The Fight Over the Roadless Rule

by Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren
Cato Institute

The Bush administration set-off a political firestorm on July 12 when it announced that the Clinton administration's rule blocking road construction on 60 million acres of U.S. Forest Service lands will soon go up in smoke. The Bush administration plans to replace it with a regime that essentially allows a state's governor, in consultation with the U.S. Forest Service, to decide how much logging will occur on federal forest lands in that state. While environmentalists predictably went berserk and conservatives naturally applauded the re-embrace of states rights, both camps are increasingly lost in the intellectual woods.

For their part, the environmental lobby is brazenly rewriting history by suggesting that the National Forests are primarily there to save trees from the woodsman's axe. As environmentalist icon Gifford Pinchot, the first director of the U.S. Forest Service, wrote in a speech for Teddy Roosevelt in 1901, "Forest protection is not an end in itself; it is a means to increase and sustain the resources of our country and the industries which depend on them." In short, the National Forests were created not to dance in but to cut in (the reason, by the way, that the Forest Service is an arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and not the U.S. Department of the Interior). Public ownership was embraced because, back then, politicians were convinced that scientific management of the forests by federal rangers could maximize timber yields over the long run.

Environmentalists are also on shaky ground when they decry the environmental damage done by logging in the West. America's appetite for furniture, hardwood floors, houses, etc., isn't going to go away just because the trees won't be coming from California or Alaska. Logging will simply shift from the American West to forestlands abroad. While it's perfectly alright to be more concerned about environmental quality in the United States than in, say, Indonesia, we're not sure environmentalists fully appreciate the tradeoff they're embracing.

Republicans embracing this new rule are not much better. Administration defenders, for instance, often cite the need for more harvesting on federal lands in order to keep timber prices from spiraling out of control. But again, we can just as easily get the timber from abroad as from here at home. In fact, during the Clinton administration, timber prices fell through the floor even while a chunk of land the size of the state of Oregon was put off-limits to the timber industry for the very first time.

Another oft-heard Republican argument is that much of the land in question is undoubtedly more valuable as a wood-producing zone than for recreational or conservationist uses. But how do they know that? The only way to ascertain whether a scarce resource is better used for this rather than for that is to consider prices and consumer willingness to pay for those alternative uses of the resource. Because public land is kept out of the marketplace, prices don't exist and consumer preferences are never put to the test. Accordingly, there's no way to test the assertion.

Leaving those decisions primarily to the nation's governors rather than to federal bureaucrats does not make intelligent decision-making any easier. All it does is transfer the venue of the fight over extraction versus conservation to about 12 western state capitals. Accordingly, we can't help but suspect that the real policy objective behind this new rule is to transfer such fights to political playing fields where environmentalists are typically weaker and industry is politically stronger.

None of this, then, is really about how to most efficiently use federal lands. Environmentalists primarily care about protecting as much land from development as is humanly possible. Republicans primarily care about ensuring that rural westerners -- primarily Republicans -- have jobs, particularly jobs in the timber industry.

It's time to find our way out of these dark woods. Wanting to protect forests from the axe is fine. Wanting the general public to subsidize your preferences is not. Wanting a job in the timber industry is likewise fine. Wanting the general public to deny others the right to their preferences in order to secure that job is not.

The original mission of the National Forests is no longer operative and the original justification for the National Forest Service is no longer defensible. Maintaining such huge volumes of federal land in such political enclaves guarantees that forests will be managed by political rather than economic or ecological criteria. Caring about the health of our nations forests -- both as an ecological preserve and as an economically valuable resource -- demand reconsideration of public ownership.

Transients blamed for Bowling Alley fire

A house engulfed in flames near Balboa Place in Needles is shadowed by dark smoke clouds.

By MICA THOMAS MULLOY
News West / Needles Desert Star

NEEDLES — Transients are blamed for igniting a wild fire that charred 60 acres of land and destroyed a house near the Colorado River on June 29, a fire spokeswoman said. What is being called the Bowling Alley fire erupted just before 5 p.m. behind an abandoned bowling alley on Balboa Place near the Needles Highway.

The fire quickly spread through heavy brush east toward the river and north and south, threatening residential areas and taking down one house, a shed, trees, desert vegetation, fences and utility lines in its path.

At about 5:30 p.m. flames jumped the river and started spot fires along the Arizona riverbanks. However, those flames reportedly burned themselves out before spreading.

While the exact cause of the blaze is not yet known, fire investigators determined it originated from “transient activity” in the brush behind the abandoned building, said Tracey Martinez, San Bernardino County Fire Department public information officer.

A total of 94 fire personnel responded to the scene along the Colorado River from as far away as Fontana, Calif. By 7 p.m., they had the fire largely controlled and were pushing the blaze toward the Colorado River, said Don Fisher, Fort Mojave Mesa Fire Department public information officer.

“There are several areas where they are actually backfiring it back to the river to burn the fuel down, so a lot of the fire you see has been intentionally set by the fire departments,” Fisher said the night of the blaze.

Specially trained wildland strike teams and bulldozers, along with firefighters and equipment from eight Arizona and California fire departments, were used to control the flames. The fire was completely contained at 11:45 p.m., Martinez said.

The fire was originally under the command of Mohave Valley Fire Department Chief Mel Sorenson. Command was transferred to the San Bernardino County Fire Department at about 7:30 p.m.

San Bernardino County Fire Capt. Tom Marshall said some residences from the Fort Mojave Tribal Village were evacuated as a precaution. Martinez said all of the residents were allowed to return to their homes by early Wednesday morning.

A house near the bowling alley was destroyed in the fire’s path and another nearby home was also exposed to the flames.

