Las Vegas is a funny place to find solutions to the woes of Western cities, but in southern Nevada, the phenomenal growth of the last 20 years has spawned innovative ways to solve the problems of Western cities. Las Vegas has all the problems of a healthy economy — growth, sprawl, air pollution, traffic congestion, […]
Communities
Posted inDecember 12, 2005: The Final Energy Frontier
Not just any book about the grasslands
In the final scene of John Price’s book, Not Just Any Land, a botanist watches buffalo moving in at an Iowa wildlife refuge and says, “There are mysteries about Iowa tallgrass only buffalo can solve.” America’s grasslands, which once stretched from the Great Plains to the Rocky Mountains, are now mostly gone, but several national […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2005: The Final Energy Frontier
Coming home to a Montana town
A clear stream and a cottonwood tree anchor Karen Brichoux’s pensive new novel. The Girl She Left Behind tells the story of Katherine Earle, who flees the big city to return to her tiny hometown in a Montana mountain valley. Katherine had crept away from Montana with her musician fiancé as a lovestruck 18-year-old, without […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2005: The Final Energy Frontier
Earth Notes
Earth Notes Edited by Peter Friederici 70 pages, softcover: $6.95 Grand Canyon Association and KNAU, 2005. Served up in two-page bites, Earth Notes is a tasty selection of tidbits about the Southwest’s canyon country. Editor Peter Friederici dishes out a smorgasbord of nicely illustrated topics ranging from heirloom plant seeds to ancient stone calendars to […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2005: The Final Energy Frontier
Flood insurance crimps Western waterways
Federal program fosters development, damages rivers and wetlands
Posted inDecember 12, 2005: The Final Energy Frontier
Healing the border with words
Denise Chávez believes that art can — and should — make a difference in everyday lives. “Why is the arts community so mute?” asks Chávez. “On the one hand, it’s a terrible time — people are so fearful, afraid of each other, afraid of people who are different, afraid to learn something new. But it’s […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2005: The Final Energy Frontier
Heard around the West
COLORADO A deliciously funny film called The Lost People of Mountain Village wowed audiences at Telluride’s Mountainfilm festival and other venues around western Colorado. In deadpan style, the 15-minute pseudo-documentary explores what happened to the overlords who once lived above high-altitude Telluride. The joke for locals: The “town” of Mountain Village always feels abandoned by […]
Posted inNovember 28, 2005: Gold from the Gas Fields
‘Sticking around’ for an alpine valley
From his kitchen window, Attilio Genasci can see past barns and alfalfa fields to a small knoll jutting up from the flat expanse of Sierra Valley. Angie, his wife of 50 years, is buried there. For Genasci, 96, the vista is a daily reminder of his promise to Angie to protect this spacious valley, 45 […]
Posted inNovember 28, 2005: Gold from the Gas Fields
Energy companies plow some profits back into Western ground
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Gold from the Gas Fields.” As he sat in his Houston office on Nov. 10, Raymond Plank, the chairman of Apache Corporation, tracked news reports about the Washington, D.C., hearing, in which members of the U.S. Senate scolded five of his fellow oil-company executives. […]
Posted inNovember 28, 2005: Gold from the Gas Fields
‘Death is stingless indeed and as beautiful as life’
I was over 80 when I found myself in a college classroom with 20-year-olds, wondering how to bridge the age gap and teach them something useful about the conservation movement in America and my role in it. I began by remarking that it must be hard for them to believe that I was once their […]
Posted inNovember 28, 2005: Gold from the Gas Fields
Heard around the West
NEVADA You’ve gotta love Oscar Goodman, the mayor of Las Vegas: He doesn’t hesitate to trumpet what he thinks, no matter how over the top. Appearing on a TV program in Carson City recently, the mayor sounded off on lawbreakers who spraypaint graffiti over freeways. “These punks come along and deface it,” he said, according […]
Posted inNovember 28, 2005: Gold from the Gas Fields
Gold from the Gas Fields
As energy companies reap billions from the region’s energy reserves, some Westerners question whether enough of the wealth is staying home
Posted inWotr
A Western railvolution begins
In 1981, when I got my first car — a used Toyota Corolla — the first thing I did was take a trip out West. For a prisoner of the sprawling suburbs of St. Louis, Mo., nothing could have been sweeter than to put that sea of homes in the rearview mirror, and to fill […]
Posted inWotr
Avian flu: Don’t fear the flocks yet
It’s November, which means that the snow geese are pouring into Oregon’s Klamath Basin in the hundreds of thousands. The sight of the undulating flocks, snow white against slate blue storm clouds, is unspeakably beautiful. These are tundra geese, passing through en route to winter quarters in California’s Central Valley. They have come all the […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2005: Back On Track
Property-rights measure overturned
The property-rights movement’s latest star has fallen. On Oct. 14, a judge ruled that Oregon’s Measure 37, passed by voters last year, was unconstitutional. The measure allowed landowners who believed they’d lost property value due to land-use regulations to demand that state or local governments either pay compensation or waive those regulations (HCN, 6/13/05: So […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2005: Back On Track
Crossing hearts on Colorado’s plains
Laura Pritchett’s first novel, Sky Bridge, is set in “Nowhere, Colorado,” on the ranchland east of the plains town of Lamar. In this tiny place assaulted by big forces — climate change, the global economy, federal policies — teenage narrator Libby finds the prospects slim: “… all my old schoolmates are either doing drugs or […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2005: Back On Track
Back On Track
One of the West’s most sprawling, traffic-choked cities becomes a champion of mass transit — and a cleaner, greener future
Posted inNovember 14, 2005: Back On Track
Eastern Sierra counties seek sustainable growth
Land trades could help build affordable housing without compromising a beloved landscape
Posted inNovember 14, 2005: Back On Track
Commuter trains could connect the West’s far-flung cities
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Back On Track.” Even as light-rail lines promise to revolutionize transportation within the West’s metropolitan areas, longer commuter rails could connect these far-flung cities in ways they have not since railroad’s glory days a century ago. Unlike light rail, which uses overhead electrical lines, […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2005: Back On Track
Reading, riding and relaxing
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Back On Track.” Kevin Koernig believes light rail is making him healthy, wealthy and maybe even wise — or at least well read. Koernig lives in Littleton, a suburb along Denver’s southwest light-rail line, and commutes by train several days a week to his […]