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…
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…
“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…
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…
“We started on the Trail at 1:30 P.M., leaving the hospitable roof of the Wetherills at Kayenta… with the same spirit of buoyant expectancy as in former years.” —Charles L. Bernheimer, June 4, 1924 From the 1890s to the 1930s,…
A long-time Navajo politician and advocate for Bears Ears National Monument and related tourism development won the June 26 Democratic primary for District 3 San Juan County (Utah) commissioner. Kenneth Maryboy defeated incumbent Rebecca Benally by 39 votes, 705-666, according…
Cisco, Utah is literally in the middle of nowhere. Off of I70, northeast of Moab and east of anything, it once was a bustling community. The decaying structures, and plenty of old vehicles and other rusting wreckage, are left deserted…