Ruth and Philip Neal own the partially-burned home. They said crews reported they were able to save the house along with several others in the area, but they watched their neighbors’ home completely burn. “Hers is completely gone,” Ruth Neal said. “There’s just nothing left, just a shell.”

Needles historian Maggie McShan owns a building near the fire and said it was burning mostly in the Needles Lagoon area. “It’s a disastrous fire as far as wildlife is concerned,” McShan said. However, the historian also said this is not the first fire in the area and in 1992 a larger fire in the Lagoon destroyed three buildings.

Firefighting crews from San Bernardino County, Mohave Valley, Fort Mojave Mesa, Oatman, Golden Shores, Lake Havasu City, Bullhead City, Arizona Fish and Game and Arizona State Fire all responded to the scene.

Park service works on exhibits

By KELLY DONOVAN/Staff Writer
Desert Dispatch

A historic depot once that was bustling with train travelers more than a century ago could be filled with sounds of tourists learning about the desert before the year's end.

The National Park Service hopes to open the Kelso Depot as a visitor's center for the Mojave National Preserve later this year, park service spokeswoman Holly Bundock said last week.

The depot in the heart of the Mojave National Preserve underwent an extensive renovation effort starting in mid-2002. The park service is now working on the exhibits for the center, Bundock said.

When it opens, Kelso Depot will welcome tourists to the national parkland with various exhibits, information, literature, an educational area for children and a theater for park-related videos. Also, the Beanery, a diner in the depot, has been restored to its 1920s state, and will be open for business when the visitor's center is done.

In its heyday, the Kelso Depot was a stop for rail travelers on their way between Los Angeles and Salt Lake City. During the 19th century, it also offered a telegraph office and a community center for residents of the Kelso community.

The restoration cost about $4.5 million, much of which was secured by Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Redlands.

In other Mojave National Preserve news, the National Park Service hasn't yet removed the cross that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals declared unconstitutional earlier this month because it hasn't yet received the official written order from the court.

After receiving it, however, the park service will likely need to take down the cross to comply with the ruling -- unless the U.S. Justice Department seeks a stay while deciding whether to appeal the case. Making that decision could take months.

The U.S. Solicitor General's Office is doing research on the Mojave Cross case to determine whether to appeal it to the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Department spokesman Blain Rethmeier said last week. The Solicitor General's Office handles the federal government's cases that go before the Supreme Court.

Cross in Mojave Desert Preserve Barred

9th Circuit Agrees 'War Memorial' Violates Separation of Church and State



Made of two metal pipes welded together and painted white, above, the cross in the Mojave National Preserve operated by the National Park Service has been covered by a tarpaulin, right, since the American Civil Liberties Union sued the federal government to have it removed. (Christine Wetzel -- Las Vegas Review-Journal Via AP)

By Kimberly Edds
Special to The Washington Post

LOS ANGELES -- A federal appeals court has upheld a lower court decision that a large white cross sitting on federal land in the Mojave desert violates the constitutional guarantee of separation of church and state and should be removed.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued the National Park Service in 2001 on behalf of a retired park employee. A federal judge sided with the ACLU and ordered the cross, in the Mojave National Preserve near the California-Nevada border, be taken down.

The Department of Justice appealed the lower court's decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. Rather than remove the cross, the Park Service threw a large tarp over the structure while the case was in court.

Monday's opinion did not specify whether the cross should be removed immediately or could remain covered if the case is appealed to the Supreme Court.

"The [9th Circuit] said this case is really quite simple. Using a sectarian religious symbol is not permissible on federal land," Peter Eliasberg, managing attorney for the ACLU of Southern California, said. "Sometimes you just have to hit them over the head three, four or five times."

A spokesman for the Justice Department said attorneys are reviewing the ruling to determine whether to appeal.

The Veterans of Foreign Wars erected a cross in 1934 in memory of those who fought and died in World War I. A plaque explaining the cross's purpose was placed at the foot of the structure, but the sign disappeared long ago.

After being nearly destroyed several times, the cross -- originally two pieces of wood nailed together and planted in the desert -- has been changed several times. The latest version is made of two metal pipes welded together and painted white.

Officially designated as a war memorial by Congress, the cross has also been the site of Easter sunrise services over the years. In 1999, the National Park Service denied a request to build a Buddhist religious symbol near the cross.

Eliasberg scoffed at the government's argument that the site is a war memorial. "That doesn't honor Muslim veterans, Jewish veterans, atheist veterans or agnostic veterans," Eliasberg said. "It's a preeminent symbol of a religion. If we want to have a war memorial on federal land, the government certainly knows how to do that without using a divisive sectarian religious symbol."

Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) crafted a plan to keep the cross in place by transferring the patch of land where the cross sits to the VFW in exchange for five acres of privately owned land elsewhere in the preserve. The legislation was approved earlier this year, but the transfer has not been completed.

Because the land transfer would put the cross on private, not public, land, the government argued that the issue of separation of church and state is moot, and urged the court not to rule in the case.

But Circuit Court Judge Alex Kozinski, who wrote Monday's opinion, said the transfer could take years to complete and provisions in the legislation could allow the land to be transferred back to the government, putting the cross back on public land.

"This case is not yet moot and may not be for a significant time, as defendants conceded that the land transfer could take as long as two years to complete," Kozinski said in a 14-page opinion.

A spokesman for Lewis said the lawmaker would support an appeal to the Supreme Court, but he hopes the land transfer would make that unnecessary.

The ACLU has also challenged the constitutionality of the land swap.

Appeals Court Backs Ruling That Desert Cross Is Unconstitutional

Earlier panel had said symbol in the Mojave Preserve violated the 1st Amendment.

