“It is remarkable that there is little or nothing to be remembered written on the subject of getting a living; how to make a living not merely honest and honorable, but altogether inviting and glorious; for if getting a living is not so, then living is not.” – Henry David Thoreau When I was 18, […]
Communities
Posted inJune 10, 1996: Outdoor Education
My coyote education
More than being in church, I loved the junipers. There, I learned how ants move cookie crumbs and how the first drops of rain sound. I also learned to lie about the dirt on the knees of my pants. In fourth grade we had an ant farm, one of those glass-paned horrors. Science class was […]
Posted inMay 27, 1996: Utah ushers its frogs toward oblivion
Imagine a West without heroes
Heroes have always come with the West. When Indians blocked homesteaders, the cavalry came. When cattle barons closed the open range, President Cleveland reopened it with the Unlawful Enclosures Act of 1885. When aridity slowed settlement, the Bureau of Reclamation built dams. When Western forests succumbed to flames and cutting, Gifford Pinchot’s Forest Service pledged […]
Posted inMay 13, 1996: Howdy, neighbor!
Mt. Graham telescope rides through Congress
The setting was as apocalyptic as a Gothic novel: While President Clinton was signing the bill April 26 approving the University of Arizona’s construction of a third telescope on Mount Graham, fire raced through the Coronado National Forest, up the base of the mountain, into red squirrel habitat and toward the two telescopes already pointed […]
Posted inApril 29, 1996: A park boss goes to bat for the land
Letter to Edward Abbey from Earth: A Review
Dear Ed, You won’t, or probably you will, believe what’s currently happening in the West: Too many of us, a commercialized landscape “- all your worst predictions have come true. We’ve finally caught up with your predictions, your “good news.” Armed militias call the West their home – white-guy losers in Montana and Idaho who […]
Posted inApril 15, 1996: Raising a ranch from the dead
Take a seat
By the beginning of the 1996 school year, the University of Denver’s Graduate School of Public Affairs will choose a professor to hold the Timothy E. Wirth Chair in Environmental and Community Development Policy. The chair honors the former Colorado senator who is currently undersecretary of state for global affairs, appointed by President Bill Clinton. […]
Posted inApril 15, 1996: Raising a ranch from the dead
A very large subdivision riles a very small town
BIG HORN, Wyo. – Residents of this unincorporated township stared bug-eyed at the lead story in the afternoon paper nearly two years ago. “700 homes planned for subdivision,” the 72-point headline read. Disbelief reigned; seven hundred homes could mean 2,100 people. Big Horn, which doesn’t even have paved streets, barely had 400 residents. But it […]
Posted inApril 1, 1996: Gambling: A tribe hits the jackpot
The nuts and bolts of Western gambling
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Gambling: A tribe hits the jackpot.” Americans spend more money on games of chance than movies, concerts and theaters combined. In 1994, Americans lost $40 billion of the $482 billion they wagered. Since state-sponsored lotteries and video gambling started the current gambling craze in […]
Posted inApril 1, 1996: Gambling: A tribe hits the jackpot
Deadwood pays dearly for gambling riches
Note: This article accompanies another feature story, “Gambling: A tribe hits the jackpot.” DEADWOOD, S. D. – Before state residents legalized gambling here in 1989, most people in this town of 1,800 or so lived life in the slow lane. They’d see each other for coffee at Marie’s Cafe or later in the day at […]
Posted inApril 1, 1996: Gambling: A tribe hits the jackpot
Goodbye, Deadwood
When I arrived in 1976, Deadwood, S.D., was 100 years old and still a living gold camp. I was 22, married and fresh out of suburban Minneapolis. Deadwood felt like home from the moment I set foot here. It wasn’t an easy place to live. You weren’t considered a local until you made it through […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
Score one for local control
For awhile it seemed as if one of the most potent weapons available to local counties and towns in Colorado would be ripped out of their hands. Conservative legislators and water developers wanted to gut state law 1041, which allows local communities to develop stringent land-use regulations to control everything from water projects to airport […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
Just a little advice
JUST A LITTLE ADVICE A county commissioner in Colorado thinks he can help newcomers adjust to the rural parts of Larimer County. John Clarke has written a seven-page primer, The Code of the West, which includes some useful tips. About utilities: even cellular phones won’t work in all areas; Mother Nature: expansive soils can buckle […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
Arid art
Arid Art An Englishman from Cornwall in the west of England, Tony Foster is fascinated by the American West’s wilderness of eroded rocks and deserts, including Death Valley in California and the slickrock onion domes of Utah’s canyonlands. An exhibit of his latest work, Arid Lands, Watercolor Diaries of Journeys across Deserts, can be seen […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
My God! Healthy trees!
Note: this article in one of several feature stories in a special issue about the West’s land grant universities and their extension programs. Cottonwood, Idaho – Sister Carol Ann Wassmuth of St. Gertrude’s Monastery wants to be reincarnated as the monastery porcupine so she can keep an eye on the progress of the 1,000 acres […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
Montana’s outback goes on-line
Note: this article in one of several feature stories in a special issue about the West’s land grant universities and their extension programs. A midwife in Wolf Point needs to know the latest practice for treating pregnant women with allergies. A Native American high school senior in Cut Bank wants to know what a laser […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
‘It’s great to ask geeks for advice’
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, What does the West need to know?, in a special issue about the West’s land grant universities and their extension programs. Livingston, Mont. – Dana Gleason, an avid skier, thought he knew how to make a great backpack. In 1985 he founded […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
Monoculture meets its match in North Dakota
Note: this article in one of several feature stories in a special issue about the West’s land grant universities and their extension programs. Carrington, N.D. – Half of all North Dakotans huddle in the fertile, prosperous Red River Valley, a stone’s throw from Minnesota. But John Gardner happily does his agricultural research in central North […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
What does the West need to know?
Note: this article in one of several feature stories in a special issue about the West’s land grant universities and their extension programs. In a burst of energy early this century, land-grant universities sent extension agents to America’s rural counties. Their mission: to modernize and civilize those counties by teaching the latest in breeding cows, […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
What is cooperative extension?
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, What does the West need to know?, in a special issue about the West’s land grant universities and their extension programs. The West’s extension agents cover some ground: They counsel Colorado wheat farmers whose crops are being nibbled by antelope, broadcast advice […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
Playing politics or helping the range?
Note: this article in one of several feature stories in a special issue about the West’s land grant universities and their extension programs. Back in 1978, ranchers around the West felt the first tremors of grazing reform. Under legal pressure from environmentalists, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management found much of its rangeland in bad […]