the place?
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Learning from Las Vegas, in a special issue about the Great Basin. “This is the place,” Brigham Young proclaimed when he first saw the Salt Lake Valley. To the Mormon leader it seemed a divinely inspired refuge for his persecuted Latter-day Saints. These […]
Posted inApril 3, 1995: The Great Basin: America's wasteland seeks a new identity
Elko is halfway home
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, Learning from Las Vegas, in a special issue about the Great Basin. With the help of its annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering, which brings up to 10,000 visitors here each January, Elko clings to its image as the last cowtown even as a gold […]
Posted inApril 3, 1995: The Great Basin: America's wasteland seeks a new identity
Unlikely reformer: Can sinful Las Vegas help change the West?
The way people gamble, it’s no wonder casino owners in Las Vegas build thousands of new hotel rooms a year. Take the man next to me at the roulette wheel in a run-down casino whose three-story marquee announced, “Where the locals play.” He was betting his Social Security check on a system based on his […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Not the whole story
Anti-environmental anger in northeastern Oregon captured headlines last year when Joseph residents hung in effigy activists Ric Bailey and Andy Kerr (HCN, 11/14/94). But according to a recent survey, 58 percent of the residents in the Hells Canyon region believe “the region’s natural environment should be protected even if this means that some people will […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Life among the ruins
A subdivision in southwestern Colorado encourages buyers to build homes closely around the ruins of ancient Anasazi dwellings. California developer Archie Hanson bought 1,200 acres of the archaeologically rich land after visiting the area just six miles east of Mesa Verde National Park, near Cortez, Colo. Now he’s offering 31 “Indian Camp” lots of about […]