Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. BROWNING, Mont. – Until recently, Browning, a dusty settlement on the Blackfeet Indian reservation in northern Montana, was known more for its bar fights than its financial enterprise. But thanks to the small town’s banker, Elouise Cobell, Browning is becoming known for something else. […]
Communities
Posted inJuly 6, 1998: Riding the Wyoming 'brand'
Colorado curmudgeon defends the rural West
Review by Ken Wright Ed Quillen isn’t exactly a voice crying in the wilderness; he’s more like that guy with a beer and a Camel Straight in his hand, yelling from the sagging porch of the house down the street – the one with all the weeds and the 1975 Jeep Cherokee on blocks in […]
Posted inJuly 6, 1998: Riding the Wyoming 'brand'
Mexican subculture grows beneath Colorado’s mountains
Just west of Aspen, Colo., hungry souls line the counter at Taqueria El Nopal. The polka beat of Ranchero music and smell of grease fill the small concrete interior. A heavily mustached cook dishes up beef, chicken, tongue, cheek and intestine tacos. A typical Monday. If it were not for the snow-topped mountains outside – […]
Posted inJuly 6, 1998: Riding the Wyoming 'brand'
A mountain town locks out gated communities
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. – Jim Mehen’s first gated golf community dropped into Flagstaff 10 years ago the way a fine putt drops into a cup on a lush green. But when the northern Arizona developer proposed another golf enclave last fall, it didn’t even make the fairway. Faced with strong public opposition, Mehen withdrew his plans […]
Posted inJune 22, 1998: Western water: Why it's dirty and in short supply
Lonely Art
In a crumbling, long-abandoned building in the desert of eastern Utah, anonymous artists have created one of the world’s loneliest art exhibits. “Thou shalt not bear false witness. Thou shalt not steal,” is scrawled ominously above a gutted upholstered chair inside a small building called the White Buffalo Bar. Cowboy boots, stuck upside down on […]
Posted inJune 22, 1998: Western water: Why it's dirty and in short supply
Aspen Center for Environmental Studies
The Aspen Center for Environmental Studies hosts a summer of naturalist-guided programs for kids and adults. Participants can choose from activities such as exploring beaver ponds at sunset or riding a gondola to the summit of Aspen mountain. Call 970/925-5756 or visit the Web site at http://www.aspen.com/aces. This article appeared in the print edition of […]
Posted inJune 22, 1998: Western water: Why it's dirty and in short supply
Leeches and cod liver oil
Ever wonder if you could have survived the measles epidemics and the streets that ran with sewage in the West’s early days? An exhibit of over 200 artifacts from the 1880s to World War II at the High Desert Museum in Bend, Ore., might test your imagination. The exhibit features an “aroma interactive” of Native […]
Posted inJune 8, 1998: Don't fence me in
Bringing a ghost town to life
By 1935, recurring flash floods had washed everyone out of Grafton, Utah, except vandals and an occasional Hollywood producer. Then this April, those living near the ghost town staged a fund raiser to repair the combined school and church that dates from the town’s Mormon settlement 139 years ago. “The buildings are in advanced stages […]
Posted inJune 8, 1998: Don't fence me in
A family preserves the West
If not for Tom Wetherill’s deathbed wish, paper wasps might still be nesting in the century-old photo albums collected by his grandfather, one of five brothers who made the modern discoveries of Mesa Verde and other Indian ruins in the Southwest. Though later archaeologists ignored the Wetherills, maligning their work as insufficiently rigorous, the family […]
Posted inMay 25, 1998: Tackling tamarisk
Ranchers fight a railroad
SOUTH DAKOTA, WYOMING Ranchers fight a railroad Ranchers living on the prairie of southwestern South Dakota and northeastern Wyoming say they’re being railroaded. The Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern railroad wants to extend its line 144 miles from South Dakota into Wyoming to the Powder River Basin’s coal mines. About 54 miles of the new line […]