Henry Sandoz, shown with his wife, Wanda, in 2000, has been taking care of the Mojave Desert cross since 1983. A federal appeals court has upheld a lower court ruling that the symbol violates the establishment cause of the U.S. Constitution. (Gina Ferazzi / LAT)

By Eric Malnic, Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times

A federal appeals court on Monday upheld a lower court ruling that a large white cross in the middle of the Mojave National Preserve violates the U.S. Constitution.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena "took a look at this issue and concluded that the case couldn't be clearer; a religious symbol on government property violates the Constitution," said Peter Eliasberg, managing attorney for the ACLU of Southern California. "At every level, the courts have rightly agreed with this principle."

In July 2002, responding to a suit by the American Civil Liberties Union to have the cross removed, a U.S. District Court in Los Angeles held that the presence of the 5-foot-tall Mojave Desert cross on federal land near the Nevada border was unconstitutional. The establishment clause of the 1st Amendment requires the separation of church and state.

The painted metal cross stands on a rocky slope called Sunrise Rock, about 11 miles south of Interstate 15. The cross was erected by the Veterans of Foreign Wars in 1934 to honor veterans of World War I.

The lower court's ruling in the ACLU's favor was appealed by a group that included Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton, Jonathan Jarvis, director of the Interior Department's Pacific West Region, and Mary Martin, superintendent of the national preserve.

In the months that followed, Congress enacted legislation, sponsored by Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands), requiring the Department of the Interior to transfer the land on which the cross sits to a local Veterans of Foreign Wars post in exchange for a privately owned 5-acre parcel elsewhere in the preserve.

The appellants then argued that because of the impending transfer of the property to private ownership, the constitutional issues were moot and the appellate court should not render a decision on them.

But Appellate Judge Alex Kozinski, who wrote Monday's opinion, disagreed.

"This case is not yet moot and may not be for a significant time, as defendants conceded that the land transfer could take as long as two years to complete," Kozinski wrote.

He also noted that the legislation authorizing the swap contains provisions under which the land could be returned to federal ownership.

Still unanswered, he said, is the question whether the presence of a religious symbol on formerly public land transferred to private ownership still violates the Constitution.

Religious symbols are not unknown on national parkland.

The Chapel of Transfiguration was allowed to remain at Grand Tetons National Park in Wyoming after it was found to be a structure of historical significance.

A National Park Service study determined that the Mojave cross, which began life as two wooden planks and is now made of metal pipe, has changed over the years and lacks historical significance.

Last week, Los Angeles County supervisors decided to remove the tiny gold cross from the county seal rather than defend it against a threatened ACLU lawsuit. Advised by county lawyers that the cross on the seal might not withstand a court challenge, supervisors followed the lead of the city of Redlands, which agreed to remove a cross from its logo after the ACLU threatened legal action.

County Speaks Out on RS-2477 Road Issues

By COREY BLUEMEL
Emery County Progress

As a result of a lawsuit filed by USA-All against Emery County, officials, some who have been involved in the roads dispute for nearly 25 years, were on hand to present an explanation of the county's stance to the citizens of Emery County.

Patrick Gubbins, from the Bureau of Land Management, was first to address the crowd. He covered the development of the route designation plan put out by the BLM. " I will say one thing, working in the public sector for 28 years and having worked with numerous county officials, it has been a pleasure working with Emery County. They are a very progressive county."

Gubbins went on to explain that when he took over the Price Field Office, there were two separate resource areas. One was the Price resource center and the other was the San Rafael resource center. There were two separate management plans, so it was undertaken to combine the plans as the offices were combined into the Price Field Office. It was Gubbins' goal to develop a route designation plan within five years. Eleven years later, the plan was implemented in the spring of 2003.

During the process of development, the BLM took more than 12,000 comments from the public into consideration for development of the resource management plan. With 1,200 miles of trails in approximately one million acres of land, the process was lengthy. In the plan, 688 miles of roads are designated for motorized use. Gubbins stated that the plan does not settle the RS-2477 situation and that the BLM will honor the outcome of the RS-2477 decisions.

Sheriff Lamar Guymon was next. He said that the county has wanted an officer on the San Rafael for many years, but because of the lack of funding, putting a deputy out there has not been possible. In the past few years, offers of funding have come about, but the funds have not materialized.

The BLM came forward with the proposition and funding for an officer and as a result, an officer was assigned to patrol the San Rafael. No place in the contract does it allow the officer to enforce federal statutes, only state and county laws and ordinances. The deputy's main duty is to educate the users and hand out information and maps. To date, the officer has handed out more than 500 packets of tourist information and educated those visitors to the area. Very few citations have been written, and those were, as the contract states, only for state and county law violations.

Sheriff Guymon also stated that having an officer present on the Swell has been very beneficial to all concerned, the county as well as the BLM. By patrolling on a daily basis, the officer can note any damage to land or signs, and notify the proper entity. The deputy keeps all parties informed about conditions and happenings on the Swell.

Mark Ward, from the Utah State Attorney General's Office, department of public lands and natural resources, was next. Ward is the supervisor of the team of attorneys involved in the RS-2477 project. He also represents counties on public lands issues. "From our perspective, Emery County has done an outstanding job in the RS-2477 project," Ward said.

Ward went on to say that most of the process is extremely confidential with the anticipation of litigation. "Emery County has been very thorough in everything connected with these issues. It has been a massive undertaking to collect the data necessary to assert rights to these roads. Emery County has not lagged and they have done everything the attorney general's office has asked of them," said Ward.

RS-2477 is a vested claim by virtue of a federal mining statute. That vestiture occurred upon the completion of roads, no one ever thought to record when the roads came into being. In 1976, Congress enacted the Federal Lands Policy Management Act and FLPMA effectively repealed the effectiveness of RS-2477. The claims that are being asserted under RS-2477 now have to be documented as being constructed prior to Oct. 21, 1976.

