Naturalist E.A. Preble, who bagged a nondescript mouse on the bank of an irrigation ditch near Loveland, Colo., in 1895, might be surprised at the ruckus he’s caused. The meadow jumping mouse named for him – a subspecies restricted to the foothills of Colorado’s Front Range – is now at the center of a controversy […]
The mouse that roared “Preble”
Posted inMarch 16, 1998: Olympic onslaught: Salt Lake City braces for the winter games
Idaho stubbornly remains what America used to be
In Coeur d’Alene, Aryan Nations’ leader Richard “I hate you” Butler and his merry band of racists make plans for a “One Hundred Man March” through the city, while the mayor wrings his hands and wonders what he should do. Kootenai County commissioners declare the county an English-only territory, then wonder why its citizens object. […]
Posted inMarch 16, 1998: Olympic onslaught: Salt Lake City braces for the winter games
Dressed for success
I can count on the fingers of one hand the new clothes I’ve bought in the past five years: insulated coveralls, underwear, felt liners for my snow boots, gloves. All the rest came from yard sales and the kind of thrift shops where you walk past the eight-track tapes and mismatched plastic plates on your […]
Posted inMarch 16, 1998: Olympic onslaught: Salt Lake City braces for the winter games
Heard around the West
Drenching rain, slip-sliding houses on the edge of eroding cliffs, not a glimpse of sun for weeks – blame the rotten weather on Al Nino. Drunks and the unruly frustrated do. But Nino, a retired Navy man in the Southern California county of San Luis Obispo, says he’s getting a little tired of complaining phone […]
Posted inMarch 16, 1998: Olympic onslaught: Salt Lake City braces for the winter games
Show me the science
It was the 1960s, and the signs plastered everywhere in western Colorado suggested that I “Ask a Friendly Native.” The “natives” were not the Utes – they were long gone. The signs referred to the Anglos who ran the gas stations and cafes scattered across the region’s 30,000 square miles of desert, forest and canyon. […]
Posted inMarch 16, 1998: Olympic onslaught: Salt Lake City braces for the winter games
Cousin to mad-cow disease hits deer, elk
As anybody who has followed the Oprah Winfrey beef libel trial knows, mad-cow disease has never been found in American cattle. Deer and elk, though, are another matter. Chronic wasting disease, a cousin to the mad-cow plague that decimated British cattle herds, has been identified in deer and elk in three Western states. Infected animals […]
Posted inMarch 16, 1998: Olympic onslaught: Salt Lake City braces for the winter games
The Park Service takes a hard look at itself
The portrait of the National Park Service that Richard West Sellars paints in his new book is not especially flattering: Entrusted by Americans to preserve natural wonders, the agency instead prefers to develop recreation and promote tourism. Such criticism is nothing new – writer Edward Abbey loved to rail against “industrial tourism” and the “National […]
Posted inMarch 16, 1998: Olympic onslaught: Salt Lake City braces for the winter games
Feds will re-examine rail service in the West
The U.S. Surface Transportation Board, the federal agency that approved the 1996 coupling of the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific railroads, may take another look at that decision. In approving the 36,000-mile system that connects the Great Lakes, the Mississippi Valley and the Gulf Coast of Texas to West Coast ports from Seattle to San […]
Posted inMarch 16, 1998: Olympic onslaught: Salt Lake City braces for the winter games
Lawmakers struggle to rewrite the Endangered Species Act
For six years, the federal Endangered Species Act has been on probation, limping along on a budget renewed in Congress every year while lawmakers try to come up with a new law that pleases conservationists and conservatives alike. What’s new this year is legislation introduced by Sen. Dirk Kempthorne, R-Idaho. Although no environmental group fully […]
Posted inMarch 16, 1998: Olympic onslaught: Salt Lake City braces for the winter games
Dear Friends
Congratulations one and all Our lead story about Utah’s coming Olympics was written by staffer Greg Hanscom, who has another reason to feel proud: Tara Thomas, whom he met while both were students at Middlebury College in Vermont, has agreed to marry him this fall. Tara, from Baltimore, Md., is working on her master’s degree […]
