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.”…
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,…
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…
A recent op-ed in the Salt Lake Tribune raised concerns yet again about the impacts of oil and gas developments at Big Flat in Grand County, near the boundary of Dead Horse Point State Park. Jacques Hadler, the manager of…
I have recently learned to remotely keep track of traffic flows at Arches National Park and the Moab area via web cameras at the park entrance and along US 191 as the tourists flow in and out. I’m a Luddite…
PART I: A latter-day David and Goliath saga The home of the Pyramid Lake (Nev.) Paiutes is pristine and spectacular. The lake is quiet, commercially primitive, other-worldly. It constantly changes color from shades of blue or gray depending upon the…
2018 PROLOGUE: My worries about housing prices in Moab and my community’s future, back in 1994, seem almost quaint when placed in today’s context. But this was the beginning of the change, the transformation–the transmogrification— that put Moab on a…
It’s a fact that Arches National Park is exploding at the seams. Heavy marketing, an eager Industrial Tourism business community, and a recent return to relatively cheap gasoline prices have all contributed to massive increases in park visitation. Tourists at…
In the late 1990s, as Moab was starting to feel the first pangs of unrestrained growth, I penned a Zephyr article called, “Return to Moab: 2020 AD.” I wrote it mostly for laughs but now, as we approach that once…
In December, Jonathan Thompson, the roving contributor and former editor for ‘High Country News,’ offered his latest musings on the Bears Ears controversy from his home in Bulgaria. Responding to an op ed in ‘The Deseret News’ by Utah’s Governor…