In mid-July, a billboard suddenly appeared on the boundary of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Monument, advertising three 40-acre lots at the lip of the 2,000-foot-deep canyon (see page 16). The price? $190,000 each. It’s the latest attempt by real estate developer Tom Chapman to cash in on private land inside protected federal […]
Recreation
Posted inAugust 2, 1999: Jon Marvel vs. the Marlboro Man
DDT doesn’t just fade away
A half century after the National Park Service dumped DDT on the northern part of Yellowstone National Park, traces of the deadly pesticide remain in the ecosystem. Scientists studying cutthroat trout last summer tested fatty tissues of the fish and found DDT – even though it has been banned in this country since 1972, a […]
Posted inAugust 2, 1999: Jon Marvel vs. the Marlboro Man
Protests proceed at Vail
The White River National Forest near Vail, Colo., was a busy place on the morning of July 1. After a springtime break for the elk calving season, work was scheduled to begin anew on the controversial expansion of the Vail ski area, which will increase the size of North America’s largest ski area by 25 […]
Posted inAugust 2, 1999: Jon Marvel vs. the Marlboro Man
Tom Chapman: A small-town boy who made good
PAONIA, Colo. – Many Westerners see Tom Chapman as a scourge who extracts millions from taxpayers by threatening to develop private land within national parks and wilderness areas. To me, he is just a local Paonia boy who made good. Starting in the 1980s with nothing more than a real estate broker’s license, an ability […]
Posted inJuly 5, 1999: The new faces of the West
Give me a home where the engines roar
A recent editorial in the weekly Bitterroot Star of Stevensville, Mont., likened a racetrack proposed for the Bitterroot Valley to “a smelly dog, running from neighborhood to neighborhood in search of a home.” Promoters first went to the Ravalli County Commission, asking to build a racetrack at the county fairgrounds in Hamilton, Mont. The commissioners […]
Posted inJune 21, 1999: The disappearing farm
An Olympic eyesore?
The Utah Sports Authority is etching out a 120-meter ski jump on a mountainside near Park City for the 2002 Winter Olympics, but the project isn’t inspiring Olympic fever. Instead, it’s raising the ire of local critics, who lament the ugliness of the scarred slope. “There was no environmental input whatsoever, and consequently we’re going […]
Posted inJune 21, 1999: The disappearing farm
Happy campers we shall always be
Every summer, my husband and I head for the woods, flushed with optimism and giddy with anticipation. The maps are crisp, the fuel cans are full and the road is open. And every summer, I forget that the reality of camping is different than that pictured in Dodge Dakota commercials and my mind. I imagine […]
Posted inJune 7, 1999: Mining the past
Black Canyon National Park?
If Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., gets his way, he will leave behind a legacy. A bill moving rapidly through the U.S. Senate would redesignate the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Monument as a national park and expand its current 20,766 acres to 30,000. Campbell, the bill’s sponsor, has been pursuing this legislation for […]
Posted inMay 24, 1999: The last weird place
Star parties
Exploding stars, colliding galaxies and random nebulae are the new attractions at Utah’s Bryce Canyon National Park. There’s even the possibility of seeing the Mir Space Station, the Hubble Space Telescope or the occasional spy satellite. “So we can look up at what’s looking down on us,” says Patrick Wiggins, the demonstration specialist at the […]
Posted inMay 24, 1999: The last weird place
‘We were created to serve all’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Scot McElveen is the chief ranger at Death Valley National Park: “It’s somewhat unrealistic to say we’re going to move land from more human-oriented uses to (management emphasizing) a stricter group of laws, but we’re not going to give you any staff to make […]
Posted inMay 24, 1999: The last weird place
The last weird place
Can rangers and desert rats coexist in Death Valley?
Posted inMay 24, 1999: The last weird place
‘The more protection we have, the better’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Dick Anderson is an environmental specialist at Death Valley National Park: “There wasn’t complete agreement with the Desert Protection Act within the park. Just because it was the law doesn’t mean it was wholeheartedly supported by the staff, not at all. Myself not included […]
Posted inMay 24, 1999: The last weird place
‘Humans aren’t that bad’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Jim Macey is a resident of Keeler, California: “The park and the Sierra Club have a really dim view of human nature. They equate more humans with more doom, more impact. They say, “Let’s not let anybody do anything.” There are a lot of […]
Posted inMay 24, 1999: The last weird place
Bureau of livestock, mining … and parks?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. When Al Gore joined President Clinton in 1996 in announcing the creation of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah, the vice president called it a “great monument to stewardship.” Yet by presidential decree the steward in this case was not the National Park […]
Posted inMay 24, 1999: The last weird place
‘I’m really embarrassed’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Kathy Goss is a resident of Darwin, California: “I’m a disillusioned environmentalist. I’m disillusioned with the way environmentalists took things into their own hands and pushed something like (the Desert Protection Act) through. Congress signed off on something it had never seen; the boundaries […]
Posted inMay 24, 1999: The last weird place
‘They’re just too rigid’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Reuben Scolnik is a longtime Death Valley National Park volunteer: “In order to accomplish their mission, (the Park Service) is slowly making it less interesting for the average person to visit the park. As I look at it, I don’t think it’s as interesting […]
Posted inMay 24, 1999: The last weird place
‘By and large, they’re heroes’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Dick Martin is the superintendent of Death Valley National Park: “In my mind, (rangers) are heroes. Once in a while they have to tell someone to do something they don’t want to hear, but, by and large, they’re heroes. They respond to people in […]
Posted inMay 24, 1999: The last weird place
So much land, so little money
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. When the Mojave National Preserve was created by the Desert Protection Act in 1994, its enemies in Congress hit it where it hurts (HCN, 4/14/97). In 1996, California Republican Rep. Jerry Lewis led a successful effort to reduce the preserve’s annual budget to a […]
Posted inMay 24, 1999: The last weird place
‘It didn’t need to be saved’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Janice Allen is a member of the Death Valley Advisory Commission. Since the 1860s, her family has grazed cattle on lands that are now within Death Valley National Park: “To me, it’s tremendously sad that lots of local people won’t even go (to the […]
Posted inMay 10, 1999: My beautiful ranchette
A bigger picture
Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument needs to think of itself in the context of a wider world. That’s the conclusion of Crown of the Canyons, an atlas of colored maps and data on the ecology, geology and economy of the monument and its surrounding landscape, compiled by the Wilderness Society. The monument’s 1.9 million acres […]