Would John Muir recognize the Yosemite of today? What would he think of his beloved “hospitable, Godful wilderness,” where he roamed freely, built campfires anywhere he pleased and traveled with his unleashed dog, Carlo? To explore questions like that, writer Geraldine Vale and geographer Thomas Vale retraced the route that Muir described over a century […]
In the footsteps of Muir
Posted inJuly 6, 1998: Riding the Wyoming 'brand'
The illustrated adventures of bison
What weighs 4 pounds, boasts stunning watercolor illustrations of wildlife, and purports to regulate brucellosis in free-ranging bison? The new 400-page Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Interagency Bison Management Plan for the State of Montana and Yellowstone National Park, of course. The statement, a collaboration by the National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service, […]
Posted inJuly 6, 1998: Riding the Wyoming 'brand'
Ordering chicken for a whole town
The city of Artesia, N.M., could get more than it asked for when NUCHIK Inc. builds one of the biggest chicken processing plants in the West in the year 2000. The plant will slaughter 1.25 million chickens a week and create 900 new jobs in the town of 12,000. NUCHIK supporters hope the chicken plant […]
Posted inJuly 6, 1998: Riding the Wyoming 'brand'
Should a highway run through it?
Utah residents are not sure they can live with Gov. Michael Leavitt’s legacy. In 1995, Leavitt proposed a 120-mile “Legacy Highway,” running along the booming Wasatch Front (HCN, 3/16/98). The four-lane highway would help shuttle commuters through the Salt Lake valley, and run right along the shore of the Great Salt Lake. The proposal sparked […]
Posted inJuly 6, 1998: Riding the Wyoming 'brand'
Victory for the tortoise
Though notoriously slow to the finish line, the desert tortoise came out ahead this April in the first endangered-species act case to be prosecuted in Idaho in 15 years. Russell G. Jones of Star, Idaho, pleaded guilty to unlawful possession of a protected species under federal law and was fined $1,000 and ordered to serve […]
Posted inJuly 6, 1998: Riding the Wyoming 'brand'
Nuclear waste hits another roadblock
Just one week before the U.S. Department of Energy planned to ship radioactive trash to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., state environmental regulators gave the agency another red light. In May, the federal Environmental Protection Agency approved shipping to the site waste that would include garbage, clothing, laboratory equipment and other […]
Posted inJuly 6, 1998: Riding the Wyoming 'brand'
The Wayward West
Each year Wildlife Services “controls’ about 100,000 lions, coyotes and bears, mostly by killing them. On June 23, the federal agency lost support when the House of Representatives voted 229-193 to cut $10 million from its $20 million budget. A day later, however, after the livestock industry mounted an intense lobbying effort, the $10 million […]
Posted inJuly 6, 1998: Riding the Wyoming 'brand'
Mexican subculture grows beneath Colorado’s mountains
Just west of Aspen, Colo., hungry souls line the counter at Taqueria El Nopal. The polka beat of Ranchero music and smell of grease fill the small concrete interior. A heavily mustached cook dishes up beef, chicken, tongue, cheek and intestine tacos. A typical Monday. If it were not for the snow-topped mountains outside – […]
Posted inJuly 6, 1998: Riding the Wyoming 'brand'
Heard around the West
Hungry bears breaking into cars and cabins at Yosemite National Park in California are racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage. Bears have learned it’s easy to get into the driver’s seat if they “place their claws on top of car doors and peel them off,” reports AP. Relocating the black bears hasn’t […]
Posted inJuly 6, 1998: Riding the Wyoming 'brand'
Glacier’s road is going to the dogs
WEST GLACIER, Mont. – The first director of the National Park Service, Stephen T. Mather, saw the Going-to-the-Sun road as a way to hold Glacier National Park together. Mather proposed building the road in the early 1920s to lure a “great flow of tourist gold” to remote northern Montana, and to convince miners and loggers […]
