NO PLACE LIKE HOME

Vol. 53 / January 2021 What’s ahead for The politics of Fighting for No. 1 • hcn.org the Salton Sea second homes the EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR/PUBLISHER Greg Hanscom INTERIM EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Katharine Lanpher ART DIRECTOR Cindy Wehling FEATURES DIRECTOR McKenna Stayner DIGITAL MANAGING EDITOR Gretchen King ASSOCIATE EDITORS Emily Benson, Paige Blankenbuehler, Graham Lee Brewer, Maya L. Kapoor PHOTO EDITOR Roberto (Bear) Guerra ASSOCIATE PHOTO EDITOR Luna Anna Archey ASSISTANT EDITORS Jessica Kutz, Carl Segerstrom, Anna V. Smith EDITOR AT LARGE Betsy Marston COPY EDITOR Diane Sylvain CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Nick Bowlin, Elena Saavedra Buckley, Kalen Goodluck, Ruxandra Guidi, Jane C. Hu, Cows graze in front of the unfinished Memorial in the Black Hills of .Tailyr Irvine / HCN Michelle Nijhuis, Jonathan Thompson CORRESPONDENTS Leah Sottile, Sarah Tory EDITORIAL INTERNS Jessica Douglas, Victoria Petersen, Eric Siegel DIRECTOR OF PHILANTHROPY Alyssa Pinkerton SENIOR DEVELOPMENT OFFICER Paul Larmer DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATES Hannah Stevens, Carol Newman DIRECTOR OF PRODUCT & MARKETING Gary Love EVENTS & BUSINESS PARTNER COORDINATOR Laura Dixon IT MANAGER Alan Wells DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS Erica Howard ACCOUNTS ASSISTANT Mary Zachman Know CUSTOMER SERVICE MANAGER Kathy Martinez CUSTOMER SERVICE Karen Howe, Shannon Kinne, Mark Nydell, Pamela Peters, Tammy York the GRANT WRITER Janet Reasoner FOUNDER Tom Bell

BOARD OF DIRECTORS Brian Beitner (Colo.), John Belkin (Colo.), West. Seth Cothrun (Ariz.), Jay Dean (Calif.), Bob Fulkerson (Nev.), Wayne Hare (Colo.), Laura Helmuth (Md.), Samaria Jaffe (Calif.), High Country News is an independent, reader-supported nonprofit 501(c)(3) media organization that covers the important issues and stories that define the Western U.S. Our mission is to inform and inspire people to act on behalf of the West’s diverse Nicole Lampe (Ore.), Marla Painter (N.M.), natural and human communities. High Country News (ISSN/0191/5657) publishes monthly, 12 issues per year, from 119 Grand Bryan Pollard (Ark.), Raynelle Rino (Calif.), Ave., Paonia, CO 81428. Periodicals, postage paid at Paonia, CO, and other post offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes Estee Rivera Murdock (Colo.), Andy Wiessner to High Country News, Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428. All rights to publication of articles in this issue are reserved. See hcn.org for (Colo.), Florence Williams (D.C.) submission guidelines. Subscriptions to HCN are $37 a year, $47 for institutions: 800-905-1155, hcn.org. For editorial comments DIRECTOR EMERITUS Luis Torres (N.M.) or questions, write High Country News, P.O. Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428 or [email protected], or call 970-527-4898.

2 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS EDITOR’S NOTE FEATURED CONTRIBUTORS

Nick Bowlin Gunnison, Colorado @npbowlin

Jessica Douglas Oregon @jessicadd29_

Nick Estes Albuquerque, New Mexico Homescapes @nickwestes

“HOME” IS OUR FOCUS this month — how shelter and connection to place define our lives and Kimberly Mitchell the lives of the people around us. This feels especially compelling right now, with a global pandemic Bell Prize Winner forcing us to stay inside, or perhaps, if we’re essential workers, to live away from home. Davis, California

2020 has shifted our idea of what makes a home. It used to be that the list of necessary rooms included kitchen, bathroom, bedroom. You can add “office” to that now. Thanks to ubiquitous Zoom meetings and television shows, we’ve all become voyeurs, peeking inside the homes of others, checking out Mark Olalde their books or beds or kitchens as they work, intimate yet far away. The freedom to work remotely has Palm Springs, had serious economic consequences, which we break down in our Facts & Figures department. Check California out the eye-popping numbers that accompany the urbanites fleeing to small Western communities, @MarkOlalde creating new boom towns, now called Zoom towns. This mass migration has driven home prices so high you’ll think we misprinted the numbers. We didn’t. Victoria Petersen Our feature this month looks at an offshoot of this phenomenon: What happens when wealthy second- Anchorage, Alaska home owners try to change the politics of a place with their dollars? Nick Bowlin tells the epic tale of a @vgpetersen recent election in Gunnison County, Colorado, where disgruntled second-home owners fought back after county officials asked them to leave when COVID-19 came to town. It’s an examination not just of how far money can take you, but of what makes a community, what causes us to call a place “home.” Carl Segerstrom In “What Works,” we hear about the rogue constables of Pima County in Arizona, led by Kristen Spokane, Washington Randall, who put away gun and badge and just started talking to people she was supposed to evict @carlschirps in Tucson. Two colleagues joined her, and the trio helped people stay in their homes and even saved the county money. Now the rebel constables are hoping their method can inspire other communities.

Lastly, meet Kimberly Myra Mitchell, the winner of this year’s Bell Prize, the essay contest for young Gabbriel Schivone writers that celebrates High Country News’ founder, Tom Bell. In her work as a wildland firefighter, Tucson, Arizona she found an unexpected balm for her grief over her father’s death, a reminder that, no matter what @GSchivone happens, we still carry our people — our true homes — with us.

From our homes to yours, we wish you a good 2021. Reid Singer Katherine Lanpher, interim editor-in-chief Santa Fe, New Mexico @reid_singer

JANUARY 2021 3 FEATURE Houses on the outskirts of Crested Butte, Colorado, in Gunnison County, where second-home owners are battling locals for political control (above). Second Citizens 32 Luna Anna Archey / HCN

When the pandemic hit, a rural Colorado county kicked out nonresident home owners. They hit back. A resident of Desert Shores, California, holds a picture taken in 1996, when water levels were much higher than they are now, and when people could swim and boat in BY NICK BOWLIN | PHOTOS BY LUNA ANNA ARCHEY / HCN the Salton Sea (facing). Mette Lampcov / HCN

Access to subscriber-only content: ON THE COVER hcn.org Lissette Lopez rides her bike in the strong wind that hcne.ws/digi-5301 blows in her neighborhood in Salton City, near California’s Salton Sea. Mette Lampcov / HCN Follow us @highcountrynews

4 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS REPORTAGE REFLECTION & REVIEW

Sea change 18 From boxes of memorabilia, 46 sifting out a life Decades have passed and millions of dollars have been spent, yet little has In her debut memoir, Danielle Geller been done to restore the Salton Sea. But California officials say the future researches her elusive mother — is bright. BY MARK OLALDE | PHOTOS BY METTE LAMPCOV and the meaning of family. Q&A BY JESSICA DOUGLAS

A space to heal 48 A wildland firefighter finds solace in an unexpected place. BELL PRIZE-WINNING ESSAY BY KIMBERLY MYRA MITCHELL

Resistance on the gridiron 49 In a wartime internment camp, Japanese American high school students find release in football. REVIEW BY REID SINGER

#iamthewest 52 Helen Leung, community activist, LA Más, Los Angeles BY STELLA KALININA

The rebel constables of Tucson 7 The battle for the Black Hills 14 Amid the COVID-19 crisis, officers Nick Tilsen was arrested for expected to enforce evictions protesting President Trump at are instead helping tenants stay Mount Rushmore. Now, his legal in their homes. troubles are part of a legacy. WHAT WORKS BY GABBRIEL SCHIVONE BY NICK ESTES

Capturing the seasons 9 Abandoned boats pose 23 of a plague problems above and Disaster researchers take a Prius’-eye below the waves view of how COVID-19 is changing An 80-year-old tugboat in Juneau Seattle. BY JANE C. HU illustrates the cost of dealing with -littered coastlines. A reset for environmental 10 BY VICTORIA PETERSEN justice DEPARTMENTS Former EPA program leader The Zoom boom 24 Mustafa Santiago Ali discusses Remote workers are flocking to how to help communities go from Western towns. 3 EDITOR’S NOTE merely surviving to thriving. FACTS & FIGURES Q&A BY CARL SEGERSTROM BY JONATHAN THOMPSON 6 LETTERS

Students and faculty 12 13 THE LATEST urge deeper look at land-grant legacy 26 50TH ANNIVERSARY University officials face pressure over HCN’s ‘Land-Grab Universities’ 27 DONORS / READER PROFILES investigation. BY JESSICA DOUGLAS 50 HEARD AROUND THE WEST

JANUARY 2021 5 LETTERS routinely wrestled steers, bar- alternative distribution systems rel-raced, practiced calf roping or for small farm operations is A+. rode bulls or bareback as a timed Tate Tischner event. Nor did they put flank straps Webster, on the bulls and horses, or work them over in the holding chutes COUNTRY COVERAGE NEEDED with painful “hotshots,” kicks and We in the hinterlands are being High Country News is dedicated to independent slaps. Some “sport!” Indeed, rodeo increasingly poorly served by journalism, informed debate and discourse in the is not a “sport” at all — it’s a macho High Country News. public interest. We welcome letters through exercise in domination. Soil, food and water will digital media and the post. Send us a letter, find us Famed Black cowboy Bill Pick- become more critical to our on social media, or email us at [email protected]. ett created the rodeo’s steer-wres- nation’s health and security as we tling event back around the turn face the future. Consequently, we of the 20th century. Pickett’s need fewer essays on effective pro- technique was to bite the hapless testing, or page after page devoted BOOM-BUST EVANSTON Michigan, is the poster child for steer on the nose and lip, so that to metropolitan matters. HCN’s Good work on “Divided Pros- this, but it wouldn’t surprise me if sheer pain kept the animal on the November issue was encouraging: pects,” December 2020. Uinta 50 million Americans have com- ground, hence the event’s com- Stories about insightful market- County, Wyoming, keeps trying to promised drinking water. Of the mon name: “bulldogging.” ing by the Spokane-based Local figure out a way out of the boom- many things that this country The United Kingdom outlawed Inland Northwest Cooperative, bust business. I always said that should be investing in, both from rodeos back in 1934. Can the U.S. or LINC, and the Lazy R Ranch; if I ever moved back to Wyoming, a moral and economic standpoint, be far behind? preserving wildlife corridors; the I’d pick Evanston. Close enough this is very high on the list. Eric Mills Redwood Summer; and Sarah to Salt Lake City, to skiing and the Ken Parsons Oakland, California Keller’s experience out where the Wasatch. Thanks for your writing, Fullerton, California antelope stay are fodder of facts Sarah Tory! Great photos in the COMPLICIT ARCHAEOLOGISTS and inspiration to those of us see- article as well. Good article on rural water prob- While I know this case is compli- ing important cultural and eco- Ken C. Erickson lems. The agencies involved, and cated (“A whistleblower speaks nomic challenges out here. Mountain Center, California anyone who does R&D in water, out over excavation of Native Please, please, please keep are myopically focused on central sites,” December 2020), I think “Country” in High Country News. Everything about “Divided Pros- grid/pipeline systems — the bread that archaeologists would be Otherwise, we would suggest pects” is fantastic. From its analy- and butter of the engineering lying if we didn’t admit that we changing HCN’s masthead while sis of rural economies to the pho- firms/banks that finance munici- recognize the patterns and struc- expecting canceled subscriptions, tography — worth every penny of pal bonds, and the municipalities tures reported on here. including ours. a subscription. Incredible work that charge for your water bill. I know we wouldn’t have to Jim Cotton from writer Sarah Tory and pho- Obviously, a point of use or try hard to find many stories like Stevensville, Montana tographer Russel Daniels!! distributed solution is the only fit this one. Because it’s actually less Chris Parri for far-flung, small communities. about individual practices/indi- NAILED IT Boise, Idaho That is deliberately ignored. vidual archaeologists and much Alex Carr Johnson nailed it in Marc Andelman more about the absolute failure his well-written essay, “Now that DON’T DRINK THE WATER Worcester, Massachusetts at a structural, cultural level of you’ve gone West, young man,” in This is a serious infrastructure sit- archaeology to be in good relation. the September issue. We certainly uation across much of the country, OUTLAW RODEOS Valerie Bondura have accumulated a terrible debt not just here in the rural West With all due respect to Black New York, New York through our conquests, biased (“When you can’t drink the water,” cowboys and their rightful place historical accounts and attending December 2020). Obviously, Flint, in Western history (“Black cow- MAKES THE GRADE mythologies. I share the shame. boys reclaim their history in Carl Segerstrom’s piece (“Food Bob Snow the West,” December 2020), be Forward,” November 2020) about Tucson, Arizona aware that every animal welfare CORRECTION organization in North America condemns rodeo due to its inher- “It wouldn’t surprise me if 50 million In “Twenty signs in 2020 that ent cruelty. For most of the ani- the climate crisis has come home mals involved, the rodeo arena Americans have compromised drinking water. to roost in the West” (December is merely a detour en route to the 2020) we misidentified a tem- slaughterhouse. Of the many things that this country should be perature record in Alamosa, Colo- Most of rodeo is bogus from rado. It was not, in fact, a monthly the git-go, having little to do investing in, both from a moral and economic record; it was a daily record. We with either ranching or agricul- regret the error. ture. Working ranch hands never standpoint, this is very high on the list.”

6 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS WHAT WORKS

The rebel constables of Tucson Amid the COVID-19 crisis, officers expected to enforce evictions are instead helping tenants stay in their homes.

BY GABBRIEL SCHIVONE

ON A WARM NOVEMBER AFTERNOON, Constable Kristen Randall fills out paperwork after finding that a tenant vacated an apartment after receiving an Kristen Randall, a red-haired woman in a blue eviction warning. Roberto (Bear) Guerra / HCN button-down shirt, knocked at the door of a rundown apartment in Tucson’s east midtown. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “I’m going to delay the eviction,” Randall told her, After three rounds of patient knocking, a woman eviction moratorium order, a temporary halt explaining that Bevins would have until Dec. 31. named Angie Bevins opened the door. in evictions “to prevent the further spread of Randall gently urged her to look for other housing Randall identified herself as a Pima County COVID-19.” Man Tran, Bevins’ landlord, filed — just in case — and gave her the names of local constable, a court-mandated officer tasked with in court to have Bevins evicted despite the CDC agencies that could help. Bevins’ relief was stark enforcing evictions. A sudden tension washed order, justifying it because Bevins is a subletter. and immediate. “Thank you so much,” she said. over Bevins, who stood behind a metal screen Contacted by High Country News, Tran did not Later, Randall told me, “The threat of the door that was frayed at the edges. She had been comment about the letter, but noted that Bevins constable was being wielded as a weapon against dreading the day she would be forced out of her was not on the lease. (tenants).” Her voice hardened. “I don’t like apartment. She said her landlord had warned Bevins, however, showed Randall the letter being used as a threat.” her that this would happen. she’d written. In a subdued voice, Bevins told Randall That was enough for Randall, who considered DURING RANDALL’S FIRST TWO MONTHS that she had written to the landlord, citing the Bevins a resident as outlined by CDC guidelines. on the job, just a year and a half ago, she did as

JANUARY 2021 7 In Tucson, Arizona, Constables Kristen Randall and Joe Ferguson talk to a tenant in early December about options for avoiding eviction (left). Ferguson posts a notice of eviction. Personal details have been blurred (below). Roberto (Bear) Guerra / HCN

cost of extra services, such as the courtesy visits conducted by Randall and her colleagues. But Randall and her colleagues achieved their goal: Their visits resulted in fewer evictions and saved their precincts money. And in October, they worked with the Pima County supervisor to create a new permanent position in the constables’ office: a behavioral health specialist, who would make courtesy stops and work with tenants facing eviction. Randall and her colleagues had previously put in countless hours of extra work, going door-to-door, speaking to vulnerable tenants on their own time. “I want to make sure that everybody in the county has access to the same information,” Randall said. “This is a way of balancing that out.” Recently, Ferguson called the program a “movement,” saying that “in most cases, the she was trained to do: showing up at people's Star journalist-turned-constable. Together, approach that we’ve been taking has been really doors and flashing her badge, with a locksmith their three precincts, out of Pima County’s 10, important, and I think can be replicated elsewhere in tow to shut people out of their homes. accounted for most of the county’s eviction cases. … in Arizona, and across the country.” Renters were given just two weeks to make an But they were determined to change that. appointment to collect their belongings. Like Beginning in early March 2020, well before other constables, Randall was armed, with Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, R, issued an executive tactical gear and body armor. "You wouldn't order halting evictions, Randall, Bernal and be able to tell the difference between (us) and a Ferguson unilaterally stopped doing them. (Tucson Police) officer," she said. She put people Little was known about COVID-19 beyond its out on the street during those two months, and contagiousness, and it was clearly spreading had problems sleeping at night. When she was faster among people who were unable to shelter still in her teens, she went without housing in place. Under Randall, Bernal and Ferguson, herself at one point. the Pima County Constables’ Office had broken Randall worked as a hydrologist for the ranks with every other constables’ office in the U.S. Geological Survey for several years before state. Their reasoning was simple: “We know that becoming constable, an elected position in there’s a health crisis, we don’t have the right Pima County. She learned that 90% of tenants in PPE, and we don’t have direction from either eviction proceedings do not even show up in court. the Legislature or governor, or our own health Randall wanted to find out why, and so she started department on how to do an eviction,” Ferguson doing “courtesy stops,” just as she did with Bevins, said. “So, we’re not going to do any whatsoever.” on her own time, wearing casual clothing, putting Soon Randall, Bernal and Ferguson were aside her badge and gun and tactical uniform for joined by their seven other colleagues. what was, essentially, social work. This approach angered some. “We’ve had some According to Randall, numerous residents pushback from landlords and their attorneys expressed shock, telling her they had never who feel like we are taking sides in the eviction been notified. In many Western states, including process,” Ferguson said. “The reality is that we California, Utah and Nevada, tenants must be were giving people information — we were doing notified prior to eviction. But Arizona has no it on our own time — and all we were doing was such law. As Randall did more of her rogue telling them resources they had available about courtesy stops, the rate of evictions tumbled shelter and rental assistance agencies.” — replaced by a new model of tenant advocacy, Some constables dislike the extra work something she dubbed the “minute-entry involved. Michael Stevenson, a retired police program.” Soon another constable in a different officer who was elected in 2016, says a lot of extra precinct — Bennett Bernal, a former city data must be collected before he can decide councilmember’s aide — followed Randall’s whether to implement the new approach in his lead, as did Joe Ferguson, an Arizona Daily precinct. He’s concerned about the potential

