New West Essay and Book Preview

Reading the latest demographic data from the U. S. Census Bureau reminds me why I so miss the late Hal Rothman, a brilliant historian of the American West who died in 2007 from ALS. He would have loved knowing that his adopted state of Nevada—he taught at UNLV for 15 years and loved every minute of it—has experienced the largest population jump of any in the union over the last decade. 

Yet immediately after absorbing that striking data, he would have dashed off a sharply worded critique for New West or High Country News or the Las Vegas Sun that placed this boom into the larger context of the Silver State’s hostile politics, depressed economy and the yawning gap between its rich and poor. Growth for its own sake was nothing to brag about, he would have argued, an argument that is as key to his incisive study of Las Vegas, ”Neon Metropolis” (2002) as it is to his posthumously (and just) published history, The Making of Modern Nevada (2010).

The same could be said for the West in general; its boom comes with an implicit bust. The census reveals, for instance, that the region’s population continues to grow at a double-digit rate. Although the increase between 2000 and 2010 is not as steep as it has been—in 1950 the uptick was 40.4 percent, in 1970 it was 24.1 percent, and in 1990 it was 22.3 percent; and although the past decade’s rise of 13.8 percent is the lowest in a century, the figure remains impressive and troubling. 

White Supremacists in the Flathead Valley

“Here we are again,” Darryl Kistler said to the small crowd gathered around him, holding candles on the sidewalk across from the Kalispell, MT, library last week. They were part of a candlelight vigil held as a response to the Holocaust denial film being shown in the library’s basement by Craig Cobb, who moved to Kalispell from Vancouver this summer after he was investigated by a Canadian hate crimes unit.

“This is our third time that we have gathered in this space, to stand up, to speak out and to stand in solidarity,” Kistler, pastor of the United Church of Christ in Kalispell, said. “It is important that we are so inspired that we can lift up ourselves and lift up each other in a spirit of community.”

Across the street, Karl Gharst stood watching the vigil and smoking. In April and May, Gharst prompted large protests by showing films questioning whether the Holocaust occurred and glorifying Nazis. He planned to screen another film Oct. 19. But Gharst made no moves to descend to the basement to watch Cobb’s film, since Cobb had earlier that week filed a restraining order against Gharst, forcing the two men to leave each other alone.

Visibly angry, Gharst accused Cobb of being an “agent provocateur” sent to the Flathead Valley by the Jewish Anti-Defamation League to stop Gharst from showing his films.

“He’s a pretend Nazi and everywhere he goes he just stinks up the place,” Gharst said. “He’s a crash test dummy for the ADL.”

From the Daily Yonder

What’s happened to rural America during the last decade?

Over the next few weeks, the Daily Yonder is trying to answer this question as it looks at changes in population, ethnicity, age groups and education.

First, population. The nation’s total population increased 9.1 percent between 2000 and 2009, a total of 25.5 million people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Population increases in rural counties lagged, however. The population of the nation’s 2,038 rural counties increased by just 2.9 percent in the decade.

Population in exurban counties had the highest percentage increase in the 2000s, up 13.1 percent. Urban counties increased 10.1 percent, just above the national average.

What’s clear from the data: Population change in rural America during this decade has varied by region. See a larger version of the accompanying map here.

The rural Midwest largely lost population during the decade. These predominantly agricultural counties may be losing people because agriculture is increasingly mechanized — and other jobs are not there to attract or retain residents.

Meanwhile, however, almost every rural county in Washington state gained population. In fact, the entire Mountain West gained residents in the 2000s.

Disptach from Polson

On one side of the Ninepipes Museum in Charlo, at the heart of the Flathead Reservation in Northwest Montana, the display is dominated by Indian jewelry, blankets and traditional beaded moccasins. On the other side, it’s a collection of cowboy hats and paintings of white men on horses.

Indians and settlers have lived side by side on this reservation for 100 years, but at the museum – and in the community – the division between them is still evident.

This year is the centennial anniversary of the Flathead Indian Reservation being opened to settlers. In 1910, under the Homestead Act, settlers were allowed to claim land that had been set aside for the Kootenai, Salish and Pend d’Oreille tribes. Though the natives and non-natives didn’t share cultures, beliefs or lifestyles, they now share this history – which both groups are striving to preserve and re-tell.

Lois Hart, the president of the Polson Flathead Historical Museum, began planning for the events two years ago, and asked the tribes for their support. They agreed at first, then decided they wanted no part in the commencement. 

“We wanted the unblemished history to be told unfettered once and for all,” says Rob McDonald, the spokesman for the Salish-Kootenai tribes. “But it was not coming together that way, and people were on the verge of being very upset. They were afraid it would turn into the whitewashing of history and become a celebration of the beginning of the tribal holocaust story.”

Hart has since decided to scale down the event, which she is calling a “Polson Centennial,” acknowledging the creation of the town with the Homestead Act. The centennial will take place through August and was kicked off with a July Fourth parade and ice-cream social.

“I admit the tone is different than when it was going to be a commemoration,” Hart says. “But I won’t use the word celebration. The lives of the homesteaders were not easy, and a lot of our (historical) programs will be sobering.”

