Patrick Jobes has written a profoundly pessimistic analysis of the fate of the West’s attractive, or amenity, towns in the April/May 1995 issue of Western Planner. Fortunately, the article by the Montana State University sociologist is so densely written that its full, depressing impact may hit only those who reread it several times. Based on […]
Deconstructing the rural West
Posted inJune 12, 1995: The Southwest's last real river: Will it flow on?
A humming good race
A humming good race This summer, the Rockies will host a kinder, gentler type of car race – one without roaring, polluting engines. The first annual Sun Sprint of the Rockies solar and electric car-race, a 500-mile run from Aspen, Colo., to Moab, Utah, is set for July 11-21. Racers will travel about 50 miles […]
Posted inJune 12, 1995: The Southwest's last real river: Will it flow on?
Family inspiration
Family inspiration Fictional and real-life families are the focus of this year’s Fishtrap gathering of writers in northeastern Oregon, July 3-9. Orphaned in Eden: The Search for Family in the West features workshops and discussion groups with literary agent Lizzie Grossman, novelist Craig Lesley and poet Naomi Shihab Nye, among others. Workshops will examine fictional […]
Posted inJune 12, 1995: The Southwest's last real river: Will it flow on?
Leave no trace
Leave no trace By promoting “light on the land” recreation, a new nonprofit group aims to protect wilderness areas. Funded in part by a grant from the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association, Leave No Trace Inc. will work with manufacturers of camping gear and federal-lands staffers to educate backcountry users about minimum-impact recreation. “Since the outdoor […]
Posted inJune 12, 1995: The Southwest's last real river: Will it flow on?
Having it all
Having it all Can a city like Boulder, Colo., really have it all? Is it possible for a community to have open space, a sound economy, adequate schools, a healthy environment and affordable housing, all at once? A June 22-23 workshop, sponsored by the Boulder Housing Authority, will address those issues and invite participants to […]
Posted inJune 12, 1995: The Southwest's last real river: Will it flow on?
Rescuing Colorado’s rivers
Rescuing Colorado’s rivers The rivers of Colorado have a new advocate. The nonprofit Colorado Rivers Alliance aims to protect and restore Colorado’s rivers and hopes to gain members from all streams of life, including environmentalists, farmers and politicians. Although the group’s mission is broad, it has more specific intentions as well, such as re-establishing riparian […]
Posted inJune 12, 1995: The Southwest's last real river: Will it flow on?
Eight is enough
Eight is enough After losing their father to an illegal shooting outside of Red Lodge, Mont., eight wolf pups and their mother are in a holding pen in Yellowstone National Park. After some agonizing over the decision, federal biologists decided to move the single-parent family to the one-acre enclosure. For now, the mother receives fresh […]
Posted inJune 12, 1995: The Southwest's last real river: Will it flow on?
Paying for lost salmon
Paying for lost salmon Each member of Washington’s Colville Confederated Tribes recently received a federal check for $5,989 to compensate for land taken to build the Grand Coulee Dam 62 years ago. But despite the money the Indians received, the land and the rich salmon fishery that the dam destroyed are still missed. Martin Louie […]
Posted inJune 12, 1995: The Southwest's last real river: Will it flow on?
Grazing reform ‘reformed’
After waging a defensive battle for more than two years, public-lands ranchers and their allies in Congress have gone on the offensive. The Livestock Grazing Act of 1995, introduced May 25 by Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., would kill Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt’s two-year effort to reform grazing practices on 270 million acres of land overseen […]
Posted inJune 12, 1995: The Southwest's last real river: Will it flow on?
Learning the trick of quiet
Some 50 years ago a bachelor farmer paid tribute to his mother by giving land to Idaho in her name. The park, named for her – Mary Minerva McCroskey State Park – is only 4,400 acres balanced on a narrow ridge called Skyline Drive. No one would ever mistake it for wilderness. Logging clear-cuts border […]
Posted inJune 12, 1995: The Southwest's last real river: Will it flow on?
