From sprawling estates in Colorado’s tony Roaring Fork Valley to parched ranches on Montana’s high plains, conservation easements protect millions of private acres of open space in the West. Next to all that, a 2002 decision by Johnson County, Wyo., to terminate an easement it held on the 1,043-acre Meadowood Ranch just east of Buffalo […]
Two weeks in the West
Posted inAugust 11, 2008: Trouble in (Private) Paradise
Of populists and political fusion
The last time the Democratic Party held its national convention in Denver was exactly a century ago, in 1908. That was also the first time the Democrats convened west of Kansas City. The presidential nominee that year was no novelty, though; for the third time, William Jennings Bryan, once known as “the boy orator of […]
Posted inAugust 11, 2008: Trouble in (Private) Paradise
Downtown an old – and new – way to live
The sun rises over the mountains and floods my room with light. I lie in bed and listen to the cooing of conspiring pigeons on the roof. I’ve lately moved from Cody, Wyo., to Salmon, Idaho. Cody, like other towns surrounding Yellowstone National Park, has become an expensive place to live, especially for a freelance […]
Posted inAugust 11, 2008: Trouble in (Private) Paradise
Dear friends
WELCOME, COBUNPaonia native Cobun Keegan is HCN’s summer high-school intern. Before he heads off to Colorado Springs to begin his freshman year at Colorado College, he’s getting some reporting and general publication experience with us. He hasn’t picked a major yet, but is interested in environmental studies, political science, international relations and linguistics. In May, […]
Posted inAugust 11, 2008: Trouble in (Private) Paradise
If you build it, will they come?
Big Water (nee Glen Canyon City), Utah, sits west of Lake Powell in the middle of the desert. It’s not the most obvious place for a town — in fact, there wasn’t anything there at all until a man camp for dam workers was constructed in 1950. In the 1980s, it was reborn as a […]
Posted inWotr
Going backwards: building an oil refinery in South Dakota
In South Dakota, politicians and business leaders are cheering a massive oil refinery planned for the state’s southeast corner. If built, it will be the first oil refinery constructed in the United States in more than 30 years. There are, of course, good reasons why oil refineries aren’t being built anymore. In South Dakota, however […]
Posted inAugust 11, 2008: Trouble in (Private) Paradise
Under the asphalt a rumor thrives
This summer, with the crack of Indy’s bullwhip still echoing through theatres, it’s natural to indulge in a little romanticism about buried treasure. Even when — or especially when — said treasure lies below a worn-out asphalt parking lot in downtown Grand Junction, Colo., within easy reach of jackhammer and trackhoe. The booty in question […]
Posted inAugust 11, 2008: Trouble in (Private) Paradise
Living deep in place
Shopping for Porcupine: A Life in Arctic AlaskaSeth Kantner240 pages, hardcover: $28.Milkweed Editions, 2008. Shopping for Porcupine is a book that weaves between worry and worship, to borrow a phrase from its author, Seth Kantner. The autobiographical essays collected here offer a glimpse of Kantner’s life in his native north Alaska, portraying a harsh landscape […]
Posted inAugust 11, 2008: Trouble in (Private) Paradise
Another kind of hero
The Legend of Colton H. BryantAlexandra Fuller202 pages, hardcover: $23.95.Penguin Press, 2008. On Valentine’s night in 2006, Colton Bryant fell to his death off a gas rig in the snowy, windswept vastness of Wyoming’s Upper Green River Basin. To most of us, his death was as anonymous as his life; he was just another roughneck […]
Posted inAugust 11, 2008: Trouble in (Private) Paradise
An unlikely Shangri-la
Little room is left for new development at the West’s established resort towns, so entrepreneurs are turning second-tier ski hills into private enclaves for the jet set. But will the new resorts fly?
Posted inAugust 11, 2008: Trouble in (Private) Paradise
Death, and taxes
In Western communities with runaway land values, even estate planning can’t keep the farm in the family
Posted inWotr
Off-roaders drive closer to the Grand Canyon
Part of the pride in putting on the iconic flat hat and the green and grey National Park Service uniform is knowing you work for an organization that tries to protect some of the most beautiful and historic places in the world. After serving the National Park Service for 32 years — the last nine […]
Posted inGoat
Not a moment too soon
“I can attest to the fact that (the Department of Interior) gets in your blood, but I can also say that it does not necessarily turn it green.” — Paul Hoffman, a deputy assistant secretary of the Interior, announcing his resignation this week. Hoffman, who got his post thanks to Vice President Dick Cheney, regularly […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Just a tad intrusive?
Homeowners in Englewood, a suburb of Denver, now have to scoop the poop in their own backyards, reports the Denver Post. A task force that met for over a year came up with the new law that gives people 72 hours to remove dog-door face fines from $50 to $999. The town got tough on […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
A chicken named Thelma, R.I.P.
A chicken named Thelma laid a gigantic egg that might have set a record,reports Capital Press. It was eight inches in circumference and the size of a small ostrich egg. “’Ouch’ was my first reaction,” said the chicken’s owner, Margaret Hamstra. Unfortunately, Thelma died a few days later, which, as Hamstra sadly noted, “kind of […]
Posted inApril 14, 2008: Taking to the Trees
The leasing protest game
Conservationists’ gritty strategy yields small fruit
Posted inWotr
My dad and the quail he loved
Theirs is the call heard in the background of every Grade B western ever filmed, no matter the supposed location of the good guy vs. bad guy confrontation. It’s still a surprise to me, though, when I hear the California quail below my house on a blustery day that passes for spring in Montana. The […]
Posted inGoat
Owl be seeing you, too
Many thanks to San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll, for his piece about High Country News titled Owl be seeing you. Carroll praises Kim Todd’s story on the spotted and barred owls — Hostile Takeover, published in our August 4 issue — and waxes eloquent as he recaps the main points of Todd’s feature. He […]