Logo
Prev
Bookmark
Rotate
Print
Next
Contents
All Pages
Related Articles
Browse Issues
Help
Search
Home
'
National Geographic : 2002 Feb
Contents
sat in a snowfield and shared binoculars, staring at the tan gled branches of a nest sus pended on a cliff. Suddenly an eagle swooped in and its mate flew out to forage, an aerial changing of the guard. "Either we save this now or it's gone forever," Ellie said. "If we lose the eagles, it's one more step toward making the mountains a theme park." Some say the theme park has already arrived at nearby Park City in Summit County, ground zero for mountain sprawl. Less than one mile end to end, Park City's Old Town is a charming jumble of shops and restaurants, where hungry skiers can plunk down $28 for caribou fajitas. Such upscale frills don't impress local res ident Ted Larremore, who bemoans the ersatz look of a new hotel that has risen across from the home he and his wife, Billie, bought in 1950. When they married here in '49, Park City was still a town of silver mines and saloons. Ted worked the mines. ("I left a couple of fingers and a couple of partners in there," he said.) Billie worked the switchboard. They're grateful Park City has been saved from ghost town extinction by skiers, developers, and Hollywood wannabes who come for the annual Sundance Film Festi val. But they question the abundance of shops, hotels, and palatial homes that crowd the hill sides. "We welcome people," said Ted. "All we ask is that they look at the beauty here and respect it." F ar to the north, near the Idaho border, I saw what Salt Lake Valley might have been like before the squeeze was on. There, in the Bear River Valley, farms and fields breathe unfettered. In the rural town of Elwood, children romped in a potato field near an elbow of the Bear, which mirrored foothills in a chameleon coat of rusts and browns. At that point in the river's irrigation gantlet the mirror was small. It may become smaller still. Fearful that Salt Lake Valley will run dry in a few decades, the Utah Department of Water Resources is considering a plan to build a new dam on the Bear and pipe nearly 20 percent of its flow south to fast-growing counties along the Wasatch Front. The dam and resulting res ervoir would inundate scores of farms for about a dozen miles upriver. That's a future some are fighting to prevent. "Diverting the Bear would have a huge cul tural and ecological impact," says Zach Frankel, founder of the Utah Rivers Council, an envi ronmental group that opposes the dam. "It could dry up the largest wetland complex in the intermountain West." He's referring to the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, the nation's first and largest waterfowl sanctuary. The Bear feeds the refuge, and from there its waters enter Great Salt Lake, providing the largest single source of fresh inflow. Few would deny that the Bear is vital to the health of the lake, its wet lands, and the birds that depend on them. But there's enormous contention over how to allo cate its water in the parched years ahead. Deep within the refuge the illusion of an unsullied West lived again. A coyote prowled an earthen berm. A red fox scratched in the sun. Pintails sculpted rippled Vs across endless marsh. And disparate landscapes, from snowy peaks to salt desert, seemed linked in harmony. "The Olympics will allow us to be discovered by the world." Yet flying out of Salt Lake Valley, such beauties became invisible. Tarmac and fencing sliced across the mottled flatlands below. Siv Gillmor, matriarch of the ranching clan that works that land, explained why her family refuses lucra tive offers to sell out. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," she said. "This land has its own charms. We've cared Should the Olympics change for it, we've survived, venues or stay inone city? and we want to hang Join our debate at national on." Hers is the voice geographic.com/ngm/0202. of the valley. I AOL Keyword: NatGeoMag SALT LAKE VALLEY
Links
Archive
2002 Mar
2002 Jan
Navigation
Previous Page
Next Page