The Missoulian, a Montana daily, ran an intriguing Help Wanted: “Sheepherder with miniumum of 30 days’ experience. Attends sheep grazing on open range, herds sheep using trained dogs. Guards flocks from predators and from eating poisonous plants … Food, housing, tools, supplies and equipment provided. Hours variable, on call 24 hours, 7 days … One […]
Heard Around the West
Posted inJune 26, 1995: Colorado's prison slayer
Xerox copiers and black helicopters
In early June, Congressman Scott McInnis, a Republican from Colorado, materialized at the Interior Department building in Washington, D.C., and demanded immediate entrance. Unfortunately for the course of history, he had forgotten his photo I.D. and it took him and the reporter he had in tow 10 minutes to get past the guards. (His forgetfulness […]
Posted inJune 26, 1995: Colorado's prison slayer
Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front: Sell It or Save It?
… And Daddy, won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County, Down by the Green River, where Paradise lay? Well, I’m sorry my son, but you’re too late in asking, Mr. Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away. — John Prine The early years of my life were spent in southern West Virginia. Dad […]
Posted inJune 26, 1995: Colorado's prison slayer
Salvage logging yields logs and controversy
BOISE NATIONAL FOREST, Idaho – Two years after an award-winning salvage harvest of burned timber, a half-dozen former log-storage areas along Little Rattlesnake Creek look like open wounds. Only a few wisps of grass cling to acres of disturbed ground littered with broken branches, ashes and partly burned wood. Gritty soils bleed directly into the […]
Posted inJune 26, 1995: Colorado's prison slayer
As landfills tighten up, midnight dumpers spread out
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. – Some people hiking through Verde Valley in central Arizona stumble upon a spot that just doesn’t smell the way a piûon-juniper forest should. A strong chemical odor fills the air and there’s a large, wet blotch on the otherwise dry ground. After testing the soil, the U.S. Forest Service determines that somebody […]
Posted inJune 26, 1995: Colorado's prison slayer
Salvage logging wounded but not dead
In his first veto, President Clinton derailed a plan to double salvage logging over the next two years and exempt livestock grazing on national forests from environmental laws. The Rescissions Bill combined $16.4 billion in cuts, mostly from existing social programs, as well as $7.3 billion from aid to Oklahoma City and areas in California […]
Posted inJune 26, 1995: Colorado's prison slayer
Ski resort flops in midst of land boom
Once considered a done deal, a planned ski resort near Steamboat Springs, Colo., suffered a major setback in early June when the principal investor pulled out. Houston-based spokesman Jack Crumpler said the decision by Mitchell Energy to “no longer participate in the funding and active development” of Lake Catamount doesn’t kill the resort. But it […]
Posted inJune 26, 1995: Colorado's prison slayer
Battle likely over Utah wilderness
As expected, Utah’s Republican delegation has introduced a wilderness bill covering portions of the state’s spectacular canyon country. And as expected, Utah environmentalists hate it. HR 1745 designates wilderness in 49 areas, totaling 1.8 million acres. Most areas are small parcels, ranging between 7,000 and 90,000 acres. The largest include Desolation Canyon on the Green […]
Posted inJune 26, 1995: Colorado's prison slayer
Dear Friends
Skipped issue Librarians especially should note that there will be no July 10 issue. This annual break allows readers to catch up on articles they haven’t read, and to get out into the great outdoors while it is still great. Getting into the higher outdoors is difficult around Paonia. Kebler Pass, which links us to […]
Posted inJune 26, 1995: Colorado's prison slayer
Lettie Hellman
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Colorado’s prison slayer. Lettie Hellman is a native of Colorado’s Western Slope. Since the mid-1980s she has promoted prisons for Delta County. Her husband, Bill, also a proponent of prisons, runs an auto dealership in the town of Delta, population 4,000. “I’m not crazy […]
Posted inJune 26, 1995: Colorado's prison slayer
A small mountain town shows prisons can be good neighbors
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Colorado’s prison slayer. When a new $223 million maximum security federal prison was recently completed in Caûon City, Colo., people began to call the central Colorado community the “Alcatraz of the Rockies.” But prisons are nothing new for Fremont County: it first hosted a […]
Posted inJune 26, 1995: Colorado's prison slayer
How Colorado’s hunters lost 90 acres to 300 prisoners
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Colorado’s prison slayer. Tom Huerkamp’s vision of the Delta Correctional Facility as a center for scientific research matches the state of Colorado’s goal when it began using the site in 1964. “The state’s noble experiment,” as a local newspaper called it at the time, […]
Posted inJune 26, 1995: Colorado's prison slayer
Crime is big business, on both sides of thelaw
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Colorado’s prison slayer. You may have heard the joke: By the year 2000, everyone in the United States will either be in prison or working for one. But prisons and the jobs and spinoff businesses they create are no joke. Prison-construction budgets nationwide topped […]
Posted inJune 26, 1995: Colorado's prison slayer
Poor, rural places are magnets for prisons
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Colorado’s prison slayer. New prisons aren’t getting built at the scene of the crime. A 1991 federal survey found that 390 prisons were located in rural and small-town settings, housing 44 percent of all state and federal prisoners. More than 200 of those prisons […]
Posted inJune 26, 1995: Colorado's prison slayer
Colorado’s prison slayer
One man’s quest to unshackle a rural economy
Posted inJune 12, 1995: The Southwest's last real river: Will it flow on?
Dennis Brownridge replies
Christa Sadler has repeated park officials’ claims about what the proposed plan would do. However, a careful reading of the entire document and unpublished supporting studies, and hard questioning of park staffers, reveals that the plan is “not as advertised.” Addressing some of Ms. Sadler’s specific interpretations: * The plan would not encourage people to […]
Posted inJune 12, 1995: The Southwest's last real river: Will it flow on?
There’s more to the story about crowded Grand Canyon
Dear HCN, Dennis Brownridge brought up some interesting points in his article about the National Park Service’s “Proposed Action” of their Draft General Management Plan for Grand Canyon National Park (HCN, 4/3/95). Unfortunately, his treatment of the subject was, while not necessarily wrong, at least remarkably biased, and did not begin to offer the whole […]
Posted inJune 12, 1995: The Southwest's last real river: Will it flow on?
Endangered Species Act defender issues call to arms
Dear HCN, Thank you for publishing the edition covering the (endangered) Endangered Species Act, (HCN, 5/15/95). I work as a biologist, surveying and trying to mitigate detrimental effects to threatened, endangered, and sensitive species and their habitats. There is a great deal of misunderstanding concerning the effects of the act’s enforcement, with people continuing to […]
Posted inJune 12, 1995: The Southwest's last real river: Will it flow on?
Who needs ski resorts anyway?
Dear HCN, I very much enjoy your excellent paper, even if quite a few of the articles sadden me as they chronicle the transition of an honest working man’s West into a characterless, la-de-da, recreational theme-park West. But “The New West’s servant economy” truly shocks and depresses me (HCN, 4/17/95). That these ski resorts, catering, […]
Posted inJune 12, 1995: The Southwest's last real river: Will it flow on?
Rants and raves about cutting government agencies
Dear HCN, Jeff Burgess rants and raves (HCN, 3/20/95) about the grazing fees for ranchers being too low (yawn). It always makes me laugh when I read this as federal land in no way compares to private grazing rentals. Lessees must develop water, cost share fencing and do a host of other things that are […]