The RMP is not a formal tool to settle the road claims and is only a part of the transportation plan. These contested roads may or may not be RS-2477 roads, but the county will continue to assert its rights and insert the RS-2477 roads into the plan. Emery County has reserved those rights in the management plan.

Ray Petersen, Emery County Public Lands Director, explained to the group that his goal was to demonstrate the consistency of the county in this situation and its relationship with the BLM. With the signed memorandum of understanding, Emery County maintains cooperating agency status.

Petersen read portions of the letters written by the county and his predecessor, Val Payne, concerning the roads and trails in the Swell. Emery County representatives have attended every meeting held on these road issues and they continue to assert their position that they will not give up roads. "Emery County has, and will continue to pursue their rights, they do not intend to let them fall by the wayside," said Petersen. "Emery County has spent more that $100,000 documenting their ownership of the roads. Margaret McMullin has countless letters, personal histories, video taped histories, photographs, and she has also spent thousands of hours collecting the documentation to substantiate Emery County's claim to these roads," said Petersen.

Dennis Worwood expressed to the audience the necessity to work with the attorney general's office and go through the process as their strategy indicates. "I have been involved with public road issues for 25 years. I am the only surviving member of the original public lands council, and this is my last six months," said Worwood.

"Some of the assertions of the law suit are just not true. The county cannot ignore what their attorney says to do, they cannot be vigilantes in this road war. Other counties have removed barricades and taken down signs, and also graded roads. Although Emery County is not doing those things, they are not standing idly by and doing nothing. Emery County's attorney has advised them to stay the course of the strategy.

"This road war is being fought on three fronts, the legislative, the judicial and the executive branches. The San Rafael Swell is the poster child for the Utah Wilderness Coalition who wants to designate 49.5 percent of Emery County as wilderness. Emery County is very active and involved in this fight. Emery County cannot ignore the advice of the attorney general's office and do what USA-All wants," added Worwood.

Agency claims home of woman

By CHUCK MUELLER, Staff Writer
San Bernardino Sun

IVANPAH - A whitewashed bungalow in this old desert mining town southeast of Mountain Pass holds a lifetime of memories for Connie Connelly.

But the National Park Service says the 44-year-old woman, who came to Ivanpah with her parents in 1968, must leave the house by Friday.

The six-room cinder block dwelling, once a general store that stocked provisions for desert prospectors, is on federal land in the Mojave National Preserve, park officials said.

Connie's parents, Don and Pauline Connelly, were issued lifetime leases to live in the house by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which administered the area before the park service took over in 1994. But the documents did not include their daughter's name.

"But it has been my home since I was 8, and all my memories are there," said Connie, who shares the five-acre site with 12 dogs, a cat and a horse.

Her father, a former sheriff's deputy in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, died in 1990 at age 80. Her mother died last year at age 81 after a long illness that had required the family to move to Newberry Springs to be closer to medical care. While they were away from Ivanpah, another family occupied the house, and the Connellys had to buy it back for $8,000.

PAPERWORK PROBLEMS

"It appears that the bureau did not update the lease after it was granted to the parents in 1986," said Jennifer Foster, co-founder of Public Lands for Public Use, a 6-year-old watchdog group that investigates the use and misuse of public land.

As a consequence, Connelly does not possess a current lease or title to the land where the bungalow sits, said Chief Park Ranger Dennis Ziemann.

Without the lease, she is residing illegally on federal land, Ziemann said in a March 18 letter to Connelly that demands she leave the 71-year-old house.

"Failure to comply will result in criminal prosecution and removal of all property on the premises," Ziemann said.

That could mean the park service intends to tear down the house, which qualifies as a historic site because of its age, Foster fears.

"When a structure is over 50 years old, it could be eligible for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places," said desert historian Dennis Casebier.

STANDING FOR HISTORY

Public Lands for Public Use plans to stand at Connelly's side on Friday and over the weekend and longer if necessary, said Foster's husband, Ken, who co-founded the group with his wife.

The Fosters filed a notice of intent Monday to appeal the issue in Connelly's behalf with the U.S. Department of Interior's Board of Land Appeals, claiming the BLM's legal description for the bungalow site is inaccurate.

"The coordinates cited in the bureau's lifetime lease of 1986 are wrong," Jennifer Foster said. "The lease says the house is in Section 32 of Township 15, but it really is in Section 31."

"Accordingly, the Bureau of Land Management may never have had the right to charge the Connelly family for a lease in the first place," Jennifer Foster said. "The federal government may owe Connie a ton of money."

"The bureau later corrected the erroneous section numbers, but the coordinates are still wrong. Her house isn't where the lease says it is. It's a mile away, across the (Union Pacific) railroad tracks on patented (private) land."

Documents in the San Bernardino County Recorder and Assessor's offices show that Connelly holds possessory rights to the house, and her tax payments are current.

Ziemann said Connelly has refused to comply with procedures that would allow the park service to provide her with relocation assistance.

Mary Martin, superintendent of the 1.6 million-acre national preserve, told Jennifer Foster in an April 5 letter that she wants to see "a positive resolution to this issue."

"(But) all the information in our records and those of (the) county and Bureau of Land Management clearly indicate that Ms. Connelly is illegally occupying federal land."

A PRICE FOR MEMORIES

Martin could not be reached for further comment this week, but park service spokeswoman Holly Bundock in Oakland said, "We've offered Connie Connelly relocation costs, including rent for 2 years and moving costs. In lieu of rent, we would buy a like house somewhere else. But she has declined that."

Connelly acknowledges she met with Martin and a park service real estate official Jan. 7.

"They wanted me to file a disclaimer and sign it over to them," she said. "They offered me $3,000 to relocate. But you can't put value on your childhood home. You can't put a price on memories."