Heard around the West
The Oregon Natural Resources Council has recruited 40 or so “cow cops” to observe public land grazing, and some ranchers are not pleased. In a letter to federal agencies, the Grant County Stockgrowers’ Association said it “will regard so-called inspection of our allotments as an act of trespass’ and call in real cops to arrest […]
Posted inJune 12, 1995: The Southwest's last real river: Will it flow on?
Feds decide that the Canada lynx can slink for itself
Note: this is a sidebar to a news article titled “In one man’s hands, this lynx became a teacher.” When the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service denied the Canada lynx a place on the list of endangered species last December, conservation groups cried foul, saying the agency ignored the recommendations of its field biologists. Politics […]
Posted inJune 12, 1995: The Southwest's last real river: Will it flow on?
In one man’s hands, this lynx became a teacher
John Weaver saw his first lynx in the wild and experienced a vision of sorts. The Forest Service biologist was hiking in Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada, when he came upon a Canada lynx sitting on its haunches about 50 yards away. “The longer I looked at that lynx,” Weaver says, “the more it […]
Posted inJune 12, 1995: The Southwest's last real river: Will it flow on?
A Montana county unearths a major welfare queen: itself
CHOTEAU, Mont. – Adam F. Dahlman never doubted the old saying that for every dollar American taxpayers fork over to Uncle Sam, the government gives back 50 cents and instructions on how to spend it. But that was before Dahlman, a commissioner in Teton County, north of Great Falls, took a long look at how […]
Posted inJune 12, 1995: The Southwest's last real river: Will it flow on?
Moab area acts to regain control of public lands
MOAB, Utah – Visitors flock here like swallows returning to Capistrano, decked out in spring plumage of spandex, their vehicles sprouting bike racks and kayaks. Locals call this the “silly season” in Utah’s southeastern canyon country. But thanks to a dramatic change in visitor management at several of the area’s most popular attractions, this season […]
Posted inJune 12, 1995: The Southwest's last real river: Will it flow on?
Can land trades stop a subdivision and clean up a mine?
REDSTONE, Colo. – The public doesn’t often benefit from the closure and cleanup of a Western mining operation. But it could at Mid-Continent Resources’ defunct coal mines outside this small town. Through an ambitious series of land swaps, the Forest Service hopes to add about 5,800 acres of the mining company’s land to the adjoining […]
Posted inJune 12, 1995: The Southwest's last real river: Will it flow on?
How an ex-clown brought order to a boom town
PARK CITY, Utah – In 1884, the editor of the town newspaper scolded that “there is too much promiscuous shooting on streets at night.” More than a century later, the common complaint is there is too much promiscuous construction each day. This is the land of perpetual nail pounding, where subdivisions materialize overnight. They march […]
Posted inJune 12, 1995: The Southwest's last real river: Will it flow on?
County votes to control private-land logging
Alarmed by a rancher’s plans to log trees at the top of a watershed, a southern Colorado county is drafting regulations to stop the cut and protect the area’s water supply. Costilla County in the high, cold San Luis Valley now has no control over its watershed because the high mountain tracts – considered a […]
Posted inJune 12, 1995: The Southwest's last real river: Will it flow on?
Man, weather conspire against salmon
The giant spring runoff that was supposed to safely whisk baby Snake River salmon over dams to the Pacific Ocean has been cut down to size. Mother Nature accomplished part of the feat. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers did the rest. A series of wet winter storms had buoyed the hopes of salmon advocates […]
Posted inJune 12, 1995: The Southwest's last real river: Will it flow on?
A 77-year-old cow watcher from Arizona
Reader Pauline Sandholdt wrote to let us know that a photo caption in our May 1 issue had blown a “considerable hole” in her confidence in High Country News. The picture in question appeared on page 19 of our special issue on land grant universities headlined, “Reform comes to “Ag” Schools.” It depicted cattle in […]