Like many Americans, Evelyn and Don Irvine enjoy camping out on public land. Evening after evening after evening, they sit by their small trailer on the banks of the Green River in Utah, watching the water and rafters flow by. Thus far, they’ve been camped on the Green for 20 years, ever since a doctor […]
Heard Around the West
Posted inAugust 7, 1995: Fighting fires, and indignities
Heard around the West
Department of What About The Horse? Any person atop a bucking bronc in a Navajo rodeo may soon have to wear safety equipment, reports The Najavo Hopi-Observer. Injuries (to people) have been identified as a problem, so the tribe’s Injury Protection Committee wants to make all rodeo cowboys compete in “rodeo safety vests’ that are […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Heard around the West
The National Park Service’s Park-‘N’-Drive Competition is getting intense: One tourist pulled a knife on another last fall in a fight over a Grand Canyon parking space. Already this season amid the canyon’s gridlock, a woman who boldly stood in a parking space – trying to save it for her husband and their car – […]
Posted inJune 26, 1995: Colorado's prison slayer
Heard Around the West
The Missoulian, a Montana daily, ran an intriguing Help Wanted: “Sheepherder with miniumum of 30 days’ experience. Attends sheep grazing on open range, herds sheep using trained dogs. Guards flocks from predators and from eating poisonous plants … Food, housing, tools, supplies and equipment provided. Hours variable, on call 24 hours, 7 days … One […]
Posted inJune 12, 1995: The Southwest's last real river: Will it flow on?
Heard around the West
The Oregon Natural Resources Council has recruited 40 or so “cow cops” to observe public land grazing, and some ranchers are not pleased. In a letter to federal agencies, the Grant County Stockgrowers’ Association said it “will regard so-called inspection of our allotments as an act of trespass’ and call in real cops to arrest […]
Posted inMay 29, 1995: Politics 101
Heard Around the West
The House of the Utah Legislature has voted 69-2 to exempt the smoke of Native American ceremonial pipes from the state’s Clean Air Act. According to the Associated Press, one nay vote came from a “white Republican Mormon,” Gerry Adair, who won’t okay any form of smoking because his father died of emphysema. The other […]
Posted inMay 15, 1995: Dog and pony show about salmon and owls
Heard Around the West
The terms of the engagement are clearly expressed in the West’s local papers, especially in the Casper Star-Tribune. This small but extraordinary daily, which tries to cover all 97,000 square miles of Wyoming, gives enormous space to local news, and at times, fills two or three broadsheet pages with letters to the editor. If the […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Heard around the West
The Montana legislature is determined to take that state’s clean water. It passed two bills that allow degradation of Montana’s streams and lakes. The bills were pushed by mining, ranching, logging and real estate. Developers succeeded in loosening septic tank standards for new homes. That could spell death for the purity of Montana’s immense Flathead […]