“We started on the Trail at 1:30 P.M., leaving the hospitable roof of the Wetherills at Kayenta… with the same spirit of buoyant expectancy as in former years.” —Charles L. Bernheimer, June 4, 1924 From the 1890s to the 1930s,…
Paul Vlachos is a New Yorker who understands The West. And he is a New Yorker who understands New York. Wherever Paul goes, he finds signs of life… From the beginning, the word was there. Some of my earliest memories…
A long-time Navajo politician and advocate for Bears Ears National Monument and related tourism development won the June 26 Democratic primary for District 3 San Juan County (Utah) commissioner. Kenneth Maryboy defeated incumbent Rebecca Benally by 39 votes, 705-666, according…
CLICK HERE to READ PREVIOUS EPISODES of BRAVE NEW WEST (The Comic Strip)! Jim Stiles is Founder and Co-Publisher of the Canyon Country Zephyr. To comment, scroll to the bottom of the page. Don’t forget the Zephyr ads! All links…
A two-part essay on the process of New West gentrification and the future of San Juan County, Utah after the designation of Bears Ears National Monument. Part one will provide historical context and define certain conceptual terms in order to…
Cisco, Utah is literally in the middle of nowhere. Off of I70, northeast of Moab and east of anything, it once was a bustling community. The decaying structures, and plenty of old vehicles and other rusting wreckage, are left deserted…
time and again I do not believe my father remained a fly fisherman long after I moved away from Moab. From the time he left Utah in the mid 1990’s, he seldom fished. Back in Texas, Dad went through a…
If there is one issue that most of the polarized citizens of San Juan County, Utah can agree upon, it’s that very few of them want their communities to wind up like Moab, Utah. The fear of “Being the Next…
As a young man, Howard E. Phelps lived in the shadows of his father Henry Enon Phelps, a Salt Lake merchant pre-dating the Zion’s Cooperative Mercantile Institution (ZCMI,) and grandfather, William W Phelps, an important figure in early Mormonism. Both…
Fight or Flight Some years back, I moved from my reasonable confines of Salt Lake City to Los Angeles. At the time, to say the least, I needed a new chapter and had found one with a woman I now…