8 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS REPORTAGE JUST BEFORE 7 on a cool, misty Seattle morning, Jacqueline Peltier stands alone on the University of Washington campus. Nearby, squirrels and rabbits frolic in the morning dew. Peltier, part of a National Science Foundation-funded research team, will spend the next hour securing a 360-degree camera to the roof of a rental Toyota Prius Prime, ensuring that it’s level and synced with its smartphone controller. In the past, this setup traveled to Puerto Rico, capturing the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. Today, Peltier is crisscrossing Seattle on a 100-mile route to document a different emergency: the COVID-19 pandemic. The idea arose in the first days of COVID-19’s spread across Seattle. Joe Wartman, Peltier’s colleague, an environmental engineer who studies natural disasters, was walking home from work one day when he noticed the empty streets, abandoned businesses and quiet sidewalks. “It struck me how much Seattle looks like a disaster zone,” he said. Unlike earthquakes or hurricanes, however, the pandemic has been Capturing the seasons raging for months. Since March, public health recommendations have tight- ened and loosened, businesses have closed and reopened, and travel has of a plague ebbed and flowed. Peltier and Wartman, along with a team of public health researchers and engineers, are capturing how COVID-19 policies and the Disaster researchers take a Prius’-eye view of how behavior of Seattle residents have changed the look and feel of the city. “We COVID-19 is changing Seattle. haven’t had a pandemic at this scale in modern history,” said study co-in- vestigator Nicole Errett, an assistant professor ... (continued on pg. 31) BY JANE C. HU Scenes from Jacqueline Peltier’s drive around Seattle, Washington, in early December, nine months into the pandemic. Kiliii Yuyan / HCN

JANUARY 2021 9 Mustafa Santiago Ali is the vice president of environmental justice, climate and community revitalization at the National Wildlife Federation. Ali left his 24-year career with the EPA’s environmental justice program when the Trump administration upended the program. Courtesy of Mustafa Santiago Ali

how President-elect Joe Biden could reset that agenda. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What is environmental justice? It deals with the disproportion- ate impacts that are happening in communities of color and lower wealth and on Indigenous land — from exposures to pollution, to the lack of access to the decision-mak- ing process. It is the creation of these sacrifice zones that we have across our country, where we place everything that nobody else wants: coal-fired power plants, incinera- tors, petrochemical facilities and waste treatment facilities. Communities of color, low-wealth white communities and Indigenous folks are often the ones dealing with this and having a difficult time being able to access basic amenities: clean air, clean water and clean land. The disparities are also that in many instances in the past, they have not A reset for environmental justice had an active seat at the table in the framing-out of policy and the prior- Former EPA program leader Mustafa Santiago Ali discusses how to help itizing of their communities. That’s communities go from merely surviving to thriving. the environmental injustice — the environmental racism — side. BY CARL SEGERSTROM The environmental justice side is: How do we help communities move from surviving to thriving? How do we revitalize communities? How do we help to build capacity A CAP-AND-TRADE system to tenure, as part of a program to get the agency. He’s now the vice and power inside of those commu- cut toxic air emissions; a bipartisan college students from minority president of environmental nities so that they are no longer seen agreement to strengthen the Clean communities more involved in justice, climate and community as dumping grounds, but as healthy, Air Act; a federal program to ease environmental issues. Over his revitalization at the National vital and sustainable communities? the unjust burden of pollution in 24-year career with the EPA, Wildlife Federation. There, he minority communities: All this Santiago Ali helped lead the has helped lead the conservation How has environmental justice sounds like an environmental agency’s environmental justice community’s growing efforts to work evolved within the federal to-do-list for President-elect Joe programs, working to undo the recognize the racist legacy of the government over the last two and Biden. But it’s actually of toxic burden of pollution in predominantly white-run world a half decades? federal actions taken by the George minority, Indigenous and poor of big green organizations. It’s always been more about the H.W. Bush administration in the communities. High Country News spoke communities, because they’re early 1990s. Then, in 2017, the Trump with Santiago Ali about the doing the work seven days a week, Mustafa Santiago Ali joined administration upended the Trump administration’s impacts 24 hours a day. The role of the Envi- the Environmental Protection program, proposing to zero- on the federal government’s ronmental Protection Agency is to Agency in 1992, during Bush’s out its budget. Santiago Ali left environmental justice work, and help communities better under-

10 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS stand (laws and regulations) and environmental racism and environ- ment in that space. And then also how those are supposed to work mental injustices. seeing a couple things: One is and how to utilize them. It is people building their budgets and about helping to get the science What do you think is the most making some financial choices. in place, helping people to under- important step to rebuild trust? They’ve said environmental justice stand various policies, and getting To rebuild trust means you have to is a priority, so we’ll see that play other offices in the agency to inte- spend some time with folks. They’ve out, and how resources will flow. grate environmental justice (into got to know that their voices are The other part will be on the their work). It’s also about making being honored in the process, and capacity side, both in the White sure that enforcement is happen- that they are a priority in what’s House and in the agencies and ing, especially in communities going to be developed, and they’re departments. When I was in the “How are that have often been unseen and playing a role in that. You’ve got federal government, I was the only unheard. to honor science, but that science senior advisor for environmental we going to The work ebbed and flowed. comes in lots of forms and fashions. justice for the entire federal govern- Under certain administrations, There are the traditional science ment, which just doesn’t work. I properly there was more of a focus on envi- models that we operate from, but mean, you can get things done, but ronmental justice, and for others, there’s also that science that comes you need to have senior advisors in engage not as much. But never anything from traditional environmental each of those agencies and depart- like you saw in the Trump adminis- values that our Indigenous brothers ments as those secretaries and young tration, where they tried to destroy and sisters bring. There’s science administrators are making budget- all the work that had happened over that comes from community-based ing decisions and policy decisions, people? the years around environmental participatory research. Many so there’s real representation there. justice and other program offices communities are doing their own All these that are critical to the work that sets of analyses and have their own What do you think is most front-line communities are doing sets of suggestions and solutions to important for moving the cause of incredible and need help with. minimize many of these impacts environmental justice forward? that are going on. A set of opportunities I definitely young Can you explain what that When we talk about rebuilding want to highlight is: How are we destruction looked like inside the capacity, we’ve got to make sure going to properly engage young leaders the EPA? that those who come from front-line people? All these incredible young Years and years of work went work, who are interested, have a real leaders across the country have across the into building relationships with opportunity with some of these jobs invested so much in trying — communities, and that trust has that will be opening up. You really whether it’s environmental justice country been broken. That has its own set of need a diversity of ideas and a new or the climate crisis — to get actions ripple effects. Folks have lost confi- set of innovation and ingenuity. and solutions in place. have dence. The current administration I really appreciate (Presi- Hopefully, we will now be decided to take steps backwards with dent-elect Joseph) Biden’s adminis- moving into a time when we don’t invested the Clean Car Rules and the Clean tration saying that it’s an all-hands have to deal with so many egregious Power Plan and all these things that approach, where all of these federal sets of actions. We’ve spent enough so much in they didn’t see any value in. agencies and departments are going time just trying to push back, and, Folks inside the agency have to have a role to play. Because if you you know, we only have so much trying to get been really concerned that enforce- really understand environmental energy. I wish we would’ve spent ment has not been happening to justice, and the work that happens that time on moving forward and actions and the level that it needs to be to make in that space, you’re talking about not continue slipping backwards sure that (communities) are being housing and Housing and Urban and backwards. solutions in protected. Folks have also been Development, and the Department So I’m looking forward to, you really disappointed in how science of Transportation, and Health and know, doing what I can, and also place.” has been weakened. Unfortunately, Human Services, and the Centers seeing how all this plays out over the the current administration has not for Disease Control, and the Depart- next four years. By the time we get to honored science. ment of Labor, and so forth and so the end of this administration, we’ll Also, more recently, the execu- on. know. It’ll be very clear if we’re going tive order and then the memo that to be able to win on climate change. came out that said, “You can’t talk What would be a sign that the Hopefully, we’ll be more clear also on about race.” When you’re trying federal government’s on the where our country stands on racial to figure out the best way to keep right path toward environmental justice issues. Because, I think, on people protected through policy justice? both of those, the sand in the hour- — and you’re saying that systemic Words are important. I’m hopeful glass continues to tick down, and racism is not a factor — then it that our new president will be shar- hopefully, we’ll end up on the right makes it really difficult to address ing with the country the commit- side of history.

JANUARY 2021 11 REPORTAGE

Students and faculty urge deeper look at land-grant legacy

University officials face pressure over HCN’s ‘Land-Grab Universities’ investigation.

BY JESSICA DOUGLAS

WHEN HIGH COUNTRY NEWS they received and sold. the land of the Gayogo̱hó:nǫ’, or A banner hangs on a statue of Cornell University’s founder, Ezra Cornell, on published “Land-Grab Universities” By far the largest benefi- Cayuga Nation, before every Indigenous Peoples’ Day this year. last April, the two-year-long inves- ciary was Cornell University in Ithaca-based event; and reinstat- Della Keahna Uran tigation shed new light on a dark Ithaca, New York, which acquired ing an ad-hoc committee on Native open secret: One of the largest almost 1 million acres from Ojibwe, American Affairs to oversee the transfers of land and capital in the Miwok, Yokuts, Dakota and other approval of these demands. Indigenous communities affected, country’s history had masquer- Indigenous nations through 63 “If the president’s office was and foster discussion of possible aded as a donation for university treaties or seizures. The land came responsible, then they would remedies. endowments. from 15 states, and by 1935, when meet each of these demands to the “We’ve had a number of state- HCN identified nearly 11 the last parcel was sold, Cornell extent that we’ve laid them out in ments that have been made by million acres of land, expropriated University had generated nearly our petition,” said Colin Benedict the administration in light of the from approximately 250 tribes, $6 million for its endowment, the (Mohawk), the external relations George Floyd murder, Black Lives bands and communities through largest of any land-grant institu- chair for NAISAC. “Each of these Matter, and all of the other things more than 160 violence-backed tion. Adjusted for inflation, it raised demands in my mind is completely that have been happening this treaties and land cessions. Now, over $92 million. 100% justified and should already year about the need for Cornell to in the wake of the investigation, Now, as the country recon- have been implemented by the really address its legacy, its histor- land-grant universities across siders long-standing issues of university decades ago.” ical roots, its complicity in … to the country are re-evaluating the racial equity and justice — focus- As of Dec. 1, the petition had some degree, with white suprem- capital they built from these stolen ing on everything from local more than 900 signatures from acy,” Jordan said. “Benefiting from Indigenous lands. political races to national legisla- students, staff, alumni and commu- stolen Indigenous land has to be More than 150 years after tion — students and faculty alike nity members. The president’s part of that.” President Abraham Lincoln signed are pressuring administrators to office has yet to respond publicly, History professor Jon the Morrill Act — the legislation address the investigation’s findings. but in an email exchange, it stated, Parmenter recently discovered that transferred the lands — new On Indigenous Peoples’ Day, “The Office of the President is in that Cornell is in possession of over discussions about the universities’ Oct. 12, 2020, members of Native receipt of the NAISAC petition, and 420,000 acres of mineral rights in moral and ethical responsibilities American and Indigenous Students the President is looking forward to the Central and Southwestern U.S., have forced Americans to re-ex- at Cornell (NAISAC) put forward a working with the Native American a portion of which was retained amine the law’s legacy. Land-grant list of 10 demands in the form of and Indigenous community at through Morrill Act lands. In institutions have long prided them- a petition. The demands include Cornell on these issues.” its petition, NAISAC urged the selves on their accomplishments turning the American Indian and A faculty committee, university to release a statement as beneficiaries: They used the Indigenous Studies Program into headed by American Indian and acknowledging the amount of land proceeds generated by the land to a university department; recruit- Indigenous Studies Program acquired, the interest accrued and broaden access to higher education, ing new Indigenous faculty and Director Kurt Jordan, launched the mineral rights funds received, and thereby contributing to economic students, specifically Indigenous Cornell University and Indigenous pledging to refrain from mineral development across the nation. But students affected and/or displaced Dispossession Project. The proj- and resource extraction on those many of those institutions paid by the Morrill Act; waiving tuition ect will research Cornell’s Morrill lands. next to nothing for the public lands for those students; acknowledging Act land history, identify the Over 2,500 miles west of

12 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS Cornell, faculty and students California Los Angeles has repatri- options for Indigenous students. and Indigenous people in the state at the University of California, ated 96% of its collection. More than 500 people attended and across the world have been Berkeley have also made strides. “A lot of it comes down to, well, both days of the conference. David made promises since colonization, Established in 1868, the university they see these issues as historical Ackerley, dean of the Rausser and they’ve been broken. It’s hard received almost 150,000 acres from and not of the present because they College of Natural Resources in not to remember that legacy; I live the Morrill Act. The land raised see Natives as historical and not of Berkeley, was among them. “I felt in that legacy.” $730,000 for the university’s early the present,” Bauerle said. Since like I was learning so much that I Orona, who will complete her endowment, and, adjusted for infla- the dispossession occurred in the had not been aware of,” he said. Ph.D. in the coming year, hopes tion, has generated over $13 million. past, contemporary people don’t “This is part of our story, I want to be that future Native and Indigenous The university paid nothing in see themselves as responsible, and part of this. I want to learn. I want students have a different expe- return. they feel no pressure to address the to figure out where we’re heading.” rience than she did. “What does The presence and history issue today. However, “ ‘Land-Grab’ Other attendees included staff that mean, when you’re having of Indigenous people has been gave us several concrete (points),” from the office of UC President California Native students pay out largely erased from the UC Bauerle said. “This dispossession Michael V. Drake, the office of the of pocket on land that has been system, said Phenocia Bauerle of Native land that this whole chancellor at UC Berkeley and the dispossessed from them? I appre- (Apsáalooke), director of Native country benefits from — here’s a governor’s office, as well as deans ciate the discussions that are going American Student Development specific way that we can show you and administrators from various on, but I’ll believe it when I see at the University of California, that Berkeley actually played a part UC campuses and units. it — and when it moves beyond Berkeley. Two years ago, Bauerle in it. These are the receipts. This is One of the panelists, Brittani acknowledgment towards actual and the Native American Student how much money you got.” Orona, a Ph.D. candidate in Native actionable items that make life Development center created a Bauerle partnered with Rosalie American studies and human rights easier for Native and Indigenous land acknowledgment to honor Fanshel, a doctoral student in at UC Davis and a member of the students and peoples.” the Ohlone tribal lands that the environmental science, policy and Hoopa Valley Tribe, was surprised As of Dec. 4, UC Berkeley university sits upon. However, the management and the program by how many people within the Chancellor Carol Christ has yet university has yet to adopt an offi- manager for the Berkeley Food university system had no knowledge to respond about the conference cial acknowledgment. Institute, to organize a conference of the history of land-grant institu- publicly. In an email, however, she According to a California audit, on the Morrill Act and Indigenous tions. “I think with Native people wrote, “To achieve this inclusive UC Berkeley is the worst offender land dispossession. and Native students, you know that campus culture, we must acknowl- among the schools when it comes “The UC Land Grab: A Legacy our land, our places have been taken edge how our history, including the to complying with the Native of Profit from Indigenous Land” away from us, from many different Morrill Land Grant Act, impacts American Graves Protection and was held in two parts in September institutions and at many different Indigenous people. Now more than Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), which and October. The conference dug points of time,” Orona said. ever, we, as a university, must take grants Indigenous nations the deep into the history of California’s At the conference, Orona spoke immediate action to acknowledge right to regain ancestral remains genocide and the founding of about the history of genocide in past wrongs, build trusting and and objects from museums. UC the University of California. California. “Scholars of California respectful relationships, and accel- Berkeley has only repatriated 20% Participants called for action, Indian genocide will say it ended in erate change and justice for our of its 500,000-artifact collection. including shared land stewardship, 1873, but I argue it is a continuous Native Nations and Tribal commu- In comparison, the University of research opportunities and tuition process,” Orona said. “Many Native nities.”

