Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore are coming to Lake Tahoe in late July for a summit on the lake’s environment and development. It will be the first time that a president has ever visited the area for policy or pleasure while […]
Communities
Posted inMay 12, 1997: Planning under the gun: Cleaning up Lake Tahoe proves to be a dirty business
Three voices on Lake Tahoe
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. “The battle between the environment and business was really joined at Lake Tahoe in the 1970s. We’ve only recently learned to cooperate.” – Steve Teshara, Lake Tahoe Gaming Alliance “We’ve transcended partisanship. We work closely with the casinos and ski resorts now.” – Rochelle […]
Posted inMay 12, 1997: Planning under the gun: Cleaning up Lake Tahoe proves to be a dirty business
Planning under the gun: Cleaning up Lake Tahoe proves to be a dirty business
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – Joe Thiemann stormed out of a meeting of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) with murder in his eyes. The powerful agency had finally pushed him too far. The quick-tempered 45-year-old entrepreneur had been running cruises aboard the Tahoe Queen, a 500-passenger Mississippi-style riverboat, since he was 20. The paddle […]
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
Beauty and the Beast
The president’s new monument forces southern Utah to face its tourism future.
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
A proud and defiant native
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Though as a child she lived in Idaho and for a while in Tooele, Utah, Garfield County Commissioner Louise Liston has always considered her birthplace, Escalante, home. Before becoming a commissioner 10 years ago, Liston taught in a one-room school in the town of […]
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
‘This monument was just plain stupid’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Roger Holland, 52, is a Kanab town councilman, a part-time rancher and a mining consultant. He has done geological surveys on the Kaiparowits Plateau within the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Roger Holland: “This monument was just plain stupid; the president did it to keep […]
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
Let’s ‘work with the situation’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Gerry Rankin moved from Salt Lake City to Big Water, Utah, pop. 350, more than six years ago. When she isn’t teaching at the town’s only school, she is the mayor of the town, which lies just a few miles west of Lake Powell. […]
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
A miner turns host
Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. Jerry Freeman, owner of the tiny town of Nipton, population less than 50, is one of the few residents of the East Mojave poised to benefit from a tourist economy: Jerry Freeman: “I first came out here in the 1950s to stake some claims when […]
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
The Mojave National Preserve: 1.4 million acres of contradictions
Note: this story accompanies another, similar feature story in this issue. CIMA, Calif. – Like most of her neighbors, Irene Ausmus never wanted the East Mojave Desert to become a national preserve, let alone the national park that environmentalists first wanted. “We live out here because we don’t want people bothering us,” says the 64-year-old […]
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
This rancher wants to stay
Note: This article is a sidebar to a feature story. Although other ranchers in the preserve have said they might sell their land and grazing allotments to a land trust or foundation, Rob Blair says he won’t. His family first settled here in 1913, and he hopes that one of his three children will someday […]
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
Paying 1 percent for place
In the ski town of Crested Butte, Colo., purchases of everything from a rack of lamb to rock-climbing hardware will now go toward buying a piece of paradise. Thanks to the efforts of a local sporting goods store, businesses this month began offering a 1 percent surcharge on all purchases for the acquisition of open […]
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
Working the Watershed
Washington’s Willapa Alliance melds science, economic development and plenty of time to plot the restoration of a battered coastal ecosystem
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
A 1,000-year plan for Willapa Bay
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Alana Probst works for the nonprofit Ecotrust and looks for ways a community can create sustainable businesses. Alana Probst: “When I worked in Eugene, Ore., in the early ’80s, I learned the hard way that recruiting industry can be a nightmare. The whole city […]
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
A newsman’s overview of Willapa
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. For five years editor Matt Winters has followed the efforts of the nonprofit Willapa Alliance for the Chinook Observer, based in Long Beach, Wash. Matt Winters: “Economic development is long-term and hard to nail down sometimes. Groups like the Willapa Alliance can work for […]
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
Defender of fish
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Les Clark has fished the lower Columbia and Willapa Bay for 52 years. He is a third-generation gillnetter and his sons are the fourth. Les Clark: “When we first moved here, paper mills dumped everything in the Columbia River. It finally got so bad […]
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
An optimistic man
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Spencer Beebe is the founder of the nonprofit Ecotrust, based in Portland, Oregon. Spencer Beebe: “To think that we can destroy the planet is a kind of backhanded pride. It reflects an inflated sense of our own importance and a contempt for the power […]
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
A Chicago bank will try to invigorate Willapa Bay
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. After spending nearly two years in the early 1990s scouting Washington’s Willapa Bay for entrepreneurs with plausible ideas for sustainable businesses, Alana Probst of Ecotrust found more than a dozen. But few local financial institutions were willing to make high-risk loans, and the chances […]
Posted inMarch 3, 1997: Hunters close ranks, and minds
Big sky or big sprawl?
Montana, the state that rejected speed limits, is heading toward a lot more traffic. According to a recent report, the number of miles traveled by car in Montana grew twice as fast as population from 1970 to 1990 and is projected to double again by 2015. With 1.7 cars per licensed driver, Montana residents already […]
Posted inMarch 3, 1997: Hunters close ranks, and minds
Severed at the hip
Western lore often portrays rural communities adjacent to public lands as joined at the hip with the federal government. Many people assume that if federal land managers reduce logging or curtail mining on public land, the tax base of the neighboring communities will plummet. Not true, says a new report by the Wilderness Society. After […]
Posted inMarch 3, 1997: Hunters close ranks, and minds
Caretakers wanted
Taking care of other people’s property for a living is taking off, says Gary Dunn, publisher of Washington state’s eight-page newsletter, The Caretaker Gazette. The bimonthly newsletter, first printed in 1983, lists some 90 caretaking opportunities in the United States and nine foreign counties. Interest is equal on either side of the equation, Dunn says: […]