A year ago, I wrote about the development of the Little Valley area of St. George in southwest Utah. What I tried to do in that piece was use words, pictures and numbers to provide a specific example of what…
While sheer numbers of tourists can overwhelm the most patient of park rangers, even I would acknowledge that among those masses could be found some of the best people on the planet. I haven’t worn a badge and a smoky…
# # # # # I would like to say that my whole photography career began with shooting motel signs, but that would be a lie on a few counts. First, it’s not really a career. Not a paying one,…
Here we are at the end of March, and I am thinking about December. Well, not really December. I am thinking about town and how I sometimes go there to write. Town can be a location and an idea. In…
The most inaccessible, least known, and roughest portion of the Navajo Reservation is bounded by the Navajo, Colorado, San Juan, and Piute canyons. […] Buttes, mesas, and small domes predominate and are so tightly packed that the base of one…
The following excerpts are from the book: CANYON COUNTRY EXPLORATIONS & RIVER LORE: The Remarkable Resilient Life of Kenny Ross, by Gene M. Stevenson. The book was written about Kenny Ross, one of the forgotten personalities on the Colorado Plateau…
Our regular readers know that we began a new project at the Zephyr in the past year–called “Zephyr America.” We’ve been slowly wading through the massive Zephyr archives of historic photos and digitizing them to share with our readers. To…
I have always been a news junkie. I grew up with Huntley/Brinkley and Walter Cronkite. It was always a matter of debate in our family, and others as well, whether Cronkite was a Republican or a Democrat. The consensus over the…
Note: This article first appeared in the October/November 2011 Zephyr… Many years ago, during one of my first trips to the canyon country, I made the dusty drive to Grandview Point on the Island in the Sky. The road was…
Author’s Introduction, from 1997:A year or so ago Jim Stiles came by for a visit and in the course of the conversation we talked about Indian ruins and how they were being vandalized. We wondered if, at the present rate…
Here at the Zephyr, we’re pretty proud of the articles we publish each issue. We’ve said this before, but we think we’ve assembled the best collection of writers we’ve ever had, all of whom are writing at a level that…
HERB RINGER and his parents, Sadie and Joseph, traveled across the American West and into the Canadian Rockies on numerous trips, from the 40s through the 70s. Herb was devoted to rail history, and was particularly fond of the historic…
April 22, 1941 Dear Hugh: This report is going to be a bit brief because I am at present confined to bed with a severe cold, and am attempting to think and write clearly while lying almost flat on my…
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In this issue… Take it or Leave it: The Insta-Facebook West …by Jim Stiles The Love of Maps …by Tonya Audyn Stiles A Satisfied Mind …By Harvey Leake “(Still) ‘Enough Rope’”: (A Reporter’s Moab Memories. 1978-1984) #6 The Pot Plane…
One of my favorite poet/songwriters, Utah Phillips, once wrote: “I’ll sing about an emptiness the East has never known, Where coyotes don’t pay taxes and a man can live alone. And you’ve got to walk forever just to find a…
The oldest surviving map of the world—the Babylonian Imago Mundi—circumscribes a landmass between the Mediterranean and Caspian Seas. The world it describes is only as long as the Euphrates River. At its center lies the city of Babylon. To the…
The wealthiest personIs a pauper at timesCompared to the manWith a satisfied mind —From the song “A Satisfied Mind,” by Joe “Red” Hayes and Jack Rhodes “I don’t think Mr. Harriman is very rich. He has not as much money…
Before Moab, Utah became the absurdly expensive, over-built, over-wrought, contrived and conflicted population center that it is today, it was a different kind of town. Somebody once said, “Moab used to be a hard place to get rich, but it was a…
I don’t feel like coming up with a narrative or story arc here. I’m a bit discombobulated. I just want to throw some stuff up against the wall, some words and some photos, and let it stick or watch it…
By early December there was not much snow, and by the end of the December there was not any snow. I took a long walk on a day between then and now. A walk in the far north in winter…