THE LATEST Backstory Committee of the U.S. Board of Geographic In the spring of 2016, three Nevada men got Names voted unanimously to name a peak in drunk, broke into a gated enclosure guarding Nevada’s Amargosa Valley, outside of Death a deep limestone cavern, and plunged into the Valley National Park, for the endangered warm water of Devils Hole, a unit managed Devils Hole and the Ash Meadows Amargosa by the National Park Service. While trampling pupfishes. Pupfish Peak “will serve to remind around the fish’s only habitat, one of the people to be stewards of important land- skinny-dippers, Trent Sargent, killed one of scapes and treasures within Nevada,” the the tiny, rare Devils Hole pupfish, which were National Park Service wrote in a statement. among the first creatures listed as endangered Even though there aren’t any pupfish at the in 1967. Sargent was sentenced to a year of top of the 4,355-foot peak, climbers “can over- prison for violating the Endangered Species Act look their habitat, marvel over the tenacity of Pupfish (“The scene of the crime”, 4/15/19). fish.” In the last official count, the Devils Hole pupfish population reached 136 — up from an Followup all-time low of 35 in 2013. Peak In early November, the Domestic Names —Paige Blankenbuehler

JANUARY 2021 13 the world,” Tilsen explained. Tilsen and others worked throughout the day to keep the protests organized, even speaking directly with park authorities to ensure that elderly activists and children were allowed to move away before any arrests were made. Soon, deputies announced that the assembly was unlawful, and the Air National Guard moved in, dressed in riot gear, pushing the protesters back and firing pepper balls at the retreating crowd. “A lot of the protectors had coup sticks, eagle feathers, and (sage) smudge sticks — and every- thing that you could think of that was sacred to us,” Laura Ten Fingers, one of the young Lakotas who helped organize the protest, recalled. A group of Trump supporters stood behind the police line, she said, shouting at the crowd “to go back to where you come from.” “It was really heartbreaking to hear them to say, ‘Go back,’” she said. “He Sapa was our home, and we came REPORTAGE from there.” During the confrontation, Tilsen took a National Guard riot shield. He was arrested and charged with felony theft and robbery. When the shield was returned, the word “POLICE” The battle for the Black Hills had been spray-painted over and replaced by the slogan “LAND BACK.” That slogan put the Nick Tilsen was arrested for protesting President Trump at Mount Rushmore. Black Hills at the center of a movement whose Now, his legal troubles are part of a legacy. unequivocal demands are rooted in a long, hard- fought history. BY NICK ESTES | PHOTOS BY TAILYR IRVINE “I DON’T WANT TO BE the next Leonard Peltier,” Tilsen told me, referring to the legend- ary American Indian Movement activist, who has been imprisoned since 1977 for the murder of two FBI agents. (Peltier has always maintained FROM A DISTANCE, the green pines and Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln are carved into his innocence.) Tilsen believes the police are the blue-gray haze that gently hug the valleys the side of the granite mountain that is the heart trying “to coin me as a radical fringe activ- of the Black Hills merge into a deep black. The of the Lakota universe. ist.” He’s a father of four whose organization Lakota name “He Sapa” — meaning “black ridge” Tilsen is the president and CEO of NDN is currently running a nationwide emergency — describes this visual phenomenon. This is a Collective, a Native-run nonprofit based in COVID-19 relief effort for Native communities. place of origin for dozens of Native peoples and Rapid City, South Dakota, which launched a “I was a speaker at the Chamber of Commerce a a revered landscape for more than 50 others. The campaign on Indigenous Peoples’ Day in 2020 year and a half ago. NDN Collective is on Main land’s most recent, and perhaps longest-serv- to return He Sapa to Native people. Many Lakota Street in Rapid City,” he said. Still, Tilsen would ing, stewards — the Oceti Sakowin, the Dakota, people, like Tilsen, view the national monument, never deny his connection to Leonard Peltier or Nakota and — hold the moun- which attracts 2 million visitors a year, as a dese- the American Indian Movement. It is, after all, tains central to their cosmos. cration of a spiritual landscape. “What South deep in his family history. The Black Hills are also central to the Dakota and the National Park Service call ‘a His Jewish grandfather, Kenneth Tilsen, political territory drawn by the 1851 and 1868 shrine to democracy’ is actually an international was a prominent civil rights attorney, who with Fort Laramie treaties. And they continue to symbol of white supremacy,” Tilsen said. He was his wife, Rachel (daughter of the celebrated be a crucial part of the strategic position that among 20 arrested for protesting Trump’s visit. socialist writer Meridel Le Sueur) defended sustained Native resistance to white encroach- If convicted, he faces up to 16½ years in prison draft resisters during the Vietnam War. Later, the ment. They have become an international for four felonies and three misdemeanors. couple helped form the Wounded Knee Defense/ symbol of the call to return stolen land to According to Tilsen, the protesters had Offense Committee for the American Indian Indigenous people. That’s why President Donald negotiated the blockade with the Pennington Movement (AIM) leadership trials. Tilsen’s Trump chose to hold his July 3 rally at Mount County Sheriff’s Office and the South Dakota Lakota mother, Joann Tall, worked with her Rushmore, said Nick Tilsen, who is Highway Patrol. The activists blocked the uncle, Pedro Bissonette, and the Oglala Lakota. The faces of U.S. Presidents George road, using three disabled vans to bar the way. Civil Rights Organization, a group led by Lakota Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore “It was to hold space and connect our issue to elders who had asked AIM for armed protection

14 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS against a repressive tribal government in Pine Land theft brought material deprivation. miners attacked the earth, drawing 10 percent Ridge in 1973. Tilsen’s parents met during the The Lakota and Dakota people inhabit several of the world’s gold supply from its ore-rich veins. siege, when federal officers fired more than of the poorest counties in the . The rise of automobiles and the tourist 200,000 rounds of ammunition at Native Tilsen’s home, Oglala Lakota County, is one of industry created new fortunes for the interlopers. protesters — killing two, including Bissonette them. “As Indigenous people, we have the lowest In the 1920s, South Dakota’s first state historian, — at the very site where the 7th Cavalry, George economic conditions of anyone in America,” he Doane Robinson, proposed building a massive Armstrong Custer’s former regiment, massacred said. Native American children in South Dakota sculpture to attract visitors to the remote loca- hundreds of Lakota Ghost Dancers in 1890. All have the lowest rates of economic mobility in tion. But finding an artist willing to undertake that happened just down the road from Tilsen’s the nation, according to a 2017 Annie E. Casey such a feat wasn’t easy. Robinson had been home. Foundation report. moved by the recently constructed memorial Raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the “A more ripe and rank case of dishonorable at Stone Mountain in Georgia, which honored birthplace of AIM, Tilsen spent his summers in dealings will never, in all probability, be found the defenders of the Civil War’s inglorious “Lost Pine Ridge, where he was born, immersed in the in our history.” That is how a 1980 U.S. Supreme Cause.” He contacted its flamboyant sculptor, movement. He returned to the reservation at 19 Court opinion described the theft of the Black Gutzon Borglum, who quickly accepted the offer. to live and work. “The Black Hills issue is part of Hills from the “Sioux Nation of Indians.” The Mount Rushmore came to South Dakota my identity,” he said. court awarded the tribe $102 million; today, with by way of a Southern, white supremacist ideol- Also down the road from Tilsen’s home, just the accumulated interest, it comes to nearly $2 ogy that blended easily with the West’s sense outside of Porcupine on the Pine Ridge Indian billion. But the Lakota position remains unwav- of Manifest Destiny. Borglum himself was a Reservation, is KILI, “the voice of the Lakota ering, as shown by the popular slogan, “The bridge: The child of a polygamist Mormon Nation” — the radio station his parents helped Black Hills are not for sale!” The relationship family of Danish settlers in Idaho, he made a jumpstart in the 1990s. A tribal radio station was with He Sapa cannot be translated into money. name for himself as an artist in service of the among the original demands behind the 71-day The land itself, the tribes said, must be returned. Ku Klux Klan. On Thanksgiving Day 1915, the armed takeover of Wounded Knee; activists so-called “Invisible Empire” was reborn in a hoped that publicly broadcasting council meet- BEFORE JACKHAMMERS and dynamite chis- torchlight ceremony atop Stone Mountain. The ings would end tribal government corruption. eled the heads of presidents into the cliff faces, site is still sacred to the Klan and Confederate In Lakota Country — where the shadows of miners cut deep into the Black Hills, in search of sympathizers. The next year, the Daughters of history linger, on the land and in one’s family a subterranean El Dorado. the Confederacy drafted a plan to commemorate tree — a new generation is continuing the fight. Custer, a Civil War veteran turned Indian the occasion with a memorial. By 1923, Borglum The loss of the Black Hills has come to represent fighter, discovered gold in 1874 near the town was a trusted Klan insider who served on the all the injustices Lakota people have suffered. that now bears his name. In a treaty signed at Kloncilium, the highest decision-making body, “It’s not just about physical land back,” Tilsen Fort Laramie just six years earlier, the United second only to the Grand Wizard. He was a natu- said. “It’s also about undoing what was done to States had pledged that a reservation — a 35 ral candidate for the Stone Mountain job. us as a people.” million-acre “permanent home” encompassing The Klan hardened Borglum’s strident the entirety of what is currently the half of South xenophobia and belief in European — meaning Dakota west of the Missouri River — would be Nordic — racial superiority. But Stone Mountain “set apart for the absolute and undisturbed use was too geopolitically specific — too distinctly and occupation” of the Sioux Nation. A bloody Southern — to capture his grand national- war erupted over Custer’s trespass into treaty ist vision. He saw the Black Hills as ideal, “so territory, a sin for which he and 250 of his men near the center of our country or so suitable for paid with their lives. By the time the dust settled, (a) colossal sculpture.” His monument would the place was booming. “symbolize the principles of liberty and freedom In 1877, under the administration of on which the nation was founded,” he later wrote. President Ulysses S. Grant, the former Union More fundamentally, it would assert white general, the 1868 treaty was abrogated. The possession, not just over the Black Hills but Black Hills were seized, the people threatened over the entire continent. The ancient granite with starvation. Prospectors hoping to strike hills would bear both gold and glory for the paydirt moved in, and frontier towns like United States with the busts of four of its presi- Deadwood — notorious for their trade in women, dents. In a letter to Robinson, Borglum warned gambling and violence — sprang up, forming that if his masterpiece wasn’t constructed the bulwark of white settlement. For 125 years, properly, “we will only wound the mountain, offend the Gods, and deserve condemnation for posterity.” In 1936, an awestruck Franklin Delano Roosevelt echoed Borglum as he gazed The head of George Washington is carved into the side of up at the nearly completed shrine. Its size, its a mountain at the Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota’s Black Hills (opposite). “permanent beauty” and “permanent impor- tance” meant that “ten thousand years from NDN Collective President Nick Tilsen, 38, in his office in now” Americans would meditate in reverence November in Rapid City, South Dakota. Tilsen is facing charges for his role in protesting President Trump’s visit here. Almost a century later, Trump proclaimed, to Mount Rushmore in July (left). “Mount Rushmore will stand forever as an eternal

JANUARY 2021 15 tribute to our forefathers and to our freedom.” Lakota holy man, climbed the monument and a banner that read “Red Power — Indian Land.” The crowd chanted, “USA! USA! USA!” sat on Teddy Roosevelt’s head, “giving him a Frustrated by getting no response from the headache, maybe.” Native students and activ- federal government, Lizzy Fast Horse, a Lakota LAKOTA PEOPLE HAVE occupied the Black ists had taken over Alcatraz Island in the San grandmother and one of the camp’s founders, Hills for generations. In 1970, at the height of the Francisco Bay a year earlier. Lame Deer was at and some accomplices decided to take back the Red Power movement, John (Fire) Lame Deer, a a protest camp on top of the monument, with Black Hills themselves. Fast Horse was among those calling for the United States to return 200,000 acres of Oglala Lakota land that had been confiscated during World War II for a gunnery and bombing range. She and two other Lakota women hid from park rangers and police, braving lightning storms as they made their way up the mountain. “We got braver and braver, and now we’re not afraid of anyone,” Fast Horse said at the time. Lee Brightman, the Lakota founder of United Native Americans, explained the camp’s goals: “We want payment for the Black Hills, for all the minerals mined, for the timber taken out. And we want our sacred mountains back.” Those demands go far back, according to , the first Oglala woman spokesperson for the Sioux Nation Treaty Council. “It was illegal to talk about the (1868) treaty” when the treaty council formed in 1894, “just like the language was prohibited, just like our religion was prohibited by the American government.” But times have changed: White Face believes that her grandmother’s treaty knowledge, which survived government suppression, can be useful for the “land back” campaign. This history is why Nick Tilsen loves the slogan. “You have elders saying ‘land back,’ ” he chuckles. “You want your land back? Hell yeah, I want my land back. I’ve been wanting my land back.” No one owns the phrase, he said; it “has lived in the spirit of the people for a long time.” “Not only has this been a long generational battle, it is also part of this current moment,” said Krystal Two Bulls. The Northern and Oglala Lakota military veteran heads NDN Collective’s LandBack campaign, which was launched last Indigenous Peoples’ Day with the goal of returning public lands in the Black Hills to the Oceti Sakowin, starting with Mount Rushmore. “Public land is the first manageable bite,” she said, “then we’re coming for every- thing else.” This would usher an era of free and prior informed consent; tribes would form

Sioux Nation Treaty Council spokeperson Charmaine White Face, 73, at home in November in Rapid City, South Dakota (top left).

Laura Ten Fingers, 18, initiated calls to protest President Trump’s visit to Mount Rushmore in July (left).

16 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS meaningful partnerships to promote land stew- ardship and equitable housing, and address more than a century of wrongdoings. In the Black Hills, the idea has traction. In 1987, New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley, a former New York Knicks basketball player, introduced legislation drafted by Lakota people to return 1.3 million acres, targeting Park Service land, not private land. The bill died in committee. Two Bulls sees land return as a moral issue more than a legal one. It’s not about owner- ship, she said, but stewardship. “As a Northern Cheyenne woman, part of my original instruc- Long revered by many Indigenous peoples, tions is to be in relationship with the land as a the Black Hills are now also at the center of the steward.” NDN Collective’s LandBack campaign. To Laura Ten Fingers, the idea of ownership doesn’t entirely mesh with Lakota relations with the land. “To me, ‘land back’ means that — it’s not that we own the land,” she said. “The land long-standing tensions between tribes and the controversial “riot boosting” law, which would owns you. It’s a way of ensuring it’s protected state of South Dakota. Lakota leaders saw his have created civil and criminal penalties for and preserved by the people who originally took visit as retaliation for their opposition to the individuals who supported any “incitement to care of it, which is us.” Keystone XL pipeline and to the state’s lack of riot,” claiming it was necessary to address prob- response to the coronavirus pandemic. That May, lems caused by “out-of-state rioters funded by FROM HER HOME in Oglala on the Pine Ridge Noem had threatened “legal action” against the out-of-state interests.” Reservation, Ten Fingers watched the George tribal health checkpoints set up to curtail the This was the battle Tilsen found himself in. Floyd protests erupt in Minneapolis and spread spread of the virus, claiming they interfered He testified against the law at the state Capitol across the nation. “The momentum of the Black with traffic. “We will not apologize for being an and was a named plaintiff in the ACLU lawsuit Lives Matter movement also created (a space) for island of safety in a sea of uncertainty and death,” that successfully challenged its constitutionality. Indigenous sovereignty,” she said. Inspired, she Harold Frazier, chairman of the Cheyenne River “We helped water down the current riot boost- and her friends put out the first call to protest Sioux Tribe, wrote to Noem in reply. Her state ing law, to make it as weak as possible,” Tilsen Trump’s visit. has some of the nation’s highest rates of infec- explained. He saw it as a win for free speech and Trump’s visit to Mount Rushmore — like tion and death. South Dakota backed down. treaty rights, as well as the right to legally protest his rally the day after Juneteenth in Tulsa, The Cheyenne River, Rosebud and Oglala Keystone XL. “It’s a reminder,” Tilsen said, “as Oklahoma, the site of an infamous race massa- Sioux tribal chairmen all wrote letters protest- Indigenous people, we’re fighting for justice not cre in 1921 — was part of a series of raucous ing Trump’s visit, citing public health concerns just for ourselves but also on behalf of millions campaign rallies aimed at firing up his base and and the continued indifference toward Lakota of Americans.” In March 2020, Noem signed a provoking his political opponents. treaty rights. In separate statements, Frazier and revised version of the law. “Our nation is witnessing a merciless Julian Running Bear, the president of the Oglala campaign to wipe out our history, defame our Sioux Tribe, demanded the return of the Black IT WAS AT MOUNT RUSHMORE in the early heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate Hills. They also called for the removal of Mount 1870s that , the Oglala holy man, had a our children,” Trump warned the crowd at Rushmore itself, which Frazier described as a vision of He Sapa: “From the mountains flashed the base of Mount Rushmore, the day before “brand on our flesh (that) needs to be removed,” all colors upwards to the heavens.” He was at the Independence Day last year. He blamed “cancel adding, “I am willing to do it free of charge to the center of the world atop Tunkasila Sakpe, the Six culture” — which he called “the very definition United States, by myself if I must.” Grandfathers. The mountain would be named of totalitarianism” — for the recent toppling of But history moves on. In November, for Black Elk’s vision that day. He saw a great Confederate statues and monuments and other Trump lost his bid for re-election; the Rapid hoop made up of many hoops of a people united. controversial historical figures. A week earlier, City Council voted to return 1,200 acres in the In the center grew a flowering tree, he recalled, he signed an executive order that condemned Black Hills to the Oceti Sakowin; and in Rapid “and I saw that it was holy.” the destruction as the actions of “rioters, arson- City, Lakota activists set up Camp Mni Luzahan In August, a magistrate judge ruled ists, and left-wing extremists,” calling for the to house Native people living on the streets so that there was evidence for the trial to move arrest of vandals who destroyed federal property that they don’t die of exposure during the harsh forward. Tilsen hopes his case and the LandBack and their imprisonment for up to 10 years. winter months. campaign will have a similar catalyzing effect, “Do you know, it’s my dream to have my face But the pipeline protests have also sharp- not only for the land-return movement but for on Mount Rushmore,” Trump told South Dakota ened disputes between tribes and the state. the restored dignity of his people. “It was power- Republican Gov. Kristi Noem when they first South Dakota lawmakers feared another ful,” Tilsen said, remembering that day. “There met in the Oval Office. “He was totally serious,” massive protest like Standing Rock in 2016. So was between 100 and 200 of us. It must have felt Noem, who invited Trump to Mount Rushmore, the Legislature criminalized pipeline-related like there were thousands of us, because you told the Sioux Falls Argus Leader in 2018. protests ahead of the construction of the could feel that spiritual power from the hills. The Trump’s arrival only inflamed the Keystone XL pipeline. Noem introduced a ancestors were waiting for us to go up there.”

JANUARY 2021 17 REPORTAGE

Sea change Decades have passed and millions of dollars have been spent, yet little has been done to restore the Salton Sea. But California officials say the future is bright.

