LA JOYA, N.M. – Jim Catron, lawyer and history enthusiast, is sitting in his living room discussing the noble and inconvenienced Celt. He isn’t talking about modern-day Scotland or Ireland, however, which to his mind have degenerated into Socialist republics populated by barfly poets. He’s talking about real, live Celts. He’s talking about cowboys. Catron […]
Sagebrush Rebellion
Posted inNovember 22, 1999: Go tell it on the mountain
Nevadans drive out forest supervisor
RENO, Nev. – After enduring a year and a half of what she calls Nevada’s “fed bashing,” Gloria Flora couldn’t take it anymore. The supervisor of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, the largest national forest in the lower 48 states, submitted her resignation Nov. 8. But Flora didn’t go quietly. Instead, she used her resignation to […]
Posted inNovember 8, 1999: A new road for the public lands
The Forest Service sets off into uncharted territory
TARGHEE NATIONAL FOREST, Idaho – Jim Gerber is staring me in the eye and he doesn’t look happy. He’s tall and lean, wears his gray hair clipped in a buzz cut, and he’s angry. The U.S. Forest Service has dug itself into a hole, he says, and he’s hell-bent on digging the agency out, and […]
Posted inOctober 30, 1995: Nevada's ugly tug-of war
Nevada’s ugly tug-of-war
A visit to the heart of the Sagebrush Rebellion
Posted inOctober 16, 1995: In the heart of the New West, the sheep win one
To save a Utah canyon, a BLM ranger quits and turns activist
Floating past cottonwood trees and tamarisk just before dusk, Skip Edwards deftly keeps his raft within earshot of ours so he can pummel us with facts about the 1964 Wilderness Act. But around the next bend, the former Bureau of Land Management river ranger falls silent and points to a massive red and orange sandstone […]
Posted inMay 15, 1995: Dog and pony show about salmon and owls
Armed, crazy and lost in the Wild West
Back in December, I covered some Western militia meetings as part of a nationwide report on the militia movement. In the wake of recent events, those gatherings have taken on a more sinister glow. What struck me at the time was that every person I randomly interviewed was a recent transplant to the Northwest. It’s […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
Forest Service bombed in Nevada
A bomb blew out windows and ripped a hole in the wall of a Toiyabe Forest Service office in Carson City, Nev., in the early evening of March 30. No one was injured in the explosion, which scattered debris and damaged computer equipment in the office of District Ranger Guy Pence in downtown Carson City. […]
Posted inApril 3, 1995: The Great Basin: America's wasteland seeks a new identity
County commissioner courts bloodshed
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, The Great Basin: America’s wasteland seeks a new identity. Dick Carver barnstorms the West telling crowds of ranchers how he faced down an armed federal agent to open a road in the Toiyabe National Forest. “We’re going to bring the power of […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 1995: No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
Waaaaaaaaaaaahh! The West refuses to be weaned
RESERVE, N.M. – Ah, the West, where the spaces are wide open and the skies are big, where they know when to hold “em and when to fold “em, where the handclasp is a little stronger and the smile dwells a little longer and where, above all, men are men. Not really. In fact, the […]
Posted inDecember 26, 1994: Albuquerque learns it really is a desert town
Land-use plan is disemboweled
Kalispell, Mont. – Over the breakfast special at the Outlaw Inn, Steve Herbaly reflected on the joys of his job as director of planning for Flathead County. Only the night before, he and his staff had been called socialists, communists and general purveyors of the demise of America at a public hearing over the county’s […]
Posted inOctober 3, 1994: Subdividing the desert: Should there be a vote?
Ranchers arrested at wildlife refuge
The arrest of rancher Dwight Hammond for running cattle on a wildlife refuge provokes a wise-use backlash in Oregon.
Posted inSeptember 5, 1994: Can planning rein in a stampede?
‘Wise use’ plans abhor change
Note: this feature article is one of several in a special issue about growth and planning in the West. Cody, Wyo. – This county on the eastern border of Yellowstone National Park has been so sparsely settled, the prospect of a little more than 100 people moving in to work a gold mine helped set […]
Posted inJune 27, 1994: Home, home on the range ... where neo-Nazis and skinheads roam
Home, home on the range … where neo-Nazis and skinheads roam
John Trochman calls himself a “Christian Patriot” and defender of the American Constitution. The soft-spoken man with a Robert E. Lee beard is also a field general in the “Militia Of Montana,” a paramilitary survivalist organization formed to fight what it perceives as oppression by the federal government. The number one threat to freedom, Trochman […]
Posted inMay 16, 1994: Babbitt is trying to nationalize the BLM
A one-man Sagebrush Rebellion
A Nevada rancher refuses to pay more than $25,000 in fines to the BLM.