The diminutive woman, who claims Mandan and Sioux tribal heritage, lives on occasional sales of her watercolor paintings and from jobs as a horseshoer and store clerk.

Her Spartan surroundings at the 2,400-square-foot bungalow include a wood stove and oil lamps. She hauls water from Nipton, 17 miles away, in two 55-gallon drums mounted in the bed of her 1973 Ford pickup. And every six weeks she shops for groceries in Nipton or in Searchlight, Nev.

When mid-summer temperatures climb to 110 degrees, Connelly turns on a generator to power a couple of fans in the bungalow.

"I'm not fussy about anything," she said. "It's not necessary to have a new wardrobe or newfangled gadgets."

The eviction controversy has sparked interest in Washington and Sacramento.

"We are aware of the situation," said Jim Specht, deputy chief of staff for Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Redlands, who represents the east Mojave. "He has asked his staff to look into it."

State Sen. Roy Ashburn, R-Bakersfield, who represents some San Bernardino County desert areas, said he was told by a Lewis staff member that the congressman would work with local officials to ensure the issue is resolved consistent with the law and that due process is followed.

Bob Smith, area representative for county 1st District Supervisor Bill Postmus, said he has asked a survey team to study the coordinates to determine if the bungalow is on private or public land.

"If it's on private land, we would intervene to determine the legality of a federal agency being involved," Smith said.

Connelly's five acres lie within a 40-acre tract that was privately patented under the Homestead Act, according to an original land patent signed on March 7, 1912, by President William Howard Taft.

"Accordingly, the Bureau of Land Management may never have had the right to charge the Connelly family for a lease in the first place," Jennifer Foster said. "The federal government may owe Connie a ton of money."

State Wants Firms to Get Share of Water Funds

Critics say 2-year-old Prop. 50 allows only nonprofits and public agencies to benefit.

By Nancy Vogel, Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times

SACRAMENTO - California health officials are preparing to reverse a long-standing state policy by letting private companies tap voter-approved water bond money that has historically been restricted to public water districts.

Several public agencies and consumer groups are fighting the move, arguing that voters had no indication that for-profit firms might benefit when they passed Proposition 50, a $3.4-billion water bond measure, two years ago.

State health officials are just now drafting rules for dividing up the Proposition 50 money and are being heavily lobbied to make sure procedures allow private firms to compete for shares. The firms gained the support last year of a key lawmaker who presides over state water issues.

"We have a multifaceted water system in California that runs the gamut from public to private," said state Sen. Mike Machado (D-Linden), who heads the Senate Agriculture and Water Resources Committee. "So we have to try to deal with all aspects of it."

Officials at the state Department of Health Services say they are inclined to agree. Next week the department is expected to complete guidelines that will allow private companies to compete for $485 million in Proposition 50 money.

Machado said he would try to make sure the rest of the bond money was similarly available to investor-owned companies.

In 2002, proponents heralded Proposition 50 as a way to protect, expand and clean California's water supplies and to preserve river parkways and wetlands. The official state voter guide included the statement that bond money "would be available for expenditure by various state agencies and for loans and grants to local agencies and nonprofit associations."

Previous water bond measures in California, including those passed in 2000 and 1996, limited grants of the bond money to public agencies and nonprofit groups, although private companies have been able to get loans through a fund for safe drinking water.

"Water in California is enshrined in our state Constitution as a public trust," said Juliette Beck, coordinator of the "Water for All" campaign of Public Citizen, a national nonprofit consumer advocacy group. "We think it's imperative that public funds go to support public water systems and never end up in the coffers of multinationals or private companies, period."

Officials with the private water companies, however, argue that their customers are taxpayers too, and therefore should be entitled to the benefits of a statewide bond issue that all taxpayers will be paying back over the next 25 years.

"Twenty percent of the state's population is served by these utilities; everybody pays for the bonds, so everybody should be able to compete fairly," said Christine Frahm, a lobbyist for Southern California Water Co. in San Dimas. The company would like to use Proposition 50 money to help pay for the replacement of main water pipes in Norwalk and Artesia, she said.

Stan Ferraro, a vice president with California Water Service Co., which serves 460,000 people from Los Angeles to Chico from its headquarters in San Jose, is also interested in getting Proposition 50 grants for his company. He said state aid would help keep customer rates from rising.

"It purely is saving our ratepayers from us having to go out and borrow the money," Ferraro said.

But public agencies and consumer advocates argue that taxpayer-financed water bonds should not be used to aid investor-owned companies, some of which are subsidiaries of large, European-based corporations. There is not enough money available to pay for all the worthy projects sought by public agencies, they argue.

The state health department's original draft guidelines on distributing Proposition 50 money banned private water company applications.

But the agency reversed itself after private water firms — which have spent more than $800,000 on lobbying in 2003 and so far in 2004 — stated that the Proposition 50 language passed by voters did not unequivocally restrict the money to public agencies.

"Unless there's some specific section that prohibits the funding to go to private entities, since the private enterprises provide water to consumers and it improves water quality, our read of it is, it's acceptable," said Rufus Howell, assistant chief of the department's Division of Drinking Water and Environmental Management.

That position is supported by a legal opinion issued Feb. 27 by the state legislative counsel's office at Machado's request.

Unlike previous water bond measures, Proposition 50 was not written by the Legislature, but largely by Joe Caves, a Sacramento attorney who has worked for various environmental groups. Many lawmakers, as well as public and private water purveyors, supported the bond issue, and private water companies donated $52,500 to the "Yes on 50" campaign.

"We didn't put in a prohibition," Caves said. "We just didn't speak to the issue."

Last year, Machado introduced a bill that would make private water companies eligible to tap Proposition 50 funds.

His bill would also open the bond money to mutual water companies, which are not-for-profit water districts owned by customers.