BY MARK OLALDE | PHOTOS BY METTE LAMPCOV

RED FLAGS FLUTTER outside the schools Juarez, a mother of three and active volun- daughter began suffering headaches and respi- in Salton City, California, when the air quality teer at the schools, often received calls to pick up ratory issues. Finally, Juarez got a runny nose is dangerous. Dust billows across the desert, her 7-year-old son, Lihan, when sudden nose- and sore throat that lasted for days when the blanketing playgrounds and baseball diamonds, bleeds soiled his outfits. But she couldn’t leave dust blew. the swirling grit canceling recess and forcing her job, harvesting vegetables in the fields that Juarez blames California’s largest lake, the students indoors. Visibility is so poor you can’t form square oases in the Coachella Valley. So she Salton Sea. Only a few miles east of ’s see down the block. Those days worry Miriam began packing fresh clothes for him every day, neatly kept house, it’s a cobalt-blue patch on Juarez the most. before COVID-19 halted in-person learning. “It’s Southern California’s Colorado Desert, a roughly OK. Just go to the office,” she’d say. “The ladies 325-square-mile oblong oddity that’s twice as This story is a collaboration between will help you change.” salty as the ocean. High Country News and The Desert Sun, The doctor’s diagnosis was unclear: Perhaps It’s also toxic — a looming environmental part of the USA Today Network. Lihan had allergies. Then, Juarez’s 17-year-old and public health disaster. The Salton Sea’s

18 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS shoreline is receding, exposing a dusty lakebed playa. It’s been almost two decades since an Miriam Juarez and two of her children, Lihan and known as the “playa.” This sandy substance agreement was signed in 2003, committing the Lissette Lopez, near their home in Salton City, California (above). The children have suffered from holds a century’s worth of agricultural runoff, Imperial Irrigation District, the Colorado River’s health issues that Juarez attributes to the poor air including DDT, ammonia, possibly carcinogenic largest user, to conserve water that once flowed quality around the Salton Sea. herbicides like trifluralin and other chemicals. from farms into the lake and send it to other A seagull reflected in the discolored shoreline of the Its windborne dust travels across Southern Cali- districts. Knowing the lake would recede, the Salton Sea. The scum found here can be toxic (facing). fornia and into Arizona, but nearby commu- state committed to mitigating the health and nities — many of them populated by Latino environmental impacts. The state and federal farmworkers — bear the heaviest burden. governments have spent more than $70 million The problem isn’t new. Yet California, so far, largely on salaries and studies. Meanwhile, though largely responsible for fixing it, has the high-water mark has fallen nearly 10 feet, barely touched the 27 square miles of exposed and salinity continues to rise.

JANUARY 2021 19 “For a very long time, the enormity of the challenge at the sea was frankly overwhelming.”

The politicians admit they’re years behind schedule, but they’re adamant that the course has been corrected, the money is being put to good use and the future is bright. Currently, 16 state employees are planning projects to tamp down dust or rebuild wetlands, and 26 new posi- tions will be approved in the latest budget are filled. They’ve also nearly finished permitting projects that will cover 30,000 acres, a little more than a third of the area that could eventually be exposed. Assembly Member Eduardo Garcia, D-Coachella, who represents the region surrounding the lake, is optimistic. “I believe 2021 will be a new story of the state of Califor- nia living up to its responsibility and liability in terms of investing in what it signed up for at the ens the waterway. In response to competing until 2014 or 2015,” said Wade Crowfoot, secre- Salton Sea,” he said. demands, the 2003 agreement diverted water tary of the Natural Resources Agency, the lead Still, the state must overcome funding from the Imperial Valley. That meant that the department tasked with restoring the sea. issues, disagreements with the feds, permitting lake’s level was guaranteed to drop. So, in 2007, That one completed site, the Bruchard Road bottlenecks and decades of inertia. the state released a sweeping proposal with an Dust Suppression Project, looks like someone $8.9 billion price tag — unfortunately, just as tried to farm the surface of the moon. Tractors FOR YEARS, THE GOVERNMENT stood still. the Great Recession took hold. “Folks got stick- dug long, straight furrows through the white, Over tens of thousands of years, as it mean- er-shocked and did not really pursue a full reha- sandy playa to catch the windblown dust. But dered across the West, the Colorado River occa- bilitation-restoration approach,” Garcia said. more expensive wetland habitat restoration is sionally filled the Salton Sea. The lake’s most Still, the agreement included 15 years of needed; the lake has long been an important recent iteration formed between 1905 and 1907, inflows to temporarily control salinity while the feeding ground along the Pacific Flyway, a when an engineering disaster diverted the river state decided on a plan. By late 2020, the Califor- migratory bird route on the Western Seaboard. into the basin. It has since been fed largely by nia Natural Resources Agency had completed In order to “fix” the sea, government agen- agricultural runoff from the Imperial and Coach- one dust-suppression project covering a mere 112 cies, led by the state, will need to flood, plough or ella valleys. It soon became clear that salinity acres; the goal for the end of that year was 3,800 plant tens of thousands of acres to control dust levels would continue increasing. Since then, acres. “For a very long time, the enormity of the and rebuild habitat. They’re racing against the millions more people have begun relying on the challenge at the sea was frankly overwhelming, clock. An estimated 131 square miles of playa will Colorado River, even as climate change threat- and there was very little action at the state level be dry and exposed to the air by the time the lake

20 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS reaches a degree of equilibrium — meaning the As of late November, state agencies had A dock sits where the water from the Salton Sea used inflow from three rivers and agricultural runoff used about $53 million, most of it going to to reach. Now the Desert Shores, California, area has a stagnant pool of water left at the bottom of the will maintain a smaller lake — in 2047. ledger entries, including “studies and planning former canals (facing). For a shallow body of water, the Salton Sea activities,” “staffing and other design costs” and holds a large amount of sunk costs. Years of “annual surveys to monitor bird and fish popu- A tilapia skeleton serves as a reminder of the die-offs that have become common in the Salton Sea. As studies, salaries and office supplies have been lations. Glaring zeros marked the “expended” water levels have fallen, salinity levels and levels of purchased, but few shovels have been put to column next to construction budgets. toxins have increased (top). work. Years of indecisiveness mixed with land-ac- Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Calif., on the banks of the But Arturo Delgado, an assistant secre- cess and permitting issues have bogged down diminished Salton Sea. Ruiz grew up in the area, tary with the Natural Resources Agency and the process; the state’s own efforts to clean up and has worked to bring lawmakers’ attention to the the state’s Salton Sea czar, pointed out that a the ecological disaster got stuck in the compli- troubled lake since he returned to the area to practice medicine (above). portion of the more than $350 million set aside ance process. “Frankly, the permitting is prob- for the lake — 99% of it from bonds — needed ably more expensive right now than the actual to be spent sorting out permits and access to a projects,” said Tina Shields, water department complex checkerboard of state, tribal, federal manager at the Imperial Irrigation District, and private land. “The bulk of the funding that which, separate from the state, completed about has been appropriated to date for the Salton Sea 2,000 acres of dust suppression on its own land program has not been spent,” he said. around the lake.

JANUARY 2021 21 The state is appropriating some funds, but Garcia said he’ll reintroduce his bill in 2021. tice medicine after studying at Harvard, and he the federal government has been slow to pitch For now, the state lacks a better funding still wears gym shoes with his suits, as if he’s in. The U.S. Department of Agriculture kicked in plan. “We don’t have the reserves that we had about to run into the emergency room. Ruiz, about $8 million for dust-suppression projects, prior to COVID-19,” Garcia said. “That money who was struck by the high rates of respiratory and over the past five years, the Bureau of Recla- has been invested in our emergency response.” illnesses in the area, compares the lake to a mation spent about $11 million on water-quality patient “in need of triage.” monitoring, wetlands projects along polluted IF SALTON SEA RESTORATION were to rein- A 2019 study conducted by researchers rivers that empty into the lake, and studies on vigorate the Pacific Flyway, it would likely begin from the University of Southern California’s the feasibility of using salty water for habitat at the wetlands around Red Hill Bay on the lake’s medical school estimated that nearly one in restoration. southeastern corner, where various agencies four elementary school children in northern When the Natural Resources Agency is are constructing new habitat. An October visit Imperial County, the area nearest to the Salton finally ready for large-scale builds, the budget found it far from inspiring. A flat patch of dirt Sea’s exposed and emissive playa, suffered from could get in the way. Individual construction covered several hundred dry acres, dotted with asthma, about three times the national average. sites are expensive, with one 4,000-acre project a few dead trees. A sign, complete with typos, “Exposing this population to more and more poor set to break ground in 2021 costing an estimated showed a hopeful rendering of a functioning air quality — in particular, particulate matter $200 million. Another 160-acre design will cost wetland and promised: “Estimated construction small enough to penetrate the lung-blood barrier $20 million. Cleanup along the New River, one in 2016.” that also carries toxins like arsenic, selenium of three small waterways flowing into the lake, Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Calif., introduced the and pesticides — would be devastating to the comes with a $28 million bill. federal Salton Sea Public Health and Environ- public’s health,” Ruiz said. And while California regularly calls on mental Protection Act in November to stream- Ruiz said that divergent visions had stalled bonds to fund large projects, that money can’t line permitting and unlock additional federal progress, while egos got in the way. Since enter- be used for operations and maintenance. Crow- dollars. He acknowledged the delays, but called ing Congress in 2013, he has tried to rally local foot acknowledged that the state lacks a mecha- the Red Hill Bay Project “proof of concept that lawmakers and called on the federal govern- nism to fund long-term monitoring and upkeep. we can get a shovel-to-ground project started,” ment to take a more active role. Juarez, in Salton At the beginning of 2020, Gov. Gavin Newsom adding, “My number-one goal was to break City, welcomes the efforts but believes that if promised an additional $220 million, but that ground on a project to rip that inertia to pieces this problem affected a wealthier, whiter area was predicated on a bond. When the pandemic and to start building momentum.” like Palm Springs, it would’ve been addressed hit, that idea and a parallel measure Garcia intro- The son of farmworkers, Ruiz grew up just already. It’s a sentiment her elected represen- duced in the Legislature both died, although miles from the lake. He returned home to prac- tatives share. So, she asked, “Why is nothing getting done?” In 2020, the Imperial County Air Pollu- tion Control District slapped the state and feds with notices of violation for failing to complete dust-control projects. The Imperial Irrigation District wants the state to act, too, citing the 2003 water transfer agreement. California poli- ticians argue the federal government needs to step up because the Bureau of Reclamation owns much of the land underneath the lake. The feds insist they occupy a supporting role, and agency heads from Reclamation and Fish and Wildlife refused to attend a September congressional hearing to discuss the government’s role in cleaning up the lake. The people in Desert Shores, Salton City and other towns around the retreating lake are still waiting. For Juarez, who began working in the fields when she was just 15, the clock is tick- ing on the American dream her family built in the California desert. It’s difficult to find hope in stepwise permit approvals while dust fights through cracks in her home. She takes her chil- dren to the doctor every six months and worries about Lihan. “I’m nervous, and I’m scared to see my son like that,” Juarez said. She doesn’t want to move away but is finally TK caption here. Photographer name / Image Source A man stands near a former boat launch on a canal of California’s Salton Sea. A drop in the water level has severed the considering it. “I don’t want to stay here and see canal from the sea and left it a stagnant, mosquito-infested pool. my kids sick,” she said.

22 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS REPORTAGE Hundreds of such boats are strewn point of a useful life for most boats along Alaska’s coast, where they — according to the Alaska-based can become navigational hazards McKinley Research Group. or dangerously alluring destina- In 2017, cast-off boats caught tions: In 2017, two people who were the attention of the Pacific States/ trying to reach the Lumberman British Columbia Oil Spill Task Abandoned boats pose died when their skiff overturned. Force, an intergovernmental Abandoned boats can also damage group that promotes coordination problems above and below habitat and leach toxic materials, in addressing oil spills. The task such as lead paint, asbestos and force labeled derelict and aban- the waves household cleaners, threatening doned vessels a “critical, emerging coastal environments. Each West issue” and established a work group An 80-year-old tugboat in Juneau illustrates the cost Coast state would need over $20 to explore the problem. “There is of dealing with vessel-littered coastlines. million to handle the backlog, and a strong sense from everybody close to $5 million annually to who deals with the issue that it is BY VICTORIA PETERSEN address the ongoing problem. On getting worse pretty much every- Alaska’s remote shorelines, these where (on the West Coast),” said costs can double. Hilary Wilkinson, an environmen- There are many reasons a boat tal consultant in Washington who may be abandoned: The owner can helps lead the task force and chairs die or become unable to continue its abandoned vessel work group. the boat’s upkeep, or the cost of The work group recommends either maintenance or disposal that states look to Washington, can be prohibitive. “People gener- which is considered to have a ally don’t walk away from the model boat-disposal program — nicer boats that have value,” said one focused on prevention, owner Matthew Creswell, harbormaster responsibility and generating at Juneau’s Docks and Harbors. funds for removal. Any owner who “They walk away from the boats cannot pay for disposal of a derelict, costing an arm and a leg to get rid but floating, vessel that’s less than of.” 45 feet long can ask the Washington The cost of removal varies by Department of Natural Resources a vessel’s size and location. On to remove it for free. The program Alaska’s expansive coasts, where handles about 20 boats annually, infrastructure is sparse, prices are using money collected from vessel particularly high. The Lumberman, registration fees. for example, could be discarded Adequate funding is a “major The Lumberman sits in Gastineau Channel at low tide in June 2018. and hauled to a landfill, or trans- obstacle” for every West Coast David Purdy / KTOO ported by barge to Seattle, but state, according to the work either option would cost between group’s findings. Aaron Timian, $250,000 and $400,000, Creswell Alaska’s abandoned and derelict THE LUMBERMAN, a 107-foot Lumberman from the tidelands. said. Sinking is a bargain in compar- vessel coordinator, said the state World War II-era steel-hull tugboat, Fearing property damage, the city ison, but it will still cost Juneau is still developing ways to secure has been floating at the quiet of Juneau took responsibility for Docks and Harbors over $100,000, funds. In response to mounting cruise ship dock in Juneau for the historic tug and towed it to the for towing, removing trash and issues caused by vessels like the months, awaiting a watery grave. cruise ship dock. In late October, stripping toxic lead paint from the Lumberman, the state passed Abandoned for nearly a decade, Juneau got permission from the vessel. “It’s not a common method,” legislation in 2018 establishing the Lumberman was moored in Environmental Protection Agency Creswell said. “But in this case with the program that Timian now Juneau’s Gastineau Channel in to get rid of the boat by scuttling the Lumberman, (scuttling) was the leads. The law, which requires the early 2000s by its last owner, it offshore, about 170 miles from most cost-effective method.” boats longer than 24 feet to have a Brenden Mattson. Two years ago, the city. This spring, weather Juneau discards about a dozen title, simplified the impoundment the 192-ton tugboat’s anchor line permitting, city officials will open boats annually. Most are smaller process and added civil penal- broke, stranding it on state tide- a six-inch valve on the ship, allow- than the Lumberman and easier ties and enforcement authority. lands and creating a jurisdictional ing it to sink 8,400 feet to the ocean to remove and salvage locally. But The paper trail should also make hot potato for city, state and Coast floor. long-abandoned boats are piling it easier for authorities to track Guard officials as they debated how This is an uncommon way up: By 2025, Alaska’s fleet will down owners. While it’s too soon to dispose of the vessel. to deal with a common problem include more than 3,000 vessels to tell if it will be effective, Creswell Then, last winter, a high tide in coastal areas: what to do with between 28 and 59 feet long that said, “It’s totally a step in the right and forceful winds pushed the abandoned and derelict vessels. are over 45 years old — past the direction.”

JANUARY 2021 23 FACTS & FIGURES LABOR- Outside money NON-LABOR BASED INCOME In the most expensive housing markets, a INCOME good portion of the money paying for that housing comes from trust funds, invest- ments, and other income from outside US AVERAGE the market.

The Zoom boom TETON COUNTY, WYOMING Remote workers are flocking to Western towns. “A tax haven with a view” Jackson Hole Property Group’s description of BY JONATHAN THOMPSON Teton County, Wyoming, which has no state income tax, no real estate transfer tax, and relatively low property taxes. $2.18 billion IN THE SPRING OF 2020, FIS driving home prices to astronomical Projected overall amount spent on real estate in Teton County this year, Worldpay, a payment-processing levels and putting homeownership shattering the previous record of $1.6 billion set in 2007. company, sent more than 200 even further out of reach for the $42.3 million of its Durango, Colorado-based typical working-class person. Amount by which the University of Wyoming had to cut its budget this year employees home to work remotely, The telecommuter-migration due to a statewide economic crisis driven by drops in coal, oil, and natural gas in order to stem the spread of the is just one of many reasons behind severance tax and sales tax revenues. The university will cut 80 positions, raise novel coronavirus. Even when the current real estate craze. Rock- tuition and is considering eliminating a number of academic programs. pandemic-avoidance measures bottom interest rates have also $65.4 million were loosened over the summer contributed, along with wealthy Revenue that could have been generated in 2020 by a 3% real estate transfer and many workplaces filled back investors seeking refuges during tax on Teton County sales, alone. up, the 81,000-square-foot building tumultuous times. “It’s clear that remained dark. Then, in November, many buyers are being driven out of the Jacksonville, Florida-based large cities by both COVID-19 and company announced that the staff civil unrest,” wrote the authors of SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO FLAGSTAFF, ARIZONA would continue to work remotely, the Jackson Hole Report, regarding and that the Durango building the recent uptick in homes priced 9,743 $480,000 — the largest of its kind in town — over $3 million. “Most have been Approximate number of net jobs Median home listing price as of lost in Santa Fe, New Mexico, December 1, 2020. would close for good. contemplating a move for some time, between February and October 2020. This phenomenon — one-time and felt that now was the right time.” 19.7% cubicle workers becoming full-time The Zoom economy has come 18.9% Poverty rate in Flagstaff, Arizona, telecommuters, liberated from at Durango from two directions. Poverty rate in Santa Fe County. metro area corporate headquarters — deprived The housing market went berserk $1.36 million 17.4 Durango of one of its largest private in the third quarter of 2020, and Average home sales price in Santa Income inequality ratio* in employers and has driven up office the median home price shot up Fe for the month of October 2020. Coconino County, Arizona, home of vacancy rates nationwide. Yet at the to about twice the amount that a Flagstaff same time, it is also fueling housing median-income earner could afford. booms in so-called “Zoom towns,” Meanwhile, economic development Durango included, as the born- officials are trying to figure out what TRUCKEE, CALIFORNIA again remote workers seek out to do with a giant, empty office more desirable areas. building. One option: Convert it 550 Zoom towns are scattered into affordable housing. Number of homes sold at prices over $1 million in the Tahoe-Truckee, across the United States, but the California, real estate market during the first 10 months of 2020. The previous 12-month record was 386 in 2018. most popular ones seem to be small- to mid-sized, amenity-rich 15 Income inequality ratio* for Nevada County, California, home of Truckee. communities, with plenty of public Sources: Redfin, a national real estate land nearby, from Bend, Oregon, brokerage firm; Headwaters Economics; *Mean income for the highest quintile (top 20%) divided by the mean income to Flagstaff, Arizona, along with National Association of Realtors; US for lowest quintile (bottom 20%). The US income inequality ratio is 8.4. a whole bunch of best-place-to- Census Bureau; Center on Budget live-list towns. In most cases, their and Policy Priorities; Jackson Hole Real Estate Report; Durango Land and real estate markets were already Homes; Tahoe Mountain Realty; Zillow; overheated. But they exploded in the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; wake of the pandemic’s first wave, University of Wyoming.