Posted inJuly 6, 1998: Riding the Wyoming 'brand'
A writer rouses Flagstaff with guerrilla journalism
Twilight settles around the cabin a few miles outside of Flagstaff, Ariz., where Mary Sojourner lives with her seven cats, her wood stove and the tools of her trade – a new Mac Performa computer, a laser color printer, a telephone and fax machine. Sojourner – her chosen name – makes her living from writing. […]
Posted inJuly 6, 1998: Riding the Wyoming 'brand'
A mountain town locks out gated communities
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. – Jim Mehen’s first gated golf community dropped into Flagstaff 10 years ago the way a fine putt drops into a cup on a lush green. But when the northern Arizona developer proposed another golf enclave last fall, it didn’t even make the fairway. Faced with strong public opposition, Mehen withdrew his plans […]
Posted inJuly 6, 1998: Riding the Wyoming 'brand'
A timber town rallies for roads
CASCADE, Idaho – The open-air protest was hastily organized, but Idaho Republican Rep. Helen Chenoweth found time to travel to this timber town of 900. “You’re the best environmentalists in the world,” she told 500 cheering people who had gathered to close the road through town with logging trucks and send a message to the […]
Posted inJuly 6, 1998: Riding the Wyoming 'brand'
Judges get FREE lessons on property rights
The Montana resorts around Yellowstone National Park are a long way from Washington, D.C., Cleveland, or even Denver, and that, as much as a thirst for knowledge, may be what has attracted about 180 federal judges since 1992 to seminars on property rights and environmental issues. These aren’t just any federal judges. These are the […]
Posted inJuly 6, 1998: Riding the Wyoming 'brand'
Begging bears are back in Idaho
REXBURG, Idaho – A cinnamon-colored bear ambles over to the green GMC camper truck, sniffs the tires and stands up on his hind legs. The 400-pound predator paws at the hood and laps at the bug-spattered windshield, behind which sits a giddy young family of four packed on the truck’s bench seat. They’re not in […]
Posted inJuly 6, 1998: Riding the Wyoming 'brand'
Dear Friends
Skipping an issue … There will be no July 20, 1998, issue of High Country News. Twice a year, HCN skips an issue so that staff can skip town, or at least avoid the office. The next issue will be dated Aug. 3, 1998. A day in the life … It is the week before […]
Posted inJuly 6, 1998: Riding the Wyoming 'brand'
Democrats struggle to regain a foothold
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. I remembered it as always the biggest rally before the general election, over at the Slovenski Dom, the Slovene lodge’s meeting home in my hometown of Rock Springs. Democrats from Sweetwater County, the party’s big, reliable stronghold in Wyoming, showed up to drink beer, […]
Posted inJuly 6, 1998: Riding the Wyoming 'brand'
Riding the Wyoming ‘brand’
Editor’s note: A year ago, High Country News carried a lead article by Wyoming journalist Paul Krza (pronounced Cur-zay) titled, “While the New West booms, Wyoming mines, drills … and languishes.” The theme of his story was that an alliance between the state’s ranchers and minerals-energy industry had turned Wyoming into a low-tax, low-wage, anti-environmental […]
Posted inJune 22, 1998: Western water: Why it's dirty and in short supply
It is cruel to fool a fish
Dear HCN, Ted Williams in his essay on fishing said that “What so offends the animal-rights crowd about catch-and-release is that there can be no motive other than fun” (HCN, 5/25/98). This statement, while true, only gives half of the reason. The other is much more important and severe. When a fish is hooked and […]
Posted inJune 22, 1998: Western water: Why it's dirty and in short supply
The same beast stalks the West
Dear HCN, Thanks for Jon Margolis’ piece exposing the West’s new menace (HCN, 4/27/98); for far too long, the recreation/tourism industry has been treated with kid gloves, wrongly presumed environmentally benign. Yet, while I applaud questioning the motives of the American Recreation Coalition, there is hidden in Margolis’ analysis a seriously flawed and potentially destructive […]