Machado said the bill had nothing to do with the $25,000 in campaign contributions he accepted last year from private water companies, including $20,000 from Southern California Water.

"It's a question of health and safety," he said. Many private water companies serve poor communities, he said, especially in eastern Los Angeles County and the southern Central Valley. "I realized we weren't addressing the needs of all the constituents who were supporting the bonds."

Machado's bill is stalled in the Assembly, but he said it was no longer necessary, given the pending health department guidelines for distributing bond money. He said he would try to ensure that the Department of Water Resources, State Water Resources Control Board and other bond-disbursing agencies that have yet to write guidelines would also allow private water companies to compete for the money.

The health department's proposed guidelines are less restrictive than Machado's bill. His legislation includes provisions to ensure that the California Public Utilities Commission prevent private companies from earning a profit from any bond-funded improvements, such as a water treatment plant. The PUC regulates 144 investor-owned water companies and sets the rates they can charge.

Public water agency officials expressed concern that mere administrative rules would be more lax than what Machado proposed.

The senator expressed certainty that the PUC would oversee the use of any bond money a private company might be awarded and guarantee that shareholders and corporations would not profit from it.

But PUC officials have yet to determine how they will deal with the novel situation, said PUC spokeswoman Terrie Prosper.

The issue never arose in the 2002 campaign for Proposition 50, which encountered only minor opposition, from the California Farm Bureau and taxpayer groups resistant to more state borrowing.

Those who represent public water agencies say they have become aware only in the last few weeks that they could be competing with private firms for Proposition 50 money. The Assn. of California Water Agencies has yet to weigh in on the issue.

Jerry Jordan, executive director of the California Municipal Utilities Assn., sent a letter last week to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Health and Human Services Agency secretary warning that the proposed set of guidelines "undermines and contradicts long-standing state policy."

Needles stays stuck in desert sand

Proximity to Nevada, Arizona holds town back

The marquee of the abandoned Masonic Lodge on Broadway welcomes visitors to Needles. The border city hopes to improve its image and hold onto businesses in the face of economic competition from Arizona and Nevada.

By JACOB QUINN SANDERS, Staff Writer
San Bernardino County Sun

NEEDLES - Drive down Broadway at night and the two brightest lights illuminate the same word a few blocks apart: liquor.

On a block between those signs, the old Masonic Lodge sits empty, having failed in its most recent incarnation as a movie theater. Ceiling tiles hang obliquely, hemorrhaging asbestos over boxes, scattered wood, a disused popcorn machine and an organ lying sideways.

This is not the image the city wants to project. Officials here want to bring in businesses and jobs and tourists.

Every few years, they try another idea to pull it off.

Every few years, nothing much changes.

Ask around and you will hear a consistent explanation: It's an accident of geography.

Across the Colorado River from Needles are Arizona and Nevada, with minimum wages $1.60 an hour lower than in California, cheaper workers' compensation premiums and gas almost a dollar less per gallon. California offers no exemptions to its laws to border cities trying to compete economically.

Needles knows this.

But as much as the 5,000 people who live here think about it and try to change it, they have more pressing priorities.

The city can't enforce an uncounted number of its ordinances because the cost of staffing and litigating against those who would fight back is too high. Standardized test scores in the Needles Unified School District are below county and state averages. Jobs are scarce and a livable wage, many times, is even more so.

The nicest new development in town, the one between the municipal golf course and the Colorado River, sprays the grass green on its gateway street. A new local hardware store is cause for unguarded excitement.

The pending departure of the Washington Mutual bank branch here the news leapt around town one recent Friday brought the executive director of the Needles Chamber of Commerce to tears and inspired unspoken expletives in the city's community development director.

For some of the people, it's enough to stab back at California in small ways, such as buying their gas in Arizona or Nevada, which means the pollutants California legislated out of its pumps come in anyway. Or it means smoking in the two bars here, also against California law but legal in Arizona and Nevada.

"It's tough," said Nita Claypool, 69, whose last name is one of the most widely recognized in town.

Last May, she and her husband, Bill Claypool, closed the last of the family's eponymous grocery and general stores that had existed in three states. The first opened in Needles in 1911, the year before Arizona won statehood.

"I'm third generation in this business, and the fourth generation just wasn't interested," Bill Claypool, 81, said.

SEEKING RELIEF

The sign on the building at Broadway and E streets still says "Claypool's" and no one quite knows what will take its place.

"This is a prime entry corridor through Needles and we have got to do something to clean it up," said Sharon Mayes-Atkinson, the city's community development director. "More than that, though, we have to make it a destination. People have to want to come down here."

Some relief could come courtesy of Assemblyman Bill Maze, R-Visalia, who represents Needles in the Legislature's lower house. He has spoken with the state Energy Department and the California Environmental Protection Agency seeking a waiver of or exemption from emissions and gas-additive regulations.

"The air-quality issue holds no water in a place like that," Maze said. "People can and will go across the river to get cheaper gas, then all the bad stuff comes in anyway."

He said he planned to introduce a bill allowing remote community college campuses to offer four-year degrees and looked forward to resuming discussion on workers' compensation legislation that was tabled in the Assembly last week.

Also on his agenda is helping broker a deal with the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe and the state Lands Commission to make a silted-over Colorado River inlet available for recreational use.

"We need to identify places like Needles as really a gateway entrance to California," Maze said, "and I think the state is capable of recognizing that."

ECONOMIC RIVALS

Laughlin, Nev., and its casinos, nightclubs and all-night bars are 27 miles away. Bullhead City, Ariz., and its retailers are 22 miles away. The joke in Needles is that the only reason people get off Interstate 40 here to get gas is because they don't know any better.

