OREGON Joseph, Ore., population 1,100, doesn’t often get rowdy, so local police quickly followed up on a complaint June 9, regarding some noisy teens. A youth group had apparently massed on the sidewalk in front of their church, where they practiced singing. Here’s the sweet denouement, as reported by the town policeman in the Wallowa […]
Oregon
Posted inApril 4, 2005: Calling It Quits
The public pays to keep water in a river
A new wave of ‘takings’ lawsuits could bust the environmental protection budget
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
City slaps back at property-rights measure
Residents of Bend, Ore., might want to think twice about where they put that new pig farm or high-rise condo. A provision in a recently approved ordinance in the central Oregon city of 62,900 allows people to sue their neighbors if nearby development reduces property values. Adopted on Dec. 1, the new rule is a […]
Posted inNovember 22, 2004: Conservationist in a Conservative Land
A mountain lifts a heavy heart
On a recent Saturday, with a heart heavy as concrete, I headed north, leaving my house in Portland, Ore., as rain pounded the windshield. The remnants of a recent breakup cast the world in dull hues. Mount St. Helens was busy spitting ash into the sky, and I figured, what else cheers the soul like […]
Posted inSeptember 27, 2004: Life After Old Growth
A timber town learns to care for the forest
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Life After Old Growth.” LAKEVIEW, OREGON — Perched on the easternmost edge of Oregon timber country, where scattered mountain ranges fade into the high desert, the hamlet of Lakeview is an apparition. All indications suggest that it should be dead and gone, a casualty […]
Posted inAugust 2, 2004: The Greening of the Plains
Speaking up for rural Oregonians: Judge Laura Pryor
JOHN DAY, Oregon — As hail pounds the concrete outside, more than 200 people cram into an Elks Lodge — replete with wood paneling and a smoky bar in the rear — to see Judge Laura Pryor, the chairwoman of the Gilliam County Commission and one of the rural West’s most outspoken champions. With her […]
Posted inJune 7, 2004: Wal-Mart's Manifest Destiny
Mountain bikers go wild
OREGON Environmentalists hoping to create a 37,000-acre Badlands Wilderness Area about 20 miles east of Bend, Ore., got a tremendous boost in February, when the local mountain bike group endorsed the proposal. Because bicycles are banned from wilderness areas, many mountain bikers are lukewarm, at best, about proposals to create more wilderness. But the biker-run […]
Posted inMarch 1, 2004: The Last Open Range
The New West collides with open-range laws
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The Last Open Range.” Kent Knudson picked up a rifle and opened fire, defending his 40 acres in Arizona, and got handcuffed and hauled to jail. John Ward, driving a truckload of hay in Oregon one night, rounded a curve and smashed into 1,300 […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 2004: Mending the Nets
Mending the Nets
After years of a disastrous free-for-all on the sea, one Oregon fishing community searches for a sustainable future
Posted inFebruary 2, 2004: Mending the Nets
A new breed of marketers gives fishing towns a leg up
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Mending the Nets.” COOS BAY, Ore. — Abandoned fish-processing plants cling to the harbor’s edge in this town of 15,000 along the Oregon coast. Less than 20 years ago, there were nine places where local fishermen could sell their fish. Now there are four. […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 2004: Two decades of hard work, plowed under
Can skiers and snowmobilers coexist?
With conflict on the rise, “quiet” recreationists want segregation in the backcountry
Posted inDecember 22, 2003: Being Green in the Land of the Saints
Massive logging plan shakes Northwest
One of the largest timber sales in history uncovers old animosity, and undermines the Roadless Rule
Posted inOctober 13, 2003: The Big Story Written Small
Urban planners look to farmland to feed industrial growth
Portland — the darling of urban planners — is bursting at the seams, and the growth is forcing policy-makers to expand the region’s prized urban growth boundary. Metro, the agency responsible for keeping development within the boundary, already added an unprecedented 18,600 acres for residential and industrial use last year. But the agency says it […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 2003: Harvesting Poison
Healthy workers, healthy label
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Harvesting Poison.” The Bailey family grows more than cherries on their 1,500-acre orchard in The Dalles, Ore. The fourth-generation farmers are also trying to nurture worker-friendly conditions. They offer employees decent housing, such as modular trailers and small brick houses, equipped with showers, toilets […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 2003: Courting the Bomb
In fire’s aftermath, salvage logging makes a comeback
Bush administration pushes to cut trees burned by Oregon’s Biscuit Fire, science be damned
Posted inAugust 18, 2003: Where the Antelope (and the Oil Companies) Play
Groovers required for Deschutes boaters
That ammo-can groover — or its more modern counterpart, a pickle bucket fitted with a toilet-seat lid — is required gear for overnight boaters on the lower Deschutes River in Oregon this summer. The Bureau of Land Management has long beseeched river rats to pack out their sewage from trips along the popular 100-mile stretch […]
Posted inOctober 3, 1994: Subdividing the desert: Should there be a vote?
Ranchers arrested at wildlife refuge
The arrest of rancher Dwight Hammond for running cattle on a wildlife refuge provokes a wise-use backlash in Oregon.