24 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS Median home sales price, 2018-2020

National Bend, Ore. Bonner County, Idaho Flagstaff, Ariz. Santa Fe, N.M. Truckee, Califo.

A post- pandemic upswing Most Western real estate markets were gradually climbing Luxury boom when the pandemic $1.75 million hit. They slumped High-dollar property during the spring and markets saw the biggest then shot up in the upswing in 2020, with $1.5 million summer. The number record-breaking home of sales fell in the fall sales and prices in the due to fewer homes over-$3-million category. $1.25 million on the market, but prices have continued to climb. $1 million Teton County, Wyo. Summit County, Utah

January 2018 July 2018 January 2019 July 2019 January 2020 July 2020

Monthly residential sales, Teton County, Wyo. Gunnison County, Colo. Summit County, Utah

2020 Los Angeles, Calif. 80 Bonner County, Idaho Out of reach Curry County, Ore. Nationwide, the middle class cannot afford housing, but Zoom towns in 60 Santa Fe, N.M. the Western U.S. are among the least Gunnison County, Colo. affordable. 2016 Flagstaff, Ariz. 40 MEDIAN HOUSEHOLD INCOME Durango, Colo.

Bend, Ore. MEDIAN HOME SALES PRICE

Truckee, Calif. 20 2018 HOME PRICE THAT A PERSON MAKING Phoenix, Ariz. THE MEDIAN INCOME COULD AFFORD

National January June December $0 $500k $1 million $1.5 million $2 million

JANUARY 2021 25 50TH ANNIVERSARY

HCN in the 1990s

BEYOND THE LORDS OF YESTERDAY

When President Bill Clinton took office in January of 1992, the West’s “Big Three” industries of logging, ranching and mining — dubbed the “Lords of Yesterday” by historian Charles Wilkinson — were already in decline. A new service economy based on the region’s spectacular scenery began to take hold. In 1993, the Clinton administration used Grand Staircase-Escalante National the Endangered Species act to end the unfettered logging of old-growth Monument. Bob Wick / BLM forests in the Pacific Northwest. That same year, Congress ceased giving away public lands to mining prospectors and increased its support for cleaning up polluted sites under the federal “Superfund” program. MONUMENTAL PROTECTION In the rural West, cattle and sheep ranchers still dominated local and state politics, despite an increasingly aggressive campaign against public-lands The Clinton administration took on a more active role in protect- grazing. Though Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt’s attempts to rein in ing the West’s last wild public lands. In 1996, Clinton used the 1906 grazing and charge higher rates for permits were unsuccessful, the new Antiquities Act to create the 1.7 million-acre Grand Staircase-Es- collaborative committees he created finally offered conservationists a seat calante National Monument in Utah. HCN followed the issue closely, at the management table. HCN publisher Ed Marston began a decade-long visiting the small communities in the area and speaking with both dialogue with progressive ranchers like ranchers like Doc and Connie monument opponents and supporters. Despite the vehement contro- Hatfield of Brothers, Oregon, who pioneered sustainable grazing practices versy the designation aroused, Clinton and Babbitt successfully while selling beef to high-end urban markets. created a total of 19 new national monuments and conservation areas.

GRAPPLING WITH GROWTH

In the 1990s, it became clear that the West was changing in fundamental ways. The region was becoming increasingly dependent on tourism as wealthy urban refugees descended on its booming resort towns. HCN produced groundbreaking stories about the recreational empires of Aspen and Vail, and their growing influence — for better or worse — over vast swaths of the West. HCN rode this wave of growth, adding thousands of new readers, and, in 1996, creating one of the earliest news websites.

For more information about HCN’s incredible first 50 years and to support our campaign, visit: hcn.org/50-years

26 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS HCN COMMUNITY

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JANUARY 2021 27 Priscilla McKenna | Boulder, CO Tom & Jane Meacham | Anchorage, AK HCN COMMUNITY Bob Meehan | Portland, OR Mike & Corky Messenger | Thermopolis, WY Susan Armijo & Roger Miller | Nathrop, CO York Miller | Denver, CO Fred Mimmack | Foxfield, CO Steve Mimnaugh | Sandy, UT Angela & William Mink | Napa, CA Laurie Mitchel | College Place, WA John Moeller | Duluth, MN Gina Nania | Rapid City, SD A red pen and Jimmie Newton | Apache creek, NM Geoff O’Gara | Lander, WY Lee Overton | Paonia, CO Jerry Packard | Seattle, WA rosy lenses David C. Parkes | Denver, CO Sumner Parkington | Seattle, WA Dwain & Pam Partee | Grand Junction, CO Sonia L. Perillo | Scottsdale, AZ G. Ray Phillips | Nederland, CO Rodger Pollesch | Hartland, MI Susan Porter Ed and Betsy Marston featured in a 1990 issue of Michael Powers | Berkeley, CA Rolling Stone. Jeffrey Aaronson / Rolling Stone Dale Quakenbush | Longmont, CO Erich Rebenstorf | Sherwood, OR Lee Robinson | Bainbridge Island, WA Rhonda Robles | Jackson, WY Don Rogers | Ridgway, CO We can’t talk about HCN during the 1990s “Coming to work for Ed and Betsy was challenging Lin Rowland | Flagstaff, AZ without talking about the Marstons and their and sometimes scary — the standards, my God! Phil Samuel | Louisville, KY extraordinary legacy. Ed and Betsy, New York But you NEVER felt like no one was in charge. Bryan Scholz | Terrebonne, OR Gerald Sehlke | Idaho Falls, ID transplants, ran the paper from 1983 to 2002, a Those two were firmly in charge. And they really Alan & Mary Shank | Snohomish, WA time when HCN moved beyond its early years taught me how to tell a story. Not such an easy Patricia Sharpe | Santa Fe, NM Rich & Gretchen Sigafoos | Windsor, CO of straightforward environmental advoca- process, but I’ll always treasure the fact that they Daniel Silver | Los Angeles, CA cy and earned its reputation for fair-minded were in my life.” Scott Smidt | Laramie, WY journalism by covering a much wider range of —Lisa Jones, HCN special projects Gail Smith | Fairplay, CO Robert Snow | Tucson, AZ topics. editor ’94-’96, author, writing coach John A. Sproul | El Paso, TX Ed, a former physics professor, was publisher. William Stansbery | Ellensburg, WA Tyrone Steen | Colorado Springs, CO His vision of the West was rooted in the region’s “After laboring for days over my first 200-word Craig Steinmetz & Lisa McVicker | Denver, CO rural communities, yet he also seemed to see the article during an internship in the early ‘90s, I Mark Sterkel | Kanab, UT Peter Sullins | Fallbrook, CA world from 30,000 feet up. He had a knack for handed it in to Betsy. It was back on my desk Barbara A. Svik | Broomfield, CO capturing the truth of the moment in a simple in less than five minutes, shredded by red ink, Toby Thaler & Beckey Sukovaty | Seattle, WA phrase, as in an interview with the local radio with only a few of my original words intact. It was Thomas R. Thompson | Santa Fe, NM Lori Thwaite | Bowie, AZ station, KVNF, shortly before his death in 2018, Betsy Marston’s brutal red pen that taught me Candace Tomlinson | Wheat Ridge, CO when he quipped that, with forests logged-out to write a solid piece without fluff or hyperbole. Warren Truitt | Fair Oaks, CA Virgil Tucker | Boulder, CO and susceptible to climate change, “The Forest Ed was no partisan enviro, but he saw the West Carol Ufford | Deming, NM Service … is just a fire department.” through a more colorful romantic lens than the Nick Ulmer | Georgetown, CO Betsy, who was the half of the duo with a rest of us. He simply loved the big, messy gran- Jill W. Upwall | St. George, UT Linelle Wagner | Hot Springs, MT journalism background, became editor. She deur of history and culture and the grand exper- Jerome Walker & Marcia Williams | Missoula, MT pored over every sentence that went into the iment of public lands that defines the modern Raphael Watts | Ignacio, CO Bob Watts | Pocatello, ID paper, fine-tuning every phrase. Betsy became West. That’s an attitude that we need more than JoAnn Weaver | Portland, OR a legend among the generations of interns who ever in our hyper-partisan times.” Janet Wesse & Steve Eibner | Minden, NV participated in what they proudly described —Ernie Atencio, HCN intern 1993, Nancy White | Spokane Valley, WA Gayl Wiegand | Inkom, ID as HCN’s “journalism bootcamp,” with many Southwest Regional Director, Nation- Chuck & Janet Williams | Durango, CO going on to successful literary, media and oth- al Parks Conservation Association Janet Winniford | Ogden, UT Victoria Winteringham | Vermillion, SD er careers around the region. Betsy still writes Lynn Zonge | Carson City, NV our “Heard Around the West” column. She and

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30 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS (continued from pg. 9) ... of public health at the University of Washington. that they’re more comfortable, or less scared, than they were at the begin- “This data provides the novel opportunity to really see, as we change policy, ning of the pandemic,” said Errett. Peltier noticed that local businesses what happens in the short term.” were reopening and often leaving their doors open — either as an invitation Peltier has retraced the same path through Seattle roughly every three to customers or a means to improve ventilation, or perhaps both. weeks. The route was carefully mapped out using neighborhood census But over the fall, Peltier noted a new phase of the pandemic: the failure of data to examine how socioeconomic status influences business recovery small businesses. While Seattle retail behemoth Amazon and food delivery and neighborhood activity. “We really want to understand what role this apps like DoorDash have seen profits soar during the pandemic, local stores pandemic is going to play in either bringing us closer together economi- and restaurants don’t appear to be doing as well. Signs reminding customers cally, or pushing us further apart,” said Wartman. to mask up or stay distanced have been replaced by closing notices or letters Each drive generates tens of thousands of images, and it will take of thanks to loyal customers. In some cases, storefronts are empty and dark. the researchers years to pore over the details. In addition to clues about “Maybe they’ve just put things in storage,” Peltier said hopefully. “But maybe economic recovery, they’re hoping to analyze people’s behavior in they’re not going to open again.” response to public health measures, everything from compliance with In mid-November, amid a nationwide surge in COVID-19 cases, mask mandates to average group sizes in city parks. Peltier has already Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced a new set of restrictions similar to noticed trends in the various phases. the stay-at-home order at the beginning of the pandemic. The economic and In May, near the pandemic’s start, Seattle was a ghost town. “I had free rein social impacts remain to be seen, but the data Peltier is capturing will likely of the streets,” she said. The researchers looked to landmarks like Seattle’s tell us more — and may even help in future disaster preparation. “I would Harborview Medical Center to observe changes, said Errett. Initially, the area be surprised if this is the last pandemic I see in our lifetime,” said Errett. “I outside the hospital was empty, save a row of triage tents set up to accommo- want my community to know more, so that next time we’re advancing our date the potential surge of COVID-19 patients. At the time, local businesses response, it’s based on what we learned in this pandemic.” were closed, elective surgeries were cancelled, and people generally avoided hospitals unless they had COVID-19 or an acute emergency, so it’s no surprise that car and pedestrian traffic around the hospital was practically nonexis- tent. People were clearly abiding by the city’s stay-at-home order. “Maybe they’ve just put things in Over the summer, as restrictions loosened and weather improved, triage tents were taken down and signs of life emerged. In June, pedestrian and storage. But maybe they’re not car traffic reappeared, and by July, nurses and doctors took breaks outside the hospital, standing alongside people at a nearby bus stop. “You’re seeing going to open again.” people return to spaces around health-care facilities, so one hypothesis is

JANUARY 2021 31 Residences outside of Crested Butte, Colorado. A 2014 economic report found that 52 percent of all residential units in Gunnison County had non-resident property owners.

32 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS SECOND CITIZENS When the pandemic hit, a rural Colorado county kicked out nonresident home owners. They hit back. By Nick Bowlin | Photos by Luna Anna Archey

JANUARY 2021 33 surged since the pandemic as well- to-do people flee cities. Moran’s property, which he bought in 2013, has appreciated: Were he to list his house today, Zillow estimates the value at $4.3 million. When COVID-19 came to the valley, the outbreak was so severe that the 17,400 residents of Gunni- son County — which includes Crested Butte, the valley and a few outlying towns — faced one of the highest rates of cases per capita in the entire country. The county’s response was drastic: On April 3, it directed all visitors, tourists and part-time residents to leave, explic- itly banning non-resident property owners, of which there are more than 4,000. The order, signed by the county’s public health director, cited the strain on local services: “Non-residents, regardless of whether they own a residence in Gunnison County, are imposing unnecessary burdens on health care, public services, first respond- ers, food supplies and other essen- tial services.” Violators could be fined up to $5,000 or jailed for up to 18 months. Moran decided to stay put. He was upset, and he was far from alone. The next day, another Dallas resident with a home in the valley created a private Facebook group, eventually called GV2H & Friends Forum, for Gunnison Valley second-home owners in the area to gather and commiserate. The group swelled quickly to several hundred members. The order was divisive, one person wrote in a comment; it made non-residents feel like Jim Moran’s second home in Crested Butte, Colorado, is a 7,000-plus- “outcasts,” wrote another. Many square-foot mansion. questioned the county’s wisdom in forcing them to travel during the pandemic. Then there were the PRIL 2020, AND THE NOVEL CORONAVIRUS was spreading legal issues. Moran told me that a through the United States. As businesses closed and hospitals filled, key question was: “Can they just tell Jim Moran found himself sheltering in place in Colorado, at his second me I can’t use my property?” home. His mansion has dark wood siding and a jutting patio, and it Some Texans in the group — perches on a bluff above Crested Butte, a small snow globe of a town and there are many; the Gunnison whose brightly painted cottages huddle at the base of mountains at the Valley has been a popular vacation north end of the Gunnison Valley, a long thin basin high in the Rockies. spot for oil-rich Texans since the Moran is from Dallas, Texas, where he managed private equity firms. early 1900s — turned to the office of From his back door, he can ski directly onto Mount Crested Butte, one Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton of Colorado’s iconic ski resorts. Moran speaks quickly and passionately for help. On April 9, Paxton asked and has swept-back silver hair. Housing prices in rural towns have Gunnison County to reconsider,

34A HIGH COUNTRY NEWS arguing that the Texans’ property with Boulder Weekly. rights were being violated. (Soon The town that kicked out after, the Associated Press revealed Van Zandt was changing. The first that several of Paxton’s associates, ski resorts opened in the 1960s, including a college friend and the Keystone Mine closed in 1972, high-dollar campaign donors, own and the town took on a countercul- houses in Crested Butte. This fall, ture vibe. In the 1980s, the county seven of his senior staff accused airport began receiving direct him of taking bribes and using his flights from cities like Houston, office to favor political donors; the Dallas and Atlanta. The area now FBI is now investigating.) draws some of the country’s rich- About a week after the order, est people, including petrochemi- nonresident homeowners received Jim Moran, photographed last cal billionaire Bill Koch — brother cards in the mail from the county. summer behind his house in of industrial tycoons Charles “While full-time residents of Gunni- Crested Butte overlooking and David Koch, the well-known the Crested Butte ski area. son County work to weather the William Woody funders of right-wing political coronavirus health crisis, non-res- causes — who owns a large ranch ident homeowners are ordered to in the county, where he’s built a leave Gunnison County and not the 1870s. Ranchers and home- full-scale reproduction of an imagi- return until further notice,” the steaders followed, motivating the “Non- nary Old West pioneer town. Today, card said. Days later, the county forced removal of Ute tribal bands Crested Butte is clean, bright and backtracked a bit, saying that from land that they had called residents, shaped by tourism, with colorful nonresident homeowners who had home for centuries. A coal mine shops and posh restaurants, such already quarantined in Gunnison opened in 1894 and sustained many regardless as Elk Ave. Prime, which serves $65 could remain. Even so, many felt livelihoods for the first half of the Wagyu steaks. the county had gone too far. Some- 20th century. of whether Gunnison County encom- thing needed to be done. In the valley below, and south passes the Gunnison Valley Jim Moran had an idea. Two toward the town of Gunnison, most they own a and vast stretches of land to the of the three seats on the board of of the land was devoted to ranching. West, where the Rocky Moun- county commissioners, the most In the bottomlands near the Gunni- residence in tains tumble into foothills. It is powerful local governmental son River, ranchers dug ditches and almost 82% federal public land. body, were up for re-election in diverted water, irrigating meadows Gunnison Most of the private land hugs the November. That included Commis- for cattle to graze. In 1901, they Gunnison River and its tribu- sioner Jonathan Houck, who had held the first annual Cattlemen’s County, are taries, which meet the Colorado endorsed the ban. Moran polled the Days Rodeo, which has taken place River, many miles west and over GV2H & Friends Forum about creat- every year since, even during the imposing 3,000 feet of elevation down. The ing a super PAC — an independent pandemic. Agriculture endured area has some of Colorado’s best political spending organization as an economic force. The coal unnecessary fly-fishing, mountain biking and that can receive unlimited dona- mine closed in the 1950s, a victim big game hunting. For decades tions but cannot donate directly of shifting markets. People found burdens now, the county and its businesses to campaigns — to influence the new jobs with the Keystone lead- have promoted this natural beauty county races. The response was zinc mine on Mount Emmons, the on health and catered to outside interest in it. enthusiastic. Moran and other “Red Lady,” a peak that looms above But, in 2001, the county instituted second-home owners set out to Crested Butte. care, public a land-use resolution designed to find and support candidates more In the 1970s, Townes Van restrain development by giving aligned with their interests, people Zandt, the brilliant, troubled song- services, first the county land board oversight who, if elected, would not ban them writer, would ride a horse named of new projects. The goal was to from their property. They thought Amigo across the mountains responders, protect resources — especially they might win a majority on the from Aspen to Crested Butte, over agricultural land and water — and commission. “There has never been Maroon Bells Pass. The town still food supplies prevent unchecked change. And a better opportunity for change,” had a dirt Main Street and several still, people and money poured Moran wrote on April 29, “and we saloons where the musician played and other in. Service industries, such as intend to exploit that to the fullest and drank and brawled late into the outdoor recreation, retail, lodging extent possible.” night. In the end, he was informally essential and restaurants, became the larg- banned from town. It was hard to est employers. Today, nearly 60% THE HILLS ABOVE CRESTED get kicked out of Crested Butte back services.” of the county’s property tax reve- BUTTE, which are layered with then, “but Townes did,” as Steve nue comes from property owners gold, silver and other minerals, Earle, Van Zandt’s friend and play- whose primary residences are else- attracted prospectors in waves in ing partner, recalled in an interview where.

