How the West was Won, and Lost, and Won Again

Well, we've returned from our little Jetta-powered version of the Oregon Trail and are gearing up to head to South America. Stay tuned for the next chapter (and a little more about our last days and encounters), but in the meantime, here are some musings from our time in the area:

It was less than a mere hundred years after our nation had been solidly founded and accepted when the prospect of the unknown, and a dream of bigger adventure and bigger fortune lured young America to the West. The promise of riches, nearly free land, religious freedom, minerals, and just plain open space began the first of the many boom-bust cycles that would shape the Southwest.

There was the gold rush, the silver rush, the Mormon invasion, the Uranium boom, the most recent tourism boom, and what appears to be yet another burgeoning Energy boom. Each of these boom periods (with the exception of the Mormons, they’re here to stay) was followed by an equally dramatic bust. It was during these bust times that the scars on the landscape were made apparent and the move toward what would be the next boom was often born. There are crumbling ghost towns, abandoned mines, and failed attempts at farming an arid desert. There are run-down Indian reservations where gambling and junkyards rule the roost. There are abandoned roads through the Canyonlands with shadows and tire-tracks of former Uranium prospectors. Most notably, there are massive dams with drying lakes revealing a beautiful canyon flooded for the sake of irrigation, energy production, and further development. Each of these scars, in time, faded into the background of the landscape as the next boom took shape. The lingering spirit of the Wild West, the loss of the American Indian, the end of the final frontier and with it the end of the traditional American dream, are all reminders of minute eras to an area that has adapted, evolved, and changed as necessary throughout time.

The most recent tourism boom seems a response to all the failed attempts at taming this region: an acceptance that our most lucrative use of the land will come from respecting it, observing it, and appreciating it. A war for ownership of the current and enduring tourism boom is being waged between the RV Rustler’s and the European Union in the backdrop of National Parks from Zion to Yellowstone. The EU has utilized a venerable artillery including favorable exchange rates, high gas prices, and nationally generous vacation time but the RV Rustlers stand strong declaring: “We are Americans, we have a right to vacation, to consume, and we will run you Smart Car toting foreigners right over”. Those Germans are tough, but I wouldn’t mess with Ruth Ann and Gerald; they’ve been around and those visors and tracksuits are just plain intimidating.

But on the horizon seems to be a struggle even more dichotomous than young Europeans vs. grizzly retirees. It’s a fundamental issue being played out all over the US but nowhere more starkly than here in the unforgiving environment of the Southwest: the energy boom, and whether it steers ahead toward renewable resources and technological advancement, or continues along that old American consumer adage with “Drill baby Drill”. We’ve noticed everything from windmill farms, solar panels, and EPA-certified off-grid towns (way to go Moab) to new rigs, a massive opening of BLM lands to oil exploration, trucks, and RV’s from Wyoming to Arizona. The resources exist for both sides, as does the will. With the nation split along ideological lines, I believe it will be the environment that decides. Will mineral resources prevail once more or will this unforgiving landscape refuse to yield and demand compliance and respect with the threat of yet another bust?

The region’s surviving native nations, plants, environment, and even pioneers of this region have all learned to adapt, evolve and move forward past the scars and harshness that have been thrust upon them, and radiate with an enduring natural beauty. As the nation faces the ramifications of a similar cycle, can we look at this example of graceful endurance and muster the unified strength to adapt and evolve beyond this bust?