TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT…By Jim Stiles The Zephyr at 25…A Summary A Few Words About Ed Abbey The Book Cliffs ‘Zombie’ Highway…A Bad Idea Rises From the Dead. SOWING CLOVER…By Tonya Stiles What You Don’t Know About ‘Mr. Zephyr’…
Trying to sum up the past 25 years, you’d think the logical opening here would be, ‘I don’t know where to begin.’ The truth is, once you wade through this issue, you might ask yourself, ‘Does he know how to…
Well, it’s the 25 year anniversary of the Zephyr, and it’s been difficult for me to think of something to write this issue. I feel unqualified, as you might imagine, to write about the long history of the paper, since…
In the very first Zephyr, I wrote a long article about a road building proposal that would be debated for years. In late 1989, the lame duck Grand County Commissioners created a self-funded, autonomous special service road district, with the…
I’m not sure what else can be said about Edward Abbey after all these years. God knows I’ve said plenty and have often tried to speculate ‘What Cactus Ed would’ve done,” as we race through the second decade of the…
BEGINNINGS…1988-1996 Here’s how far we’ve come. Shortly after The Zephyr’s first issue appeared on newsstands, in mid-March 1989, I was at the old Main Street Broiler, eating one of Debbie Rappe’s wonderful cheeseburgers and overheard a spirited conversation at an…
This is the first issue of the Canyon Country Zephyr, a monthly publication of news, opinion, information, and entertainment for Grand County and southern Utah. According to Webster’s Dictionary, a “zephyr” is defined as “any warm, western breeze.” As it…
NOTE: This 1991 essay, if anything, shows how naive I was in the early days of The Zephyr. I was hopeful then that a peaceful resolution of the ‘wilderness issue’ could be found without the kind of extreme polarization that…
Why Jim Stiles Isn’t Normal: a Story That MUST be Told By Scott Thompson You should know that I’m a relative newcomer to The Canyon Country Zephyr. For me it started when Jim Stiles published several of my letters beginning…
1. Portland, Oregon – 2011 This photo has nothing specific linking it to the 25th Anniversary of the Zephyr, but I never would have taken it had I not fallen in love with the West many years ago and begun…
In 2013 I attended a San Juan County Commission meeting to talk with the commissioners about how the proposed public lands bill being considered by Congressman Bishop would affect the recreation economy of the region. I am an outfitter…
This is the second in a series of Zephyr Interviews, that we have pulled from our archives and re-posted. We offer these interviews as a way of measuring the changes that Moab and Southeast Utah have experienced in the 25…
In October 1991, I received a manila envelope from somebody named Dan O’Connor, up in Leavenworth, Washington. Somehow Dan had become a regular reader and a subscriber and was troubled by my obvious lack of graphic technical skills. I was,…
MOAB June 1950 CORONA ARCH Summer 1960 “They will never be able to see what we saw. They will never feel what we felt. They will never learn what we know.” Edward Abbey To see the PDF version of this…
COMING SOONER OR LATER… No one knows for sure when it happened…when the forces of nature, wind and water and gravity, scoured a lone Entrada Sandstone outcropping of rock until they finally punched a small opening in the rock fin.…
In the first few years of the Zephyr, I drew a new cartoon to grace the front page of each issue. Here is a small sampling of those covers…JS Jim Stiles is the Founder and Co-Publisher of the Canyon Country…
Over the years, the Zephyr has published innumerable articles on Edward Abbey. Below, we’ve assembled links to as many as we could find… Quiet Times at Arches National Monument: Lloyd Pierson and Lyle Jameson remember Arches in the 1950s…by Jim…
The Zephyr is honored to present selected images from TOM TILL’s remarkable book, “Then & Now.” Mt. Olympus 1930’s Mt. Olympus 60 Years Later, Viewed from Murray, Utah. To read the PDF version of this article, click here.…
The Zephyr has always been noted for its ’cartoon ads,’which Stiles initiated with the first issue. We believe we may be the only publication in America where readers consistently looked at the ads first, before they read the articles. Here…
EDITOR’S NOTE: Recently the threat (or promise, depending on your point of view) of new oil and gas development in the area of Big Flat in Grand County has once again aroused local passions, for and against this renewed effort…
…And some other favorite faces mixed in for fun. To see the PDF version of this page, click here and here. To comment, scroll to the bottom of the page. Don’t forget the Zephyr ads! All links are hot!