Posted inMarch 16, 1998: Olympic onslaught: Salt Lake City braces for the winter games
Can a ski town survive its moment of glory?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. PARK CITY, Utah – If it is true that the three keys to real estate are location, location, location, then this town is two-thirds of the way home. It is only a half-hour’s interstate drive east of Salt Lake City, with its airport, hotels […]
Posted inMarch 16, 1998: Olympic onslaught: Salt Lake City braces for the winter games
The games should belong to the people
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. John Cushing just started his fifth term as the mayor of Bountiful, and his first term as the president of the Utah League of Cities and Towns: John Cushing: “Since Utah was awarded the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, we have heard a great deal […]
Posted inMarch 16, 1998: Olympic onslaught: Salt Lake City braces for the winter games
Colorado refused to play
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. In 1972, four years before Colorado was to host the world’s biggest winter sports extravaganza, the state got cold feet. Businessmen and politicians had been working to lure the winter Olympics to Colorado since the 1950s. But when the Olympic flag arrived in Denver, […]
Posted inMarch 16, 1998: Olympic onslaught: Salt Lake City braces for the winter games
Does Utah know what’s coming?
Note: see end of this feature story for a list of three accompanying sidebar articles. In four years, thousands of reporters and spectators will crowd hillsides and stadiums around Salt Lake City to watch the world’s top skiers, skaters, bobsledders and other athletes muscle for medals in the world’s biggest winter sporting event. Competition will […]
Posted inMarch 16, 1998: Olympic onslaught: Salt Lake City braces for the winter games
Olympic onslaught: Salt Lake City braces for the winter games
Note: this front-page editor’s note introduces this issue’s feature story. If Salt Lake City were held to the same standards as cigarette manufacturers, there would be warning signs on its inbound roads: “Chaos Ahead!” and “Allow yourself an extra four hours!” Residents joke that the fastest way to get from suburban Salt Lake to the […]
Posted inMarch 2, 1998: Wild horses: Do they belong in the West?
Mineral Policy Center’s response to David Rockland
Dear HCN, David Rockland invokes a rather confusing logic in his essay “Is our love of the West destroying Chile?” (HCN, 1/19/98). Just because Americans wish to protect their local communities from the environmental impacts of bad mining does not imply, as Rockland asserts, they wish to “export environmental problems’ to other countries. Nor are […]
Posted inMarch 2, 1998: Wild horses: Do they belong in the West?
Let’s not blame each other
Dear HCN, As an activist and a writer, I am dismayed by the acrimony being flung by enviros toward enviros around the West regarding the recent decision by Judge Downes in the wolf reintroduction case. The editorial in The New York Times by Thomas McNamee, as well as pieces appearing in High County News, raise […]
Posted inMarch 2, 1998: Wild horses: Do they belong in the West?
Forest Stewardship Council
Since 1993, the Forest Stewardship Council has been promoting earth-friendly forest products. The Council’s logo is a “green” label for furniture, guitars, hardwood floors and other products that have been produced with care for communities and the environment. From March 11-13, the Forest Stewardship Council will make its debut in the Rockies, touring Boise, Salt […]
Posted inMarch 2, 1998: Wild horses: Do they belong in the West?
1998 Southwest Earth Studies Program
College students are invited to apply to the 1998 Southwest Earth Studies Program at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colo. The eight-week summer program, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, is “a research program into the nature of research itself,” using the problem of acid mine drainage in the nearby San Juan Mountains to investigate […]
Posted inMarch 2, 1998: Wild horses: Do they belong in the West?
Club 20
Club 20, a regional chamber of commerce for Colorado’s Western Slope, will hold its 46th annual meeting March 6-7 in Grand Junction. Guest speakers and panelists include Rep. Scott McInnis, R, Louisiana-Pacific CEO Mark Suwyn, HCN publisher Ed Marston, and Rick O’Donnell, executive director of the Center for the New West. Panel discussions will address […]