Law Enforcement Surge

Mike Shockley is used to working alone. An officer in the Bureau of Indian Affairs police, he was until recently one of just two assigned to night patrols on the Wind River Indian Reservation, an area so vast that he sometimes drove 400 miles in a single shift. Backup? Forget about it. Chances are the other guy was 40 minutes away. As a reservation policeman, you learn to handle stuff on your own.

Not anymore. One night last month, the 37-year-old from Cheyenne was one of four officers who pulled up at a house in separate vehicles, emergency lights flashing, to investigate a report of underage drinking. Two set off in hot pursuit of a 16-year-old girl who had bolted out the back of the house. The pair tackled her in the dirt and the three of them went sprawling, with Shockley bringing up the rear. The teenager was led away in handcuffs.

From the Daily Yonder

The rural West is dawdling in returning this year’s U.S. Census, according to the agency’s numbers.

See the accompanying map from our friends at Daily Yonder and you’ll see a big red swath running down the Rockies. Red counties mean a 17 to 40 percent return rate.

The lowest return rate came from Hinsdale County, Colorado, population 790. There, Roberto Gallardo of Daily Yonder reports, only 17 percent of the population returned their Census forms.

Read on for Gallardo’s full report.

Column

In an interview included in a new book titled “Voices of the American West,” I was surprised to read author and law professor Charles Wilkinson state matter-of-factly that the much ballyhooed New West “never happened.”

It didn’t? I thought the New West was exactly what did happen to the region over the past thirty years. What about all those mountain bikes, lattes, art galleries, jeep tours, spiritual vortexes, fancy megahomes, microbreweries, destination resorts, pink coyotes, crab cakes, traffic jams, telecommuters, bird-watchers, river runners, amenity buyers, downhill skiers, real estate agents, migrant housekeepers, foreign tourists, and myriad nonprofit employees?

Transportation Policy

The proposed streetcar in downtown Boise has generated a lot of comment and controversy. But even with all the news coverage and discussion there still seem to be a number of questions. I try to get to the most important ones in a series of trolley FAQs:

Just where exactly is Boise getting the $60 million to pay for this thing?
Earlier this year President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) into law. As part of that Act, the U.S. Department of Transportation is making $1.5 billion available to state and local governments through the TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) Discretionary Grants Program. TIGER grants can be used for most any kind of transportation related project, but it must also achieve certain outcomes such as increasing livability, sustainability, economic competitiveness, and job creation. Grants will be announced as soon as possible after September 15, 2009, but not later than February 17, 2010.

If the City of Boise gets the grant those funds will partially cover the start-up costs. To generate the remaining monies needed they are considering the establishment of an LID or Local Improvement District. Under the LID, the City would levy an additional tax on businesses along the streetcar route. There is still no consensus among business owners as to whether there is support for the creation of an LID, but Idaho state law 50-2601 allows Idaho municipalities to create LIDs (or BIDs - Business Improvement Districts) with a simple majority vote of the Council. The Mayor and Council will then have to cobble together funds from the City’s general fund and CCDC to pay for ongoing operations. 

Demographic Patterns

My friend has lost his voice. He communicates with a child’s “doodle” pad these days, writing on an Etch A Sketch kind of board he can wipe clean with the sweep of a green plastic handle.

I tell him I’m reading a report about baby boomers who, in increasing numbers, are moving out of cities and into smaller, more remote towns. He picks up his hard-headed doodle pen and scrawls, “Like maybe me!”

The Economic Research Service (a part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture) reported this week that some parts of rural America will see a steady and quite large influx of older Americans over the next decade or so, as Baby Boomers, like my voiceless buddy, leave the larger cities for the quiet and the community of smaller cities.

Live Long and Prosper

If we all live to be 120 years old, we'll have a lot of things to worry about besides land-use planning. But consider this: serious people involved in biomedical research think that such longevity is likely, if not necessarily imminent, and if it were to transpire it would in fact have huge implications for the design of our communities. It would bring huge population growth, far more old people and a far smaller ratio of children - and drive growth patterns towards urban centers and away from the the suburban fringe.

That was one of the more provocative arguments put forth last week at NewWest.Net's 1st annual Planning in the West conference. Keynote speaker Arthur C. Nelson, Director of Metropolitan Research at the University of Utah, said these kinds of drastically changing demographics would alter land-use patterns in ways we are only beginning to understand.

This kind of thinking is more than a little removed from the quotidian arguments over planning that still rage across the West. Just last week, residents of the Flathead County, Montana town of Somers almost came to blows over whether a preliminary discussion of a neighborhood plan for the lakeside community was appropriate. Here in Missoula, a city council meeting on Monday went past midnight as people argued over a new zoning code, and especially whether the city should allows "accessory dwelling units" - which might, not incidentally, be an important type of housing for an aging population, but are considered anathema by University-area residents who fear they will fill up with students.

Yet planning, by its very nature, is all about the long term, and it can be a lot more inspiring than the day-to-day politics of subdivisions and infill and roads and sewer systems. Here are a few of the highlights from our recent conference:

[more]