JANUARY 2021 35 Extremes of wealth and of the situation. Lack of an ICU poverty, comfort and labor, charac- meant the sickest patients had to terize the 30 miles between Crested be sent 120 miles over the moun- Butte and the town of Gunnison, at tains to a bigger hospital in the the southern end of the valley. For city of Grand Junction. Tests were Crested Butte property owners available only to those with obvi- and the hundreds of thousands of ous symptoms and risk factors. On annual tourists, Gunnison is often March 28, Gunnison County had just a stop to buy gas and grocer- the sixth-highest concentration of ies. But it’s also home to most of cases per capita in the entire coun- the valley’s low-paid seasonal and try, according to Johns Hopkins service workers, the people who University. serve the food, groom the trails, Gov. Jared Polis shut down run the lifts, and clean the hotels Colorado’s downhill ski resorts on and lodges. March 14, right before spring break, Service jobs often pay poorly, when mountain towns count on less than the lost mining jobs. earning enough to get through the Combined with the decades- slow seasons. The closure hurt. The long influx of outside wealth and local food bank saw an enormous investment, this has spawned increase in demand, especially housing shortages, income from older people and laid-off inequality and an expensive rental service workers. For Ramgoolam, market. According to Headwaters there were more bills to pay than Economics, a nonprofit research money in the bank. His book firm, Gunnison County’s work- distributor required payment for ers devote 32% of their income on a large order made in anticipation average to rent, compared to 19% of spring break. Rent was due on Country Meadows Mobile Home Park in Gunnison, in non-tourism-based economies. Colorado. During the pandemic, rent on lots has been the store, which he runs with his A 2016 county report noted a severe raised from $350 to $425. wife, Danica, and so was his home housing shortage and employment mortgage. Ramgoolam feels fortu- imbalance. Jobs are concentrated nate that he makes a living talking in Crested Butte, where affordable ing aid. Gunnison has several rado’s highest rates of inadequate to people about books every day. housing is scarce. Many workers are sizable mobile home parks on the plumbing, according to Kaiser But when he closed in March, he forced to seek housing in Gunnison, outskirts of town, where much of Health News. Ahonen worked with wondered if he would ever reopen. sending rents skyward. An image the community’s Spanish-speak- a woman who had no running water The lowest point for of this economy is on display early ing population lives, according to in her trailer. She melted snow in a Ramgoolam came in late March, each weekday morning at the Zubkova and other housing advo- frying pan during the winter and when his friend, Mikey Larson, Gunnison bus stop, where a free cates. gravity-flushed her toilet by pour- died — Gunnison County’s first shuttle fills with people employed Inadequate housing impacts ing in water by hand. coronavirus fatality. A beloved in the town’s swankier neighbor older folks on fixed incomes, as member of the community since to the north. Many of the valley’s well as young people in the service TOURISM BROUGHT the coro- the 1980s, Larson owned an epon- Latino residents work these service industry and families packed into navirus to Gunnison County early. ymous pizza shop in Crested Butte. industry jobs; Gunnison’s popula- overcrowded quarters, according The first official case was recorded As news of his death spread, mourn- tion is about 10% Latino, includ- to Loren Ahonen, recently of the on March 10, but many locals think ers covered the shop’s door with ing immigrants from Mexico and regional housing authority. And the virus was present several weeks memorials and hand-written notes. Guatemala and several hundred Gunnison’s cold winters multiply before. “It was the talk of the town,” A former employee remembered Cora, an Indigenous people from the burden on low-income fami- Arvin Ramgoolam, a co-owner of Larson as “an easy-going stoner” northwestern Mexico. lies. Nighttime temperatures can Rumors Coffee House and Townie who treated his workers well. “Members of our immigrant drop below zero for weeks at a time, Books on Crested Butte’s main Ramgoolam told me that when he community clean houses, clean causing exorbitant heating bills for street, said. “But no one was willing and Danica first opened their shop, rooms at the local hotels, work in people living in trailers with insuffi- to admit they were sick.” Larson let them use his kitchen for the restaurants, also do construc- cient insulation or broken windows. Gunnison Valley Health is prep. Ramgoolam can still picture tion jobs, also work at ranches in This creates what Ahonen describes the only hospital in the county. In him in the back, cooking burritos. the area,” said Marketa Zubkova, as an “energy justice” issue: Accord- March, it had 24 hospital beds, few “That’s how small this town is,” a legal representative with the ing to Department of Energy data, ventilators and no intensive care Ramgoolam said. “Someone dies, Hispanic Affairs Project, a west- the lowest-income residents spend unit. An emergency room doctor that’s not a stranger, that’s some- ern Colorado immigrant advocacy the most, relative to their income, I spoke to at the time described one you know.” group that, among other projects, on utility and heating bills. Gunni- multi-day 16-hour shifts as the Jonathan Houck, the county provides legal counsel and hous- son County also has some of Colo- staff struggled to keep control commissioner who backed the

36 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS nonresident ban, was also strug- conversation differently. He says with Texas plates belonging to gling. He was working long days, One woman that he heard Moran out and second-home owners were keyed. coordinating the public health acknowledged his frustration but Resentment simmered. On April 20, response and dealing with business who had stood by the recommendations it boiled over after Crested Butte’s closures, all the while living out of of public health officials. Houck annual “Townie Takeover,” when a small camping trailer in his back- no running admits that the tone of the card sent locals bike around town and smoke yard to quarantine from his wife, to second-home owners was too weed to honor 4/20, the traditional Roanne, and two kids, who were water in abrupt. He values the second-home holiday of stoners everywhere. all showing clear symptoms. owners, he said, and sees them as “Those are the people that don’t Houck has a salt-and-pepper her trailer community members, just like the want the 2nd homeowners in town,” beard and a crooked smile. He seasonal residents and tourists who wrote one person on Facebook. “It’s came from Maryland to Colorado in melted snow visit to hunt, fish or hike, and the all fun and games until the Kung 1990 to rock climb. Eventually, he college students, who often vote Flu rates start to spike again and got into Western Colorado Univer- in a frying elsewhere. He tries, he told me, to then nobody will have anybody sity, in Gunnison, and met Roanne, represent that full spectrum, but to blame but themselves for this,” who was born and raised in Crested pan and tough decisions needed to be made. responded another. Butte. He worked at a coffee shop, “I stand by those decisions,” Houck Not everyone shared this view. fixed bikes at a gear store and did gravity- said. Peter Esposito, a resident and some ranch work. For 12 years, he property owner in Crested Butte taught social studies at an alterna- flushed her AT FIRST, COUNTY OFFICIALS and an energy industry regulatory tive high school before he ventured received the brunt of the second- lawyer, posted a letter in the Face- into politics, eventually serving as toilet by home owners’ ire, but within weeks book group that gently criticized mayor of Gunnison. His backyard, of the ban, the Facebook group’s the backlash against the bike ride. where he quarantined in March, is pouring in sense of grievance expanded to A certain funkiness, he argued, an unmistakable homage to Gunni- include locals they felt didn’t separates Crested Butte from more son County: His fire pit is a mine water by appreciate their presence during buttoned-up Colorado ski towns. boiler, sliced in half, and his fence the pandemic. Several members He saw the Townie Takeover and is old barn wood. An old sign for hand. reported angry stares in grocery a multi-day pagan bacchanal in Gunnison National Forest hangs store parking lots, and a few cars autumn called Vinotok as things nearby. As commissioner, Houck, a Democrat, became the go-to public official for land-use issues, an important role in a county where recreation, ranching and conserva- tion often collide. The local ranch- ing community appreciates him. He works hard for them, advocates for them. He believes ranching’s continued existence is important to Gunnison County. This can make him unpopular with conservation advocates, but, as he told me, his “absolute obligations” are to the citi- zens of Gunnison. In late April, Jim Moran and Houck had a tense phone call about the second-home owner ban. According to Moran, Houck said that his hands were tied and asked, “What do you want me to do about it?” Moran accused Houck and the other commissioners of hiding behind the county public health director who wrote the order. A free bus carries workers from Gunnison to their jobs Moran says the call motivated him. upvalley in Crested Butte. About the only affordable housing in the area can be found at places like the Sherpa “Jonathan Houck is the reason that Motel, shown here, which offers long-term stays, and the the PAC got started,” Moran told me. local mobile home parks. Houck remembers their

JANUARY 2021 37 to embrace. Esposito agreed that made a point to send business his I pointed out Gunnison County’s an artist. Sometimes it noted where the county’s non-resident ban was way. Ramgoolam believes that the housing shortage to Moran, who, someone worked and what they more aggressive than it needed to county made the right decision, but from 2008-2011, was an advisor did. Repercussions were hinted at. be, and he pitched a collaborative other business owners disagree. of the private equity firm Lone “One of those big mouths is sling- approach to bring part- and full- “Our rights to earn a living, Star Funds — the biggest buyer ing drinks for tips — I’ll be sure to time residents together. His advice travel freely, come to our homes of distressed mortgage securities leave her a little tip — ‘Maybe don’t initially got a warm reception, he and to make the best decisions in the world after the 2008 finan- run your mouth so much on social told me. But then it vanished; about the health, safety and risk cial crisis. After the crash, the firm media when you depend on those Esposito said Moran had deleted it. to our family is ours,” the petition acquired billions in bad mortgages people to help pay your bills,’ ” one Esposito concluded that Moran and read, “and not your spigot to turn and aggressively foreclosed on Facebook commenter wrote. a few others had already decided on and off.” thousands of homes, according to Amber Thompson, a longtime on a strategy: “to have a fight,” he The New York Times. I asked Moran server at Crested Butte restaurants, told me. Esposito was later booted SO, WHAT DO WE KNOW about if, compared to locals who struggle was not in the Rogues Gallery, but from the Facebook group, along them, these vocal second-home to pay rent, people who own two or was mentioned later as a possible with several other dissenters. owners? They worked hard for more properties should be consid- addition after several online argu- The second-home owners everything they own. They are ered wealthy. “I think that’s wrong,” ments with Moran and others from found allies in a group of disgrun- clear on this. Their critics, they he replied. the GV2H Facebook group. She gets tled local business owners. Some believe, are often motivated by jeal- Over the summer, I obtained especially mad, she told me, when were angry at the COVID-19 orders, ousy. “I’m certainly not ‘rich.’ I’ve access to the Facebook group. a second-home owner cites a big tip which they saw as heavy-handed, worked for my entire life to have the Beneath the anger at the County as evidence of their authority and and they feared that restrictions properties I own,” wrote one group Commission and the exasperation value. As a server, she said, her job is would last into the summer tourist member. Like many mountain with the local newspapers and adult simply to deliver food. The demand season. In late April , a group called communities, the Gunnison Valley skateboarders, a deeper grievance for gratitude, the resentment when Save Gunnison’s Summer and Busi- attracts a motley mix of younger burned, one that was expressed they don’t receive it: “It’s a way to nesses took out a full-page ad in a residents — seasonal public-land consistently in the group. “Our intimidate people, to make them local paper demanding a faster and employees, ski bums who work money supports all of the people in bow down, and I just won’t do it.” more concrete reopening plan. It the lifts, river guides, college the valley,” wrote one man. “Where The first name on the Rogues included a petition with around graduates who stick around. “Irre- is the appreciation and gratitude for Gallery was Ramgoolam, and he, 200 signatures from local residents sponsible, non-tax-paying, bored the decades of generosity?” wrote too, declined to back down. His and businesses, including some children who will never plant roots another. According to the second- offence was a Facebook post in members of the Facebook group, here successfully,” one Facebook home owners, Gunnison County’s which he asked why Gunnison who were worried their businesses comment called them. In early economic survival and most of its County residents were incapable would not survive the shutdown. April, a second-home owner from residents’ livelihoods depend on of making their own political deci- Some did not. Gunnison Oklahoma City, described “local their economic contributions and sions — a thinly veiled critique of County lost the Majestic, the only adult skateboarders and bikers” continued goodwill. Their dona- the super PAC, which Moran had movie theater in a two-hour radius. picking up donated food at a food tions prop up the local nonprof- registered in May. Shortly after A venerable and much-loved inde- pantry in Crested Butte. “These its. Their broken derailleurs keep learning about the Rogues Gallery, pendent cinema, the Majestic had takers need to pony up or get out,” the bike shops open. In late April, Ramgoolam wrote another Face- three screens and draft beer. The she wrote. “Sadly,” another replied, Moran sent an angry message to a book post, thanking the commu- theater’s landlord had raised the “there are many entitled ‘takers’ local server who had criticized the nity for its support during the rent by 30% the year before, and the here.” second-home owners, posting his pandemic. It included a picture shutdown pushed it over the edge. In a phone interview, Moran note to the GV2H Facebook group of him in a red bandanna, carry- A guitar shop on Gunnison’s Main dissected the implications of the as well. Moran, who had apparently ing a Captain America shield. He Street closed in June. Ramgoolam’s word “rich.” Describing the second- left the server a large tip, called her intended it as defiance. bookstore in Crested Butte teetered home owners as such was a tactic comments “a betrayal of the good “I think (the super PAC) spits in on the brink, but pulled back after employed by the media to “divide people who have been gracious the face of the relationship we have online ordering kicked in, as locals people by social strata,” he told me. to you.” Around that time, there with our neighbors in this valley,” was talk on the Facebook group of Ramgoolam said. “Whether you are compiling a list of locals they consid- a primary homeowner or a second- ered ungrateful. “People who rely on home owner, you respect people’s “Where is the appreciation and others for their livelihoods should opinions and everyone is welcome not bite the hand that feeds them,” to the table, but to overpower every- gratitude for the decades of wrote one second-home owner. one at the table and try to take all The list, which was posted on the chairs for yourself is just wrong.” generosity?” Facebook, became known as the For many in the Facebook Rogues Gallery. It named 14 people group, opinionated locals inter- described as “folks who oppose fered with their ability to relax and A car with Texas license plates parked outside a GV2H.” The list, which was later enjoy the Gunnison Valley. Fun, luxury real estate office in Crested Butte (facing). deleted, included a local pastor and after all, is what brings them to

38 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS Crested Butte. But fun was hard to son likes bluegrass and mountain to Aspen, with 6,000 feet of eleva- come by in 2020. People were irate biking,” she said with a chuckle. tion gain. when the county declared a mask After the June demonstrations, Despite her love of the trails, mandate on June 8. “We come to though, Cobbins felt drained. After Smith was often critical of the decompress, to relax, to regener- a few years in Gunnison, it seemed commission’s handling of tourism, ate!” one person wrote. “That’s a like the end of something. Her lease more so than Houck, her fellow pressure we don’t need! Or don’t was up at the end of July, and she Democrat. The summer saw a WANT, which isn’t a crime either!” decided to move back to Missis- massive wave of in-state visitors This came to a head when sippi. “My journey in Gunnison from metro Denver. The money local demonstrations were held, was done,” she said. “It was such saved many local businesses, but prompted by George Floyd’s kill- a satisfying, bittersweet moment.” the impacts were extreme. Smith ing by Minneapolis police. One said she got an earful from locals in of them took place on June 27, in AS THE SNOW MELTED and Marble, a small community north of Crested Butte. After a short rally, a wildflowers bloomed in alpine Crested Butte. “I got yelled at,” she crowd proceeded up main street, meadows, two candidates emerged, said. She heard about overrun trails, led by the Brothers of Brass, a funk intent on shaking up the Gunni- defecation and trash at campsites, band from Denver. Demonstra- son County Commission. Both felt RVs lining Forest Service roads for tors then lay on the blacktop for 8 the county treated second-home miles, and damage by off-road vehi- minutes and 46 seconds, the time owners badly when the pandemic cles. If you market the county as a that Officer Derek Chauvin knelt sizable Hispanic community. The started and that the local health recreation paradise, that’s what it on Floyd’s neck. Many diners, who second-home owners feel their order went too far. This prompted will become, Smith told me. The were sitting at outdoor patios on opinions matter because of their cheers in the Facebook group. The tourism economy needs to endure, either side of the march, paused economic contributions, which, first to enter the race was “KOA but the county has to mitigate its their meals for the duration. But on Cobbins said, are important, but, Dave” Taylor, a garrulous fixture of effects. “I love trails as much as the Facebook group, indignation “the people who serve them live the Gunnison community. Taylor, anyone out here,” she said, “but it’s bubbled up. “People come to the here, too, and they live here for the who owns the local KOA camp- not about me, it’s about what our Valley to relax and enjoy nature,” whole year.” ground, is known locally as a gener- community as a whole needs.” wrote one commenter. “This is At the time, Cobbins was the ous presence. He volunteers at the Houck, the incumbent Demo- made impossible when ‘protest- program coordinator at the multi- food bank and drives a public- crat, was challenged by Trudy ers’ are bused in for a photo-op cultural affairs program at Western school bus. He sometimes puts up Vader, an unaffiliated candidate. (not to mention pollution, noise, Colorado University in Gunnison. people at the KOA when they can’t Vader, a former public-school aggravation, and trash).” Several Over the phone, I read her some find housing. The campground is administrator, is a fourth-gener- other commenters also insinuated of the internal GV2H comments full of animals: four donkeys that ation Gunnison Valley resident. outside influence. (Other than the about the demonstrations. “It’s live in a pen, several free-roaming She grew up working on her fami- band, there is no evidence that the funny and ironic that these people goats and a few pigs, acquired from ly’s ranch, which was largely lost protesters were not primarily local.) say they feel uncomfortable,” she 4-H kids he met on the bus. His during the 1980s farm foreclosure The Crested Butte Town Council’s said, given her own experience as steer, Norman, is 6 feet, 2¾ inches crisis. That material loss reflects a subsequent decision to paint “Black a Black woman in Gunnison. She tall. Without a tape measure, I was larger cultural one. She believes the Lives Matter” on the main street was often the sole person of color unable to verify Taylor’s claim, but Gunnison community is facing the prompted another wave of irri- in social spaces. Norman is a very tall steer indeed. erosion of its ranching heritage. tation. “Crested Butte has clearly “People get defensive when Taylor’s political pitch Vader is measured and seri- forgotten why people (tourists or they hear ‘privilege’ and ‘white centered on his accounting back- ous in conversation. During the second homers) like going to the privilege,’ but that’s how privilege ground and business acumen, campaign, she nearly always wore a mountains. It’s about escaping the works,” she said. “That they feel something he felt the commis- wide-brimmed felt hat. The County craziness and the BS of the cities,” threatened by these protests, even sion lacked. Many agreed with Commission’s behavior nudged her one of the second-home owners though they were nonviolent. … to him: Taylor received more than into the race, she told me, but that’s wrote. A few others announced that say ‘I feel threatened’ shows priv- six times the number of write-in only the surface. More than any they would no longer go downtown. ilege.” votes needed to make the ballot other candidate, Vader consistently This hostility came as no Cobbins grew up and went as a Republican. He was hoping to brought up the service-worker surprise to Elizabeth Cobbins, the to school in Mississippi. She told take the seat held by Liz Smith, an underclass, the emphasis on recre- lead organizer of the Gunnison me that she was “not an outdoorsy English lecturer at Western Colo- ation and tourism as opposed to Black Lives Matter demonstra- person” and had never heard of rado University and, at the time, small industry and business with tion. The second-home owners Gunnison when she applied for the chair of the local Democratic their better-paying jobs. More than come to their vacation properties the campus job. Friendships came Party. A serious college runner, 44% of Gunnison County voters, to “escape the real world,” she said. slowly, though, in the end, she Smith first came to Gunnison for the largest proportion, are unaf- They forget, she told me, that the found “a second family” — others the trails. She’s the sort of person filiated, and Vader set her sights valley is more than a ski destination. like her who did not quite mesh who finishes third in the Grand on attracting support from those It includes a college that is home with the mountain town cultural Traverse — a 40-mile race through left behind, the “downvalley” resi- to many students of color, and a sensibility. “Not everyone in Gunni- the mountains from Crested Butte dents obscured by Crested Butte’s

