(photos by the author except where noted) Author’s Note: For more than three years , I have spent most of my keyboard time writing “informational/investigative” long form articles (some might suggest ‘long-winded’) about excruciatingly serious topics…Moab politics, San Juan County politics,…
just a few friends When a writer starts thanking some people, he is bound to forget others. The appearance of ingratitude, certainly actual ingratitude, is not a condition into which a person should strive. For a long time, I told…
The recent controversies swirling around Bears Ears National Monument are only the latest in a series of struggles resulting from attempts to increase federal government involvement with exceptional places in the Utah/Arizona borderlands region of the Colorado Plateau. Elmo R.…
Small rural towns in the American West have a talent for incubating distinct personalities whom city folk call “local characters” or “colorful individuals” while town members express their appreciation with grins and tales of exploits and recognition. Blanding, a town…
In early October 1939, Henry G. Schmidt, “Hank” to his friends, reported for duty at a little known, seldom visited national monument in southeast Utah, just a few miles north of Moab. He was assuming the duties as “park custodian”…
It seems I grew up around taverns. My father was landlord to a few working man beer joints. As a child my favorite days were spent accompanying him as he went around to count the coins in the pinball machines…
*Note: This episode of Brave New West originally appeared in the December 1999 Zephyr, 19 years ago… CLICK HERE to READ PREVIOUS EPISODES of BRAVE NEW WEST (The Comic Strip)! Jim Stiles is Founder and Co-Publisher of the Canyon Country…
“I always liked to hear about the oldtimers. Never missed a chance to do so. You can’t help but compare yourself against the oldtimers. Can’t help but wonder how they would have operated these times…. I don’t know what to…
HERB RINGER came West from his home in New Jersey in 1939. Camera in hand, Herb captured the American West, from the Canadian Border to the Rio Grande and from the Big Sur coast to the High Plains. We believe…
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What is the story we can tell about ourselves, to ourselves? Lewis Mumford, the 20th century historian and philosopher, said, “Every culture lives within its dream.” Like dreamers, we can’t know how–or especially why–we came to be here. Like dreamers,…
What’s happening here is happening elsewhere. And what’s coming may be bigger than even we doomsayers would dare predict. Barring a miracle, we are about to enter a new phase, the last phase, in the taming of the West. When…
Utah’s Transient Room Tax (TRT) has recently made headlines in Southeast Utah. The TRT allows a tax on “transactions involving tourist home, hotel, motel, or trailer court accommodations and services that are regularly rented for less than 30 consecutive days.”…
Last Spring, six students from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Journalism traveled to rural southeast Utah and Monticello, to serve as interns–to be “embedded with”— the local weekly newspaper, The San Juan Record. Under the direction of…
Paul Vlachos is a New Yorker who understands The West. And he is a New Yorker who understands New York. Wherever Paul goes, he finds signs of life… I don’t have many words this month. I have burned them all…
This is the conclusion of a two-part essay on New West gentrification and the designation of Bears Ears National Monument (part one here). In this part two, I will more closely examine the concrete ways in which New West colonization…
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. William Shakespeare,…
“When I was a young boy, about six years old, my grandfather and mother started me on the path of light.” —Wolfkiller Found among the papers of my great-grandmother, Louisa Wade Wetherill, was a remarkable story of early Navajo life…
Far away places, with strange soundin’ names Far away over the sea Those far away places, with the strange soundin’ names Are callin’, callin’ to me -lyrics by Joan Whitney and Alex Kramer Back in mid-July I went fishing…
The trains don’t stop at Woodside any more. After the geyser stopped erupting the people didn’t go there anymore and the cars don’t stop there anymore. Now you can buy Roy Pogue’s 700 acres, abandoned buildings and assorted junk for…
