A rural electrification convention symbolizes the forces that vigorous, progressive elements must overcome if the countryside is to move forward again. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/22.6/download-entire-issue
Ed Marston
Posted inMarch 12, 1990: Bucking tradition
The West’s real cattle heritage: Damaged land and political paralysis
It has taken more than a century for livestock grazing on public lands in the West to reach maximum pain and minimum profit. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/22.5/download-entire-issue
Posted inJanuary 1, 1990: The decline of the West's made-in-Washington economy continues
The decline of the West’s made-in-Washington economy continues
What sense are we to make of the inland West’s last 10 years? And what possible futures can we imagine for the 1990s and beyond, based on our interpretation of the 1980s? Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/22.1/download-entire-issue
Posted inDecember 4, 1989: The West's fouled waters, Part II: The new reclamation
Water enters its age of reform
The drastic decline of the West’s natural resource economy and the failings of conventional water development have created a climate for change. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/21.23/download-entire-issue
Posted inNovember 20, 1989: The West's fouled waters, Part I: Billions for quantity, but not a penny for quality
The West’s right to pollute shall never be denied
The West’s refusal to confront the issue of water quality will haunt the region. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/21.22/download-entire-issue
Posted inSeptember 25, 1989: Special issue: High Country News is 20
A tough weed takes root in the devastated West
The 20-year-long history of High Country News is romantic because it is tragic. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/21.18/download-entire-issue
Posted inJune 19, 1989: FBI changes four with attack on power line
Ecotage isn’t a solution, it’s part of the problem
The time for an ambiguous attitude toward ecotage passed with the announcement of the arrests in Arizona and the allegations of a plan to attack the Rocky Flats nuclear arsenal. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/21.12/download-entire-issue
Posted inApril 10, 1989: Drought, fire and cold ravage Yellowstone's elk
Why Denver’s concrete proposal got beat
Two Forks Dam is on the verge of veto because the economic currents are flowing against it, and the political currents are following. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/21.7/download-entire-issue
Posted inFebruary 27, 1989: Synthetic Fuels Revisited, Part I
The West is crippled by its resources
Writer Wallace Stegner has a rule of thumb: The more arid a state, the worse its congressional delegation. I have a corollary to that rule: The more a state is “blessed” with natural resources, tile worse off it will be economically, socially and politically. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/21.4/download-entire-issue
Posted inDecember 5, 1988: Oil industry rolls over opponents
Wallace Stegner: The transcendent Western writer
The geographic removal of Stegner from the inland Western landscape he helps us see says a great deal about the past state of this region. But we do not yet know whether the forces that led him out of the region are artifacts or persisting conditions. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/20.23/download-entire-issue
Posted inSeptember 26, 1988: The bust in agriculture and mining
Global economy turns ‘lite’
The rural West believes all wealth comes out of the ground as food, as logs or as mined ore. Now comes noted writer Peter F. Drucker to say that the land’s commodities are increasingly irrelevant to the production of wealth. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/20.18/download-entire-issue
Posted inSeptember 26, 1988: The bust in agriculture and mining
The West lacks social glue
Despite its posturing as the helpless colonial victim of powerful corporations and the federal government, the West isn’t so much weak as it is passive. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/20.18/download-entire-issue
Posted inSeptember 12, 1988: The Reopening of the Western Frontier, Part 1
The rural West: An artifact of the 19th century
This essay examines the blend of economic and social defenses that has kept the West on its own track for the past century. To read this article, click the “View a PDF from the original” link below, or download the entire issue: http://www.hcn.org/issues/20.17/download-entire-issue This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the […]
Posted inSeptember 12, 1988: The Reopening of the Western Frontier, Part 1
The reopening of the Western Frontier
Thanks to a mixture of geography, climate and natural resources, the rural West became the domain of a particular way of life that has lasted for 100 years. But today its economies are in retreat, and the Western frontier is reopening. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/20.17/download-entire-issue
Posted inJuly 18, 1988: Can nuclear waste be salted away?
O’Toole is the Adam Smith of forest economics
O’Toole has done all of us, including the Forest Service, a great favor. His genius and hard work have shown us that the national forests are governed by a welter of laws whose purpose and workings are exactly the same as those of the 1872 Mining Law. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/20.13/download-entire-issue
Posted inMay 9, 1988: Two Forks Dam: Push comes to shove
Two Forks will unite Colorado
From the outside, to a casual observer, Two Forks is inexplicable. From the inside, Two Forks is the only solution to the Denver metro area’s — and the West’s — dilemma that existing leadership can conceive of. Understand Two Forks, and understand the West. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/20.9/download-entire-issue
Posted inMarch 28, 1988: Off-road vehicles and the public's land
Exxon tangles with Wyoming over taxes
Wyoming, already hard-hit by the long decline in oil and gas prices and exploration, is further strapped without the taxes it expected from Exxon’s LaBarge project. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/20.6/download-entire-issue
Posted inOctober 26, 1987: Ski industry collides with the big game industry
The Imperial Valley sits down with the upper basin
It may not have been historic, but it was certainly startling to find several directors and staff members of California’s Imperial Irrigation District at a recent meeting with the most knowledgeable water experts, attorneys and even politicians from the upper basin states of the Colorado River. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/19.20/download-entire-issue
Posted inAugust 31, 1987: Range war in South Dakota
Yet another unneeded power plant starts generating
The Intermountain Power Project, the latest in a series of large power plants in the Southwest that keep California cities lighted, fired up this summer. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/19.16/download-entire-issue
Posted inAugust 17, 1987: Hoover Dam, 1990s version: The Superconducting Collider
In search of a few long levers
Environmentalists should look beyond the regulate-litigate approach and consider things like superconductivity, which could have substantial long-term environmental benefits. Download entire issue to view this article: http://www.hcn.org/issues/19.15/download-entire-issue