In the meantime, Mayes-Atkinson said, the city is considering building an office park and trying to find tenants itself.

The development of 70 homes already under construction and the groundbreaking in March on a few dozen senior-citizens condominiums bode well for the city.

Mayes-Atkinson knows that residential development is hard-pressed to generate enough money for cities to cover the services they demand, but Needles owns all local utilities except the gas company and has extra capacity on its waste-treatment plant.

Still, Sue Godnick is nervous. She moved here from Temecula almost 15 years ago and has worked for the Needles Chamber of Commerce for the last eight, becoming executive director less than two years ago.

She saw the city try to woo retailers Target and Wal-Mart, only to have both open stores in Bullhead City. When she heard Washington Mutual and its eight jobs would pull out in May, she called it a "crisis."

"When somebody comes to town, the appearance is that we're losing business," she said, her eyes wet and red after hearing about the bank. "First impressions are hard on some of these people."

SPRUCING UP

Mayes-Atkinson, who also handles code enforcement, has made a concerted effort to change those impressions. Painting curbs, cleaning sidewalks, trying to remove or refurbish eyesore buildings.

Downtown, along Route 66, the El Garces train station has received millions of dollars in grants and donations as the city tries to restore it.

Every day, the same homeless man spends much of the day in the adjoining park, sitting on the bench in front of the World War I memorial.

West along Front Street from the train station, dilapidated, crumbling houses rot. Of the city's $22 million annual budget, $35,000 goes toward tearing down unsafe buildings.

"That's one, maybe two buildings a year," Mayes-Atkinson said. "And I consider code enforcement one of our highest priorities."

As she drove her Mercury Grand Marquis east along Broadway, she grumbled as she passed a succession of billboards, one of which read, "You think it's hot here? God."

"Putting up a billboard in Needles is illegal," she said. "I suppose we could order them taken down or sue the owners, but we can't afford it. We just have other things we have to do first."

OPEN SPACES

Beyond first impressions, geography plays a tremendous role.

"It's really the lack of other small towns in close proximity," Godnick said. "Blythe is 110 miles away, Ludlow doesn't count, Barstow is 150 miles away, Essex doesn't count. You can put your store in Bullhead City where there is a growing population and more people, and the folks from Needles will shop there anyway."

And while decrying geography is the easiest and most common issue when assessing Needles' challenges, it is not the only way to go.

David Hayes bought talk radio station KTOX-AM (1340) in 1997 for $200,000 cash. A former record company owner in Orange County, he was removed enough to speak his mind and not concern himself too deeply with whom he might offend. Over his shoulder as he spoke was a poster of four American Indians holding rifles with the caption, "Homeland Security, fighting terrorism since 1492."

Hayes, 43, joined the Needles Economic Development Corp. even though he lives in Fort Mohave, Ariz., and gave Mayes-Atkinson her largest pipe-dream: a public river-walk from one end of town to the other.

"I could give you the politically correct answer that all our problems are because we're in California," he said, sitting in his small studio surrounded by CDs, extraterrestrial-themed merchandise and Marlboro smoke. "But for a long time there was a feeling here perpetuated by people like the Claypools that this was our river, our town, and anyone from the outside should pack up and get out of here."

One of the reasons to have hope for Needles, he said, is the softening of those attitudes.

His focus is on building a sustainable tourist culture here, attracting movie production companies and exploiting the city's Route 66 heritage. One idea is designing each block of Broadway in the style of a different decade, beginning in the 1930s.

"Can you imagine this place with a drive-in theater?" he asked excitedly. "My God. It would be amazing."

WORD OF MOUTH

For now, at least, the city's goals are smaller. Gary Reed decided to move his hardware store here from Bullhead City in August and city officials rejoiced.

"They didn't have one when I got here," Reed, 62, said.

He said the city moved all his applications through the system quickly and showed it was an accommodating place for a small business.

"Sales are growing and I've had a real good experience with the customers here, and so much of it is word-of-mouth," he said.

He sees reason for concern and understands why Needles has its skeptics, based both on its history and what he has seen himself.

"It feels like we're our own little nation separated from everything and I think sometimes that we ought to secede and take care of this ourselves," he said. "Of course, I could be wrong, too."

Cultural center struggles to cope with visitors

By KELLY DONOVAN/Staff Writer
Victorville Daily Press

GOFFS — Promoters of the Goffs Cultural Center say they've been almost too successful in their efforts to attract guests.

Visitors have been flocking to monthly open houses at the remote east Mojave cultural center in such great numbers that there haven't been enough volunteers to handle them all.

The cultural center, about two hours east of Barstow, is a 70-acre property with artifacts and historical displays in more than a dozen buildings, one of which is a historic schoolhouse.

More than 600 people visited the center last year, mostly during the open houses, said Helen Baker, a San Fernando Valley resident who organizes the events as a volunteer for the nonprofit Mojave Desert Heritage and Cultural Association.

Although the center had open houses prior to last year, it didn't have a regular schedule and didn't publicize them much. The center normally had about 100 visitors a year.

The center adopted a regular schedule for open houses and got publicity from media outlets in 2003, and more people started pouring in.

"It's just been a win-win, except that we've got so many people coming that we need more volunteers," she said. "There's all kinds of people who come to Goffs — people interested in history, people interested in four-wheeling, people interested in touring the desert."

Goffs had open houses the first weekend of every month last year except in July, August and September, when it's too hot, Baker said. Its 2004 open houses are on the same schedule.

Last year's visitors were a mix of out-of-state tourists and California residents, many stopping off on their way to or from Laughlin, Nev., Baker said.

To volunteer for an open house weekend, or for more information, call Jo Ann Casebier at 733-4482. Information is also online at www.mdhca.org.

The center is in Goffs at 37198 Lanfair Road, just off National Old Trails Road.