JANUARY 2021 39 economic power. One of the first young men in Trump 2020 masks able housing goals. The commis- things Vader did, upon entering and ballcaps directed traffic at the sion failed to act with enough the race, was to post a long note entrance to Moran’s block. As night urgency, she said. on Facebook about a 2015 DUI came on, music spilled out from But it’s complicated. In 2017, that caused her to lose her job as the house. Torches lined the patio, Houck and the rest of the County a school superintendent. Vader while, down in the valley, the lights Commission pushed an enormous struggled with addiction for many of Crested Butte winked. housing development called Brush years but is sober now. If nothing Word travels fast in Gunnison Creek, just south of Crested Butte, else, she told me, she hoped that her County. Soon enough, Taylor and which, combined with 76 new campaign would encourage others Vader were defending their rela- rental units in Gunnison reserved to seek help and not fight addiction tionship with the super PAC, which for moderate-income workers, on their own. represents people who would not would have nearly fulfilled the Both Vader and Taylor’s be their constituents. Both were county’s goals. But while the campaigns received praise and questioned about it at debates and county was onboard, the city of support from the GV2H super PAC. forums. In an August letter to the Crested Butte balked at the number From the beginning, Taylor was Gunnison Country Times, “an inde- of units, in large part due to a vigor- more willing to accept this associa- pendent voter,” who said he’d voted ous backlash from a group of local tion with the second-home owners. for both major parties in the past, property owners, including future Vader was more circumspect. She called Taylor and Vader’s atten- members of the second-home told the second-home owners dance “disrespectful” and disturb- owners Facebook group. “Classic that she governs for the good of ing.” Who will they represent, if NIMBYism,” a local housing offi- the county and would, if elected, elected? he asked. “I can assure you cial called it. I asked Vader how she make decisions that would upset that they both have lost my vote could run a campaign that empha- them. Even so, Vader often spoke to already.” In the same edition, Taylor sized housing while accepting members of the super PAC, meeting wrote a letter stating that everything support from people who helped with Moran and others more than was aboveboard. “Access to my ears squash a substantial housing proj- once and soliciting signatures is free to all,” he wrote. ect. “I can’t help who supports me,” for her write-in campaign on the she said, adding that the super PAC reported. Facebook group. Moran, Gunni- THE GUNNISON COUNTY continued to back her after she Michelle Burns, a Crested Butte son Republican Party Chair Jane Commission races ramped up after made housing her main campaign and Gunnison real estate agent Chaney and other prominent back- Labor Day. All signs pointed to the plank. with Berkshire Hathaway, called ers of the super PAC encouraged widening of Gunnison County’s Like many alpine areas in the summer and fall 2020 the busiest donations to her campaign. economic divide, and the housing West, Gunnison County — and season she’d ever seen. “People do On July 17, both Vader and issue quickly rose to the top of both Crested Butte in particular — has want to get out of the city,” she said Taylor attended a party at Moran’s races. All four candidates — Demo- seen a surge of transplants since over the phone, “whether it’s away Crested Butte mansion along with crats Smith and Houck, and the the pandemic. Wealthy people are from COVID, away from proximity, Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner, at the challengers, unaffiliated Vader and abandoning more populated metro especially if they can work remotely.” time deep into one of the nation’s Republican Taylor — agreed that areas as remote-work becomes the In the county commissioner most-watched Senate races. (He there was an affordable housing norm. Jackson, Wyoming; Boze- race, the housing issue took a lost.) That evening, Moran’s street crisis. In multiple debates, Vader man, Montana; and Sun Valley, personal turn. Taylor owns a small and adjacent roads were filled hit Houck, who was running for his Idaho, among others, have all seen apartment complex in Gunni- with Teslas, Porsches and custom third term, often and hard for the housing-market booms. (See page son. From the outside, it appears Jeeps with lifted suspensions. Two county’s failure to meet its afford- 24 for Fact & Figures, The Zoom run-down, with broken windows boom.) By most metrics, Gunnison visible from the street during the County real estate had an unprec- summer. According to Taylor, the edented year. By mid-October, average apartment rent is $487. By mid-October, rural rural Crested Butte housing sales He could nearly double that, he had already surpassed all of 2019, told me, and still have tenants. “I Crested Butte housing sales had and single-family-home sales in have rent-controlled my own prop- the town were up 56%. Housing erty,” he said. That’s one view. The already surpassed all of 2019, prices rose, as well: The three- other is that Taylor is more lax month rolling average was up 19% when managing the living spaces and single-family-home sales in on July 1, compared to 2019, and up of those who have nowhere else to 24% compared to 2018, according to go. “If you are going to make money the town were up 56%. county assessor data. Enrollment on other people’s living situations, in Crested Butte’s schools was up, you should be able to meet health and the county collected a record and safety standards,” said a local On Election Day, County Commission candidates Dave Taylor and Trudy Vader, with her dog, Eli, stood outside Gunnison's one polling place (above). That night, amount of lodging tax revenue in county housing official. At a forum friends gathered in Jonathan Houck's backyard to watch the results. (facing). September, The Crested Butte News hosted by The Crested Butte News,

40 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS small businesses. She singled out his 2017 vote, which helped kill a business expansion by a trash and recycling company started by a local couple. “If you look at how this county has handled small businesses if they are not tourism or recreation, they’re not handled well,” she said. Houck pushed back. He ticked off the sectors that make up the county economy: agriculture, the ski area, tourism, the university and hospital, oil and gas. “It’s a five-legged stool,” he said. “We can’t do without any of it, and we need all of it.” Houck sees his role as someone who can bring together disparate factions and reconcile competing interests. He cited a proposed network of new trails on public land behind the univer- sity campus in Gunnison. Houck brought trail advocates, the school, ranchers and wildlife officials to the table, and everyone left with some- thing. The mountain bikers had to one audience member quoted a they lack U.S. citizenship. Devan branches and tree trunks that came pay for rollovers — metal ramps newspaper article from 2017, where Haney, from the Gunnison County down during an early September for mountain bikes — and spring- Taylor had pledged to repair the Health and Human Services Divi- blizzard. “(The landlord) said, ‘If loaded gates to keep the cattle broken windows. Taylor said he sion, described the bind like this: you have a problem you can leave,’ behind the fence line. Wildlife offi- had “no excuse” for the state of the Housing is so hard to come by — ” the resident told me, fully aware cials approved the trails in return windows and promised again to especially when you factor in the that the tenants had few options. for longer-than-required closures repair them, this time within two pandemic layoffs — that anyone Most of the residents own their for sage grouse mating season and weeks, which he did. He again who finds an affordable place will own trailers, but the trailers are old, mule deer migration. The ranchers defended how he runs the apart- put up with a great deal just to stay falling apart, and would not survive have to put up with bikers zooming ments. “I am guilty of not fixing there. Landlords know this, and transport. And there are virtually through the rangeland, but their those windows, and I am proud of this advantage can breed abuse. no other places in Gunnison with cattle can graze the area when the how I have kept rents down on 13 Despite a statewide eviction comparable rent, Haney told me. herds move to summer pastures units.” moratorium during the pandemic, When we spoke in November, she high in the national forest. Jennifer Kermode, director Haney received reports of land- was still working with several fami- In the other race, Taylor, of the Gunnison County Housing lords attempting to kick people out lies with no lodging and winter the Republican, hammered the Authority, said both sides have a of their homes. Haney and several coming on. commission’s decision to ban the point. Taylor does rent his units at others singled out Country Mead- second-home owners, and criti- rates not generally available in the ows Mobile Home Park as one of the IN MID-SEPTEMBER, all four cized the county budget as bloated area. Still, certain quality-of-life worst offenders. The owner of the candidates spoke at a small voter and misdirected. Throughout the standards ought to be met. “Dave park did not respond to requests for forum on a ranch in Powderhorn, campaign, he noted that he had is not the worst” landlord in Gunni- comment. According to multiple a town of 148 people, on the coun- personally gone through all of the son County, she said. park residents, the owners raised ty’s southern edge. A harsh sun beat county budget. “We’ve got to eval- In Gunnison, housing for the rent from $350 to $375 in April down from a cloudless sky, and the uate skill sets,” he said. “I’m an lower-income workers and fami- and then later to $425, just as the yellow aspens blazed on the moun- accountant, I’m a businessman, I lies is so scarce that several local pandemic’s economic fallout was tain, making the surrounding fir get along with people.” motels have essentially trans- peaking. One resident who was laid and pine look painted black. Eight In the weeks leading up to formed entirely into long-term, off in the spring and has since found voters and four dogs attended the Election Day, several large GV2H month-to-month rentals. This work, spoke to me anonymously for event. A yellow Lab kept nudging super PAC signs appeared along the shortage can leave low-income fear of repercussions from the land- my hand as I took notes. highway, urging voters to balance workers at the mercy of exploitative lord, who has threatened another Vader, who spoke first, criti- the County Commission and back landlords, especially if the renters’ rent increase. Throughout the fall, cized Houck for favoring recreation Vader and Taylor. Several ads first language is not English, or the park remained littered with and tourism at the expense of other appeared in the paper, and a few

JANUARY 2021 41 local businesses displayed banners. that what I’m doing is what they they are here for a little bit, and then In June, Moran had celebrated a asked me to do,” he said. they want to change it.” five-figure donation to the super Minutes later, my phone Change is coming to Gunnison PAC and set the group’s fundrais- buzzed with a text from Taylor, County, fed by the post-pandemic ing goal at $3 million. This startling asking for Smith’s number so that he movement of people into the area. number soon leaked out into the could congratulate her. I asked him The details of this change are community. No candidate for the for his response: “My motto is ‘no murky, even as the economic and Gunnison County Commission complaining — no explaining,’ ” he cultural divisions in the Gunnison had ever spent more than $30,000 wrote back. “That means no excuses. Valley remain vivid. Smith, who on a campaign. (Moran spent the My life will continue to be good and emphasized mitigating tourism’s next several months denying that I do value the experience.” impacts during the campaign, he had ever said such a thing, but The next morning, I drove east acknowledged this point. Reflect- High Country News has reviewed a of town out to Trudy Vader’s prop- ing on this sense of an evolving photo of the post in which he sets erty, the last 40 acres that remain community, she quoted Gertrude the $3 million goal.) In all, the PAC of the family ranch. She’s living Stein on the loss of the writer’s own raised $47,500. By comparison, all in a mobile home until she builds childhood home in Oakland, Cali- four candidates raised approxi- a house on the property. Vader fornia: “There is no ‘there’ there.” mately $70,500 combined. breeds a few horses, and when I As a county commissioner, Smith In late October, Moran told arrived, she was riding one named described the central question me on the phone that, win or lose, loudly greeting passersby by name Tule. “Horse therapy,” she said, “I confronting her as: “How can we he considered the GV2H effort a and telling stories. He used to be so deserve it.” steward this thoughtfully?” success. Back in April, the county fun, he told me, that he would get Vader is proud of her campaign. I asked Arvin Ramgoolam rescinded its demand that second- invited to the weddings of people She stuck up for the low-income for his thoughts on the Gunnison home owners leave the county. he barely knew. Vader was there, workers and pushed Houck on Valley. Sitting behind his book- “We’ve been successful in voicing too. She had attached a purple affordable housing, she said. She store, he told me that community is our concerns loudly enough that campaign sign to her dog, Eli. Two choked up while talking about the about social bonds between people, they have been spoken about in blocks down, Liz Smith and a few limited economic possibilities for where mutual dependence upon virtually every single newspaper supporters stood on a Main Street younger generations. Eventually, and responsibility for one’s neigh- article printed since March,” he corner and waved signs. I brought up the super PAC. She bors link individuals in an inter- said. “If our goal was to have a say, The results came in quickly acknowledged that her associa- locking series of relationships. One then we’ve certainly had some say. that night, and it was not close. tion with the second-home owners acquires a place in a community as “Even if they both lose,” he Houck and Smith cruised to — her willingness to take their one shares in those relationships of continued, “I’m still going to be re-election, with 63% and 60% of support and attend the dinner at mutual care and accountability. In here with a permanent organiza- votes respectively. Voter turnout in Moran’s house with Gardner — may gambling terms, he said, all his bets tion expressing how second-home Gunnison County — as in the rest of have hurt her. She does not regret are on Crested Butte. owners feel about policy.” the country — was huge. Accord- hearing them out, but, in retrospect, “I don’t have anywhere else to ing to The Crested Butte News, more she admitted, “I probably wouldn’t go,” he said. “I don’t have another ON NOV. 3, GUNNISON County than 88% of eligible voters submit- have gone to the second meeting. home. I don’t really have another voters had their say. It was sunny ted ballots. “In my mind, I just went to listen place off the top of my head that I and unseasonably warm. The When the race was called, to everybody,” she went on. “And I could even think of.” candidates were out and about. Houck was in his backyard, where have been everywhere in this county It’s community in this sense Taylor sat facing the exit to Gunni- he had spent most of the early and I have listened to everybody.” — a shared life across time and a son’s sole polling location with weeks of the pandemic. He smiled At the candidate forum in shared fate in a specific place — that a sign that said “Thank you for and hugged his son. “It felt good Powderhorn, a tall man with a eludes the second-home owners, voting.” He was in a good mood, that the community acknowledged ruddy face and a cowboy hat Ramgoolam said. By virtue of their expressed a common sentiment wealth, their permanent residency in the Gunnison Valley. He and his stamped elsewhere, they remain wife are ranchers. He said that the removed from the fate and well-be- migration of people into the valley ing of the people who live full-time “A lot of people come here “needs to happen, no doubt,” but he in the valley. They can escape in worries that the new arrivals neglect a way that Ramgoolam cannot. because they like what they see, to learn about the people and prac- There’s an entanglement with the tices already present. He fears the fate of his neighbors, he said, that but they are here for a little bit valley’s agricultural sensibility will fundamentally is not shared by go the way of the mines. People who someone with the opportunity to and then they want to change it.” buy second homes here made their pick up and leave when troubles money elsewhere, he said. “A lot come. What happens to Crested of people come here because they Butte, good or bad, happens to Arvin Ramgoolam at his Crested Butte bookstore (top). like what they see,” he went on, “but him.

