NOTE: This is the first in a series. What has changed in Moab & Vicinity in the last couple of decades? These are my own remembrances going back to the late 70s. What was here…what’s gone…what’s lost forever? And…what’s new?…
It has been said that people should be nice to writers or else they will suffer a grizzly death in the writer’s next novel. I decided this would be the way to commit the perfect murder … totally legal and…
In 2013 I attended a San Juan County Commission meeting to talk with the commissioners about how the proposed public lands bill being considered by Congressman Bishop would affect the recreation economy of the region. I am an outfitter…
PREFACE: This is a story about Change…about the transformation of a small part of the American Southwest. It’s about what happened to my old home town of Moab and what may happen next, just 55 miles south. Some say that…
I am in most ways an un-ambitious writer. Even downright lazy. While I’ve contributed to other magazines and periodicals over the years, and finally threw a book together in 2007, I confine most of my scribbling to The Zephyr. Recently,…
NOTE: Bolded passages are those cut out of the final BIKE magazine article. When everything is reduced to the mere counter-balancing of economic interests…when Nature has been so subjugated that she has lost all her original forms, what room will…
‘Old Moab’ vs. ‘New Moab’ Ed Abbey, Chilled Red Wine & When to Clap at the Symphony. In 1952, when Charlie Steen discovered uranium and turned Moab from a sleepy little village to the most famous Boom Town in America,…
Rumors were flying last November that the ‘24 Hours of Moab’ bike race was at an end after its organizers reported “a precipitous drop in attendence (sic) in 2011 (has) put the continuation of the event in question.” But apparently…
Many Moabites were not quick to embrace the Mountain Bike Phenomenon. Local businesses geared to tourism were the first to see the benefit and tolerated the invasion, if not fully embracing it. Old Moab was not so generous. These guys…
EDITOR’S NOTE: For Part One of: ‘The Calm before the Swarm,” go to: http://www.canyoncountryzephyr.com/2011/12/01/the-calm-before-the-swarm-by-jim-stiles/ After decades in operation, the Atlas Uranium Mill, once the lifeblood of the community, ground to a halt, closed in 1984 and never re-opened. The domestic…