In the late 1980s, the city and county of Denver chose to look away from a deteriorating public school system, dirty air, traffic jams and inadequate public transportation, to pour $10 billion into 53 square miles of prairie out toward Kansas. As this special issue shows, the decision to build Denver International Airport was made […]
Essays
Posted inDecember 26, 1994: Albuquerque learns it really is a desert town
Easy does it: A sport to make your blood run slow
Even a pudgy mammal like myself knows better than to hibernate all winter, but choosing a winter sport is tricky. Downhill skiing is out; standing at the top of a steep hill with slippery little boards strapped to my feet gives me the fantods. This spell-checker doesn’t know that word, but I do. Cross-country skiing […]
Posted inDecember 26, 1994: Albuquerque learns it really is a desert town
We can’t save the land without first saving the West
Once a month I spend several hours with what I affectionately call my “wise-use” group. It’s not really a wise-use group but at first glance it resembles one. Members include the six county commissioners from Delta and Montrose counties here in western Colorado, a rancher, a timber mill employee, a coal miner, a banker, and […]
Posted inDecember 12, 1994: Shrink to fit
He felt the earth move when scientists nuked western Colorado
Twenty-five years ago Americans walked on the moon for the first time, and a federal agency set off an atomic bomb 8,426 feet underground in rural western Colorado. I was there at 3 p.m. on Sept. 10, 1969, a stowaway on the surface, you might say, when our government detonated the 43-kiloton bomb. It released […]
Posted inNovember 28, 1994: Beauty eludes the beast
Victory in Idaho: Canyon lovers defeat the military
The Air Force’s decision Oct. 6 to back off on building a new bombing range in the Owyhee canyonlands is a victory – and therefore shocking. Who would have thought that a coalition of local and national environmentalists, hunting groups and a few members of Congress could stop the military and Idaho’s forceful Gov. Cecil […]
Posted inNovember 14, 1994: Land grant universities
Three agricultural fallacies
The poet laureate of cultivated land challenges the ‘experts’
Posted inOctober 31, 1994: Water for the taking
If you hear the alarm, stop breathing
That doesn’t mean take a deep breath and hold it, says the man at the front of the room. It means STOP BREATHING. Pull on your gas mask, clear it of air to get a tight seal, and breathe through it until further notice. No one gets into the new Chemical Agent Disposal Facility at […]
Posted inOctober 31, 1994: Water for the taking
Wise-use power is overblown; the real threat is apathy
The 103rd Congress, which just wrapped up most of its business, was the worst environmental Congress since the first Earth Day 25 years ago. The conventional wisdom in the mainstream press is that this poor record comes from the diminished clout of the environmental movement and the rise of the wise-use movement. But is the […]
Posted inOctober 31, 1994: Water for the taking
Ripples grow when a dam dies
Four years after the defeat of Denver’s proposed Two Forks Dam, water development in Colorado has changed drastically. No longer is Denver the imperialistic leader of Front Range urban development. And no longer are environmentalists a fringe influence, forever fighting the good fight against dams and forever losing. The change is visible at three major […]
Posted inOctober 31, 1994: Water for the taking
Llamas: They expect YOU to know what you’re doing
DURANGO, Colo. – Juan stares at me with soulful brown eyes. We have spent six hours on high trails without seeing anyone else, descending finally to a timberline camp. Above us looms a cirque of tundra painted with the muted, water-color palette of high country autumn. Heavy trout rise just beyond casting range in this […]
Posted inOctober 17, 1994: As elections near, green hopes wilt
A creeping plague of crickets is hitched to everything in the world
There have been a few times when my love of nature has been put to the test: a July 4 snowstorm that trapped me in a tent for three days, a two-month bout with poison oak, a gnat attack in Utah. The Mormon cricket plague was no exception. The outbreak began in 1981 in Dinosaur […]
Posted inOctober 3, 1994: Subdividing the desert: Should there be a vote?
An agency icon at 50
CAPITAN, N.M. – Dear Boys and Girls: I’m writing this letter in a beautiful forest where Smokey Bear was born. I came because I’d read that he turned 50 years old in August, and I wanted to see his old stomping grounds. You won’t believe what I found. First of all, everything is named after […]
Posted inOctober 3, 1994: Subdividing the desert: Should there be a vote?
Burning nerve gas makes me ‘volatile’
For the past two years, I have actively opposed the construction of massive chemical weapons incinerators, both in Tooele County, Utah, where I live and at seven other sites across the nation where chemical weapons are stockpiled. As common folks like me (I’m a librarian) who get involved in controversial issues often say, “It’s been […]
Posted inOctober 3, 1994: Subdividing the desert: Should there be a vote?
The Southwest’s writers are terrified liars
One of the best modern novels about the real Southwest is in technicolor. It takes place in Prescott, Ariz.: A rodeo performer returns to his hometown, finds out that his brother is bulldozing the home ranch and slicing it up into ranchettes and subdivisions, that his dad is about to hit the road for prospecting […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 1994: Flame and blame in the Northwest
Love, hunger, money
I’ve just returned from the Spokane Tribe’s casino-and-gambling mecca at the western edge of our reservation, and I may have to enter the federal Witness Relocation Program because I have seen and know too much. I couldn’t believe it. I had gone there expecting to see a few slot machines and some sweaty small-town gamblers. […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 1994: Flame and blame in the Northwest
Bit by bit, government’s power is being eroded by wave of takings lawsuits
Takings in its newest formulation has taken the West by surprise. It shouldn’t have. Many reservoirs sit on taken ranches. Highways and railroads run across formerly private lands. Missile silos are embedded in once-private farms. These lands were taken by government or corporations through the power of eminent domain. The only question was how much […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 1994: Flame and blame in the Northwest
The Park Service didn’t put my son in a coma
The lead story in High Country News Aug. 22 concerned a hiking trip gone tragically awry near Zion National Park in Utah. Two men died, and the survivors filed a $23 million lawsuit against the Park Service. This essay responds to the question the story raised: “Whose fault?” My 24-year-old son’s accident in Yosemite National […]
Posted inSeptember 5, 1994: Can planning rein in a stampede?
The real bind is too many people everywhere
I suggest that one of the dominant environmental issues in the West’s future will be: How many people can live satisfied lives here? Population size is a factor of three variables: birth rates, death rates, and immigration. Birth, death and territory. Can any other issue cover such deep atavistic feelings? The issue will divide friends […]
Posted inSeptember 5, 1994: Can planning rein in a stampede?
Towns angling for tourism should beware of the great white shark
MOAB, Utah – The simplest way to describe what happened in Grand County is to say that, in 1986, our resilient community leaders got in their rowboat and went fishing for a little tourism to revive and diversify our economy. They hooked a great white shark. This monster has swamped the boat and eaten the […]
Posted inSeptember 5, 1994: Can planning rein in a stampede?
This boom will end like all the others – in a deep, deep bust
In 1982 a plumber named Jeff Everett and I competed to see who was the greater fool. I won. The competition centered on a 1,000-square-foot building we owned at 124 Grand Avenue, on Paonia’s two-block-long main street. It had been home to Betsy’s and my first newspaper – North Fork Times; by 1982 it stood […]