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44 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS Bluebird Grain Farms

JANUARY 2021 45 Lauren Crow / HCN

AFTER HER MOTHER DIED, She persisted in seeking answers. Danielle Geller defaulted to what The result is an honest and power- she knew. Tucked away in her ful meditation on negotiating loss, Boston apartment, she spent entire From boxes of memorabilia, identity and family. days writing about her life — her High Country News recently earliest memories of her mother, sifting out a life spoke with Geller about the bless- sister and father; her childhood and ings and burdens of family, recon- the grandmother who raised her — In her debut memoir, Danielle Geller researches her elusive necting with relatives on the Navajo everything leading up to her moth- mother — and the meaning of family. Nation and resolving messy stories. er’s final days in a Florida hospital. This conversation has been edited Geller wrote 80,000 words, but BY JESSICA DOUGLAS for length and clarity. remained unsatisfied. She still had unresolved questions about her How would you describe Dog mother. “My mother lived entire Flowers? lives apart from mine,” Geller When I first started writing, I would noted. say, “I’m writing a book about my So Geller, a trained archivist, Geller sought to understand her physically abusing her mother mom.” But it’s less of a book about assembled her mother’s belong- mother’s many lives. It wasn’t and sister. Geller was tempted, she my mom, and more about confront- ings, labeling, dating and describ- easy. Both of Geller’s parents writes, “to erase the questions and ing family history — the history ing every photograph, diary and struggled with substance abuse; unknowns from my mother’s life — that is spoken, and the history that letter. her white father was emotionally to simplify the arrangement — but you find under a rock somewhere. With this as a starting point, abusive, and she witnessed him what kind of archivist would I be?” It’s for people who are really in

46 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS it with their families, who are strug- letters that she sent to and received about grief, I’m not writing about than a master! (Hearing) the gling with familial expectations, from her family? How can I fill in losing my mother or those feelings laughter in that room, I had this and are in close relationships with the gaps?” of grief, because I don’t think intense feeling of people knew people who have substance abuse When I was 5, my grandma this book really offers you a path where I came from. They knew issues and are constantly pushing adopted me. After my step- through that. what my experiences were, and boundaries. grandpa, Don, passed away, my Instead, I’m writing about it felt so comfortable. I think that grandma decided to move us to (how) I feel possessed. I feel experience is the closest that I Your mother’s boyfriend told you Pennsylvania. But I didn’t remem- haunted by her life as much as conceive of what family should that she used to call muddy paw ber what happened with my mom. her death, and the things that I feel like. prints “dog flowers.” Why did I didn’t really remember a goodbye. wanted from that relationship you use this as the title for your So I went to her diaries to try and that I didn’t get. I felt most proud Do you feel Dog Flowers reaches book? figure out, “What did she say about when I emerged from the writing a resolution? The image of “dog flowers” came it?” of that passage, because I was I really struggled to find the from the trip I took to see my All I found was two entries. articulating early on what I was ending. When Heid Erdrich mother when she was in the hospi- The first was a week before we left: setting out to do. blurbed my book, she said it tal. At the time, all she owned was “Grandma and girls stopped by to “refuses to deal in the tropes of at her boyfriend’s, and he told me say they’re leaving to Pennsylva- When you returned to the Navajo redemption and reconciliation,” I could go through everything. He nia.” The second entry was a week Nation and your mother’s family, and I think that captures a truth was showing me around their place, later: “They’re gone.” I was trying what surprised you? about the way I have found to and he took me to the backyard to to fill in how she felt about it. Did I tried not to have many write about my family. see their garden. She had told me she not want us to go? What was she expectations of flying back to Reconciliation requires about it on the phone, so I was feeling? And then I’m reading into the reservation and meeting my mutual understanding. It requires excited to see it. His roommate’s the lack of information and what I mother’s family for the first time. two people making their views dog was out there digging around feel like that could mean. I was surprised by how strong the compatible with one another’s. in the dirt, and as we walked back feelings I had for my cousins and But I will never have that inside, he pointed to the muddy Dog Flowers includes aunties were — that I felt such opportunity for reconciliation paw prints leading indoors and photographs, letters and diary a familial connection, and how with my mother. I will never have said, “She used to call those ‘dog entries — memorabilia from your that connection has lasted, even the validation I am looking for flowers.’ ” Those words kept echo- mother. How did you go about though I don’t live close to them from her. ing in my head as I went back to embodying these in the book? anymore. (But) my relationship with the hospital, back to Boston, and When I incorporate my mother’s my sister is ongoing, and it’s then sat down to write. My mother archive, it’s not just placing a photo- How do you define family? still developing, and that really always looked for the beauty in the graph on the page. It’s not having I grew up with a definition of the became one of the most important world around her, and I try to carry scans of letters or diary entries American family that was more threads to me in the book. that with me. stripped of any context, because I like the definition of a cult. I grew Growing up, the way my sister don’t think a reader is fully able to up with the idea that your family and I understood the world and Because your mother’s visits engage with what I am looking at will always be there for you, and our experiences were so different. were infrequent during your when I am seeing those documents. you always need to be there for And it’s not as easy as sitting down childhood, you didn’t have a lot My description of the objects them, (and) those bonds aren’t and having one conversation of information about her life and differs from the archival description severable. where we try to hash out the her feelings about you or your because it’s much more personal. I Those were all harmful ideas “facts” of our memories, because sister. How did you use your have my own memories, and what for me growing up, because I really those “facts” don’t exist. expertise as an archivist to fill in I was trying to do was record every- believed them. I carried these Resolution requires some the gaps? thing that I could about it, pointing ideas with me for a long time, and kind of firm action or decision of When I first received all my moth- to the places where I was surprised, they put me in a situation that felt some kind. I alone can’t resolve to er’s things, I didn’t really know how or where my experience and my inescapable. I gave more than I was have a better relationship with my to handle the situation. I defaulted mother’s experiences resonated. given. The abuse I experienced sister and expect that to happen. to, “I’m just going to arrange all of wasn’t justification to sever those She could decide tomorrow that this stuff into these boxes, I’m going Are there any particular relationships. I was expected to her life is better without me in to label the folders, and I’m going to passages in Dog Flowers that you forgive, forget and move on. So it, and I would have to find a way try to make sense of these objects.” are most proud of? it’s difficult for me now to redefine to accept that reality. So a book, I knew some of the facts, but there’s There is a passage on this idea of family. which is a very solitary thing, a lot of interpretive work that goes “ghost sickness,” that, when I first Two winters ago, I attended a can only reflect my openness to into filling in the blanks. wrote it, I was like, this is it — this weaving class with Barbara Teller that possibility. I think my book What I went back to do was, is key to how I am thinking about Ornelas and Lynda Teller Pete at reaches not for an ending, but for “Here’s what I remember. Can I my relationship with my mother’s the Heard Museum (in Phoenix, a new beginning. find that memory or that event in belongings, with this history Arizona). It was a master class my mother’s diary entries, in her and her death. What I say in that for Indigenous weavers, though little appointment books or the section is that I’m not writing I was much closer to a beginner

JANUARY 2021 47 BELL PRIZE WINNING ESSAY

A space to heal A wildland firefighter finds solace in an unexpected place.

BY KIMBERLY MYRA MITCHELL

Corey Brickley / HCN

I WRITE THIS ON OCT. 25, as outdoors. My earliest memories are nature of Western conservation, any remaining hot spots. We went another fire-weather watch is of the snow in the Sierras. At 3 years even as I studied its heroes. On over every inch of its interior, turn- declared over Northern California. old, I lay on my back making snow the surface, I couldn’t have less in ing over dirt, spraying water with I can hear the wind screaming past angels, staring up at the pines in common with Roosevelt or Pinchot. backpack pumps between rock the windows, straining the trees. wonder. The trees loomed against But I identified with their love of crevices. At the end of the day, I I know from experience that this the gray winter sky, impossibly high nature, their desire to protect it, made my way down the slope, wind can make a spark rip through and imposing. Even then, I recog- and, most of all, how nature served exhausted, my legs aching. dried grass and brush in an instant. nized their otherworldly beauty. as a balm to their grief. The burned rocky slope bordered Every time a gust picks up, I feel a My dad was the first to show me Both Pinchot and Roosevelt a stream that flowed into the lake. A knot tighten in my gut. the magic of the forest, the majesty suffered unimaginable losses. Both small wooden bridge went across Westerners try to control fire of rivers and lakes, the quiet beauty immersed themselves in wilder- the stream, connecting the trail to with chainsaws, fire retardant, bull- of the desert. When he died, I was a ness looking for an answer to their the opposite side. The land on one dozers, and the sweat and blood of teenager. Those trips to the moun- grief. Roosevelt lost his wife, and side of it was burned by fire, but the wildland firefighters. But in condi- tains ended, and for a time, so did then his mother, within the space of other side was untouched. tions like these, I am reminded my experience of nature. a day. Pinchot’s fiancée died young I crossed the bridge to a lush of our helplessness against fire’s I was working my first fire of tuberculosis, and yet he contin- green forest. Broadleaf trees hung powerful indifference. season when I read The Big Burn ued to write to his love many years overhead in a dense canopy. Grass For half a century, land-man- by Timothy Egan, which chronicles after her death. When he felt her formed a thick carpet under my agement agencies adhered to the the story of the U.S. Forest Service. I presence, he would record a “clear feet. The wet ground sank under my “10 o’clock rule,” a requirement that learned about the history of Amer- day” in his journal. boots, still dusty with ash. Turning all wildfires be extinguished by 10 ica’s public lands while sitting I felt a kinship with their loss; my back, I sat on the bridge. The setting a.m. the following day. Now, land within their legacy — how Gifford father’s death shaped my adoles- sun shone down on the lake, reflect- managers know that wildfire is a Pinchot and Teddy Roosevelt cence. I, too, ran to the forest seek- ing across the water. natural part of the West. Good fires fought tooth and nail to protect ing a spiritual reckoning. I heard At that moment, I thought of prevent bad ones; small-scale burns America’s wild places from privat- my own answer during my first fire my dad. I felt his overwhelming thin out excess vegetation and dead ization, at a time when there was season, and I continue to hear it to presence. The one thought that trees, thereby helping prevent large, little concept of conservation. this day. surpassed all others was, “It’s all destructive megafires. This year, As a racially mixed kid from the Three years ago, my crew was right now.” I heard a clear answer however, our efforts feel insufficient. Los Angeles suburbs, many times I assigned to a small lightning fire by to my grief and despair, an answer In college, I spent the school year was acutely aware of my difference, a lake in Northern California. The I can hear even now, in this time of learning about wildlife biology and working on wildland fire crews burn went through a rocky slope, uncertainty. I felt a sense of peace the summers fighting wildfire. The where most of my co-workers were scorching the ponderosa canopy in that beautiful place on the water, choice to work in the wilderness was white men from rural backgrounds. above. The fire was already extin- on a bridge balanced between life clear. My dad taught me to love the I recognized the exclusionary guished, so our job was to mop up and destruction.

48 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS REVIEW racism of Gen. John L. Dewitt, Col. Karl Bendetsen and the other War Department authorities who approved of the camps, it can be hard to imagine anyone living in them experiencing a moment of contentment, let alone joy. And yet football, gardening, kabuki and other forms of social life flourished. In an approach that’s common Resistance on the gridiron in books about armed conflict, and practically unavoidable in books In a Wyoming wartime internment camp, Japanese American high school students about sports, Pearson depicts the find release in football. Eagles as a crew of scrappy entre- preneurs, making the most of what BY REID SINGER they had. He renders people who are too often flattened by history into full human beings, and the reversal can feel exhilarating — even as it avoids confronting the perpetrators’ MOST BOOKS ABOUT WAR At Heart Mountain War Reloca- their jerseys drooped loosely over enduring power. Most of the people center on heroes. By choosing a tion Center, near Cody, Wyoming, their lean frames. After a coach brought to Heart Mountain stayed few actors and following their prog- the camp’s high school had a football from nearby Cody High School there until the war ended, and many ress, a writer can briefly untangle team, nicknamed the Eagles. And conducted tryouts and scheduled died before they could be inter- the decisions that drove the course they were really, really good. From games against mostly white squads viewed. Meanwhile, Col. Bendetsen, of events, bringing clarity and newspaper clippings and interviews from around the Bighorn Basin, the who defended Executive Order 9066 purpose to what might have been with surviving family members, team had only 13 days to practice for decades, enjoyed a long career as a senseless trauma. This approach Pearson is able to describe practi- before the season began. Few of the a corporate executive before retiring gives tangible freedom and agency cally every pass and run the team boys had previous football experi- in 1973. In 1989, at Arlington Ceme- to ordinary people who might not made. He is a knowledgeable fan ence, but Yoshinaga and Nomura tery, he was buried as a hero. have been in charge. It is an innately of the game, and his nuanced and explained the finer details of the satisfying way to talk about history, occasionally thrilling account allows game. The players quickly learned to and remarkably similar to the way readers to see the Eagles’ success as a transform their opponents’ fumbles we talk about sports. Who gets to be genuine source of hope and strength and bottlenecks into breakaways. the hero, though, remains an open for other prisoners. “Replace all the bad with all the question. In The Eagles of Heart Two star players, Tamotsu good, and for those seconds he can Mountain: A True Story of Football, “Babe” Nomura and George “Horse” be just a boy doing what he loves Incarceration, and Resistance in Yoshinaga, first met at a race- most,” Pearson writes, describing World War II America, journalist track-turned-holding station near one of Nomura’s decisive end zone Bradford Pearson turns that lens Los Angeles. The Nomuras were sprints. “Gone from that field, gone on a group under persecution. forced to leave a boardinghouse in from camp, gone from Wyoming.” Between 1942 and 1946, the Hollywood, while the Yoshinagas The players managed to accom- United States War Department had to sell their strawberry farm plish this at a time when Japanese imprisoned over 110,000 Americans near San Jose. Their families spent immigrants (isei) and their Amer- of Japanese descent under Execu- months waiting amid the stables ican-born children (nisei) were tive Order 9066, signed by Franklin with no idea of their fate, but even- being treated like enemy combat- Roosevelt. Men, women and chil- tually, they were packed into a train ants. As Pearson points out, Asian dren were forced to live in in “relo- and sent to Wyoming, where they arrivals in America had endured cation” camps around the Western traded the odors of horseshit and hay hostility and distrust for centuries U.S.; but, despite this trauma, they for dusty air and punishing weather. before Pearl Harbor and Execu- didn’t necessarily lose all meaning- Like many prisons, Heart Mountain tive Order 9066. After the camps ful control over their own lives. By was chosen in part for its remote were occupied, the government focusing on an obscure but dramatic location and inhospitable terrain. handed residents a “question- The Eagles of Heart Mountain: A aspect of one camp, Pearson crafts a Wintertime temperatures could drop naire” to assess their patriotism, True Story of Football, Incarcer- rich and dignified portrayal of the to minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit. and when 434 people from Heart ation, and Resistance in World incarcerated Americans, the kind The Eagles played for a school Mountain objected or refused to War II America many victims rarely receive. We find built from converted barracks and fill it out, they were sent to an even Bradford Pearson that while their rights were erased, heated by coal stoves. Their pads more appalling facility in Northern 400 pages, hardcover: $28 their humanity was not. were made from cardboard, and California. Given the entrenched Atria, 2021.

JANUARY 2021 49 Heard Around the West Tips about Western oddities are appreciated and often shared in this column. Write [email protected].

BY BETSY MARSTON

MONTANA a big state with very few human When you’re called out for smear- inhabitants — “Wyoming, lowest ing Vice President-elect Kamala in population last in the alphabet, Harris on social media as a “hoe,” lowest of all the lists. … It’s not real, you ought to apologize. But after it’s all a big conspiracy.” Montana Rep. Kerry White, R, an advisor to Montana Republican OREGON Gov.-elect Greg Gianforte, called Before we forget 2020, we need to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris “Joe pause to remember the November and hoe,” he tried to paint himself day in 1970, when a rotting, 45-foot- as the victim, according to the Great long beached whale was dynamited Falls Tribune: “So much hate that on the Oregon coast near the town someone actually photoshopped an of Florence. The legendary fail was inappropriate post … and claimed preserved, thanks to on-the-scene I was the person who posted it. KATU TV reporter Paul Linnman Don’t know who this person is or (https://katu.com/news/local/ their motivation but I will pray for the-exploding-whale-50th-anni- them.” Later, he claimed he was versary-of-legendary-oregon-event). “misinterpreted”: “Hoe,” he insisted, It’s worth watching to see how good was merely shorthand for “some- Armando Veve / HCN intentions can result in blobs of blub- one who had dug in or become MONTANA ber spewing from the sky. Before the entrenched.” White concluded with Two women “caught” two years am proud to be bilingual. … No one blast, Linnman interviewed a Trans- a classic non-apology apology: “If ago speaking Spanish in northern else should ever have to go through portation Department worker, who that offended anybody, I am sorry.” Montana recently won an undis- this again.” Unfortunately, back- assured viewers that the half-ton of closed cash settlement from the lash over the lawsuit has forced the dynamite would “disintegrate” the WYOMING federal government. Ana Suda and two women to leave town, accord- decomposing whale, while squads Over Thanksgiving, we learned Martha “Mimi” Hernandez said ing to Time magazine. of seagulls would gobble up the about a turkey’s stubborn will to that a Border Patrol agent violated smaller bits. “I’m confident that live. Wishbone, a giant, 47-pound their constitutional rights by WYOMING it will work,” he said. Instead, the turkey in Teton County, Wyoming, detaining them for almost an hour The Cowboy State is basically just a boom was followed by an astonish- was caught in a blizzard and buried outside a store in the small town of large rectangle with a small popu- ing amount of large airborne clumps under four feet of snow. “We really Havre. When Suda, who videotaped lation, but it does exist, right? Not and 100 observers running for cover. thought maybe the coyotes got part of the encounter, asked Paul according to the online forum Linnman clearly relished the after- him because we looked every- O’Neil, a U.S. Customs and Border Reddit, where r/Wyomingdoes- math, calling “landlubber newsmen where, couldn’t find him,” rancher Protection agent, why, he replied: notexist has 24,000 members landblubber newsmen,” and marvel- Laurie Ward said. Five days later, “Ma’am, the reason I asked you for — almost twice as many as the ing that the explosion “blasted blub- Ward’s grandson, Chase, heard your ID is because I came in here subreddit dedicated to the actual ber beyond all believable bounds.” noise coming from under a bank of and I saw that you guys are speak- state, reports the Jackson Hole News In honor of the occasion, Florence snow near the turkey pen. Chase ing Spanish, which is unheard of up & Guide. One entry in the online has named its new park “Exploding investigated and witnessed a “mira- here.” According to the Associated Urban Dictionary even claims that Whale Memorial Park.” Columnist cle”: “Boom! His head popped out Press, the women were represented if people try to drive into Wyoming, Dave Barry, interviewed on the 50th right from the hole.” Wishbone was by the American Civil Liberties they “will find themselves myste- anniversary, called it “the most alive and well, reported Billings Q2 Union. They sued, Suda explained, riously transported to Canada, wonderful event in the history of the News, though slimmer than before. because they needed to “stand up confused and sans clothing.” Site universe,” adding, “It’s a tribute to There’s more good news: Chase’s to the government, because speak- moderator Wyatt Brisbane, 21, said what humans can accomplish when grandmother decided “after all that ing Spanish is not a reason to be the theory sprang from an “epiph- they have a dead whale and a lot of trauma, we can’t eat him now.” racially profiled and harassed. … I any” he had in high school, about dynamite.”

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#IAM THE WEST HELEN LEUNG Community activist, LA Más Los Angeles, California

I am a child of Chinese immigrants who met in California, and I grew up in the Elysian Valley, nicknamed “Frogtown,” which, in the ’80s, was a primarily Latino and Asian working-class neighborhood. I left to go to college on the East Coast and worked in D.C. After nearly a decade away, I wanted to be doing work that directly connected with real people in my community back home. Today, my work can be described as undoing our society’s systems of white supremacy that favor the very individualistic and seldom encourage community. My hope is that if you create safe spaces to think about “we” and to move beyond survival and “I” — so much could happen. It’s very special for me to be back, closer to home. Every day I’m thinking about how we reorient the system so that it works better for

working-class people of color — like / HCN Kalinina Stella my parents, my Frogtown community.

Do you know a Westerner with a great story? Let us know on social.

Follow us @highcountrynews #iamthewest | hcn.org