Posted inMay 11, 1998: The working West: grassroots groups and their newsletters
Smart Growth
Smart Growth Regional Partnerships, a new grant and assistance program in Colorado, gives grants of up to $75,000 to towns and counties to help address a host of growth-related issues, including rural and urban sprawl, and loss of open space, agricultural land and habitat for wildlife. To apply, write Smart Growth Regional Partnerships Program, 1313 […]
Posted inApril 27, 1998: The old West is going under
Judge gives grave-robbers a green light
The Utah Court of Appeals has decided that state law does not protect Anasazi graves. In late February, the court upheld a state judge’s dismissal of felony charges against Jeanne and James Redd, a Blanding, Utah, couple who were accused of desecrating a Native American burial site while pot hunting. “I am appalled the judges […]
Posted inApril 27, 1998: The old West is going under
An era ends: old industries face reality
Note: a sidebar article titled “Surrounded by dogs, bikers, developers” accompanies this feature story. RIFLE, Colo. – Logging is a touchy subject with Kent Strong, owner of K & K Lumber near this Colorado River Valley town 70 miles west of the ski resort at Aspen. Ask about business and he says, “There’s no logging […]
Posted inApril 27, 1998: The old West is going under
Surrounded by dogs, bikers, developers
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories. RIFLE, Colo. – Jim Snyder wants to give a piece of his mind to every driver hurtling down Interstate 70 past his ranch seven miles east of this town. He wants to tell them that they are driving over what was some […]
Posted inApril 27, 1998: The old West is going under
The old West is going under
Note: this front-page editor’s note introduces this issue’s three feature articles. Think of this as a deathwatch issue, in which we hover around the bed of the extractive West, some of us administering CPR, some of us trying to yank the creature off life support so it can die a quicker death, and some of […]
Posted inApril 13, 1998: Oil clashes with elk in the Book Cliffs
A road to ruins?
New Mexico Republican Sen. Pete Domenici is trying to pave the way for a six-lane highway through the Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque (HCN, 1/20/97). In March, Domenici attached a rider to an emergency appropriations bill that allows the city to extend the Paseo del Norte road through the 8.5-acre midsection of the national monument […]
Posted inApril 13, 1998: Oil clashes with elk in the Book Cliffs
Wyoming: The last tough place
There’s a Wyoming hunter I know who lucked out one year. He’s a big man, well over six feet, who commands a room without even opening his mouth. He’s also a mule man. I’ve never seen him ride anything else. He likes wild country where grizzlies outnumber men and that’s where he likes to hunt […]
Posted inMarch 30, 1998: A bare-knuckled trio goes after the Forest Service
20 years with the Arapaho
Often photographs of Native Americans stereotype them as victims of poverty or “beads and feathers’ powwow performers, says Lander, Wyo., photographer Sara Wiles. For that reason, she photographs Arapaho people in their everyday lives, both in moments of celebration and moments unadorned. “If I wanted to pick out pictures that made Arapaho tribal members … […]
Posted inMarch 30, 1998: A bare-knuckled trio goes after the Forest Service
The Four Corners celebrated in photos
Images From an Untamed Land, an exhibit by Moab, Utah, photographer Bruce Hucko, will be at the Anasazi Heritage Center in Dolores, Colo., until May 31. Hucko’s black-and-white pictures, along with excerpts from writers Gary Snyder, Simon Ortiz, Ann Walka and others, celebrate the Four Corners region. “Since I don’t disclose locations (of the photos), […]
Posted inMarch 30, 1998: A bare-knuckled trio goes after the Forest Service
The New West spawns a new kind of range war
DURANGO, Colo. – The lawyers outnumber the sheep in the Shenandoah sheep war. It started one morning about three years ago, when Edward and Adalou Dunne woke up to find eight sheep grazing in the yard next to theirs in Shenandoah, a subdivision of large lots where green pastures roll and dirt roads unwind in […]