Two decades of hard work, plowed under

Wilderness activists look on as the Bush administration gives oil and gas drillers first crack at the West’s last wild lands




by Matt Jenkins
High Country News





Oil well at the top of Long Canyon near Dead Horse Point State Park, Utah.

BIG RIDGE, COLORADO — Not far from the northwest Colorado oil and gas outpost of Rangely, benches of shattered sandstone rise to a seven-mile-long, piñon-and juniper-mottled landmark called Big Ridge. A herd of wild horses ranges across the land here, and the draws that run down from the 7,500-foot-high ridge shelter Fremont Indian pictographs, petroglyphs and archaeological sites that date from around 600 to 1300 A.D. On a bitterly cold December day, the flat winter haze has given way to a deep cerulean blue. Time seems to be marked only by the lazy pass of an eagle overhead.

In its own modest way, Big Ridge stands where two worlds collide. It is one small chunk of the Piceance Basin, a gigantic oil and gas field that has lured energy companies for decades. But it is also still a relatively untouched island, and conservationists have tried to protect it as wilderness.
In 1997, Amoco drilled a well here, but came up dry. The company plugged the well and moved on, leaving behind a half-mile of road and a barren well pad. At about the same time, the Colorado Environmental Coalition (which would later team with several other groups to form the Colorado Wilderness Network) discovered that Big Ridge still qualified as wilderness, as defined in the 1964 Wilderness Act: "an area of undeveloped Federal land retaining its primeval character and influence … with the imprint of man’s work substantially unnoticeable."

In July 2001, the Wilderness Network nominated the area to the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for protection as wilderness. That nomination was a gamble: Just eight months earlier, another oil-and-gas company had leased several parcels of the area. And oil and gas leases generally trump a wilderness designation, even if they haven’t been developed yet.

"Even though the area was leased, the larger landscape was getting hammered," says CEC’s Kurt Kunkle, who helped identify the area as potential wilderness. "Protecting a little part of that seemed important, so we were willing to take the risks."

At first, the gamble seemed to pay off. Under a Clinton-era directive, the BLM agreed to include Big Ridge in its roster of places that might be eligible for wilderness protection, and to take a "second look" at any proposal — such as oil and gas drilling — that might disqualify it from protection. As a result, in 2002, when El Paso Corporation applied to the BLM for permission to drill an exploratory well on its lease in the proposed wilderness, the BLM thought twice about allowing it. The agency gave El Paso permission, but only after it determined that the well would affect just .01 percent of the proposed wilderness. The company promptly drilled another "duster," a dry hole.

It looked, for a moment, as if Big Ridge might escape with only a few scars. Then, last April, wilderness activists across the nation were rocked to their core. Interior Secretary Gale Norton and then-Utah Governor Mike Leavitt settled a wilderness lawsuit that blew the doors wide open for drilling in Big Ridge and many of the hundreds of other areas in the West proposed for wilderness protection (HCN, 4/28/03: Wilderness takes a massive hit).

Just over a month later, El Paso applied for — and quickly won — permits to drill five more wells in the proposed Big Ridge wilderness. Last November, the company tried a second well about 200 feet from Amoco’s dry hole. That, too, proved dry. Late in the month, El Paso plugged the well and abandoned it; the company has momentarily pulled out and is deciding whether to drill the other four wells.

A few days after El Paso moved out, I arrive with Jennifer Seidenberg and Reed Morris from the Colorado Environmental Coalition. We park our cars at the bottom of the hill and hike the half-mile up to the abandoned drill pad. The sign from the earlier Amoco lease has been knocked to the ground, and silence reigns over the site. In the middle of the 1.3-acre pad bulldozed out of the side of a ridge, the well — a capped pipe — sticks out of what looks like a bomb crater of oozing muck.

On the edge of the pad, a rented trailer sits empty, its TV satellite dish pointed at the sky. The door is unlocked. Inside, mud is caked on the thin carpet, and the just-departed drillers have left a note on the counter: "Sorry to leave a mess."

The making — and the undoing — of the citizens’ wilderness movement

Welcome to the world of citizen-led wilderness protection. Behind the big official wilderness areas — celebrated places like the John Muir Wilderness in California and the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness in Idaho — a gritty, on-the-ground fight is on to protect the West’s last remaining wild places. These are areas that citizens’ groups believe should be protected from harm until Congress can decide whether to formally recognize them as wilderness areas.

Many of the proposals have been around for years. But they may not survive much longer, because the Bush administration has made energy development the first priority on public lands. Big Ridge is an emblem of what could happen to the several hundred proposed wilderness areas throughout the West. This fall, the BLM began offering a new wave of oil and gas leases that could set the stage for intensive development on lands that, only eight months ago, the agency considered candidates for wilderness.

Understanding the recent controversy requires going back to 1964, when Congress passed the Wilderness Act, laying the foundation for subsequent bills that protected over 400 wilderness areas on the national forests. In 1976, Congress passed the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA), which expanded the Wilderness Act to cover lands run by the Bureau of Land Management. It gave the BLM 15 years — until 1991 — to recommend wilderness areas to Congress. As a result, the 1990s saw several large BLM wilderness bills, including the 1990 Arizona Desert Wilderness Act and the 1994 California Desert Protection Act.
FLPMA did something else that was significant: It opened the door for continuing, citizen-initiated efforts to protect more BLM wilderness (HCN, 3/23/03: The Wild Card). The law required the BLM to continuously inventory "resource and other values" on public lands, and to protect those values. That allowed citizens’ groups to find lands that met the BLM’s own criteria for wilderness — areas larger than 5,000 acres that were roadless and free from human disturbance — and to ask the agency to protect those lands until Congress could decide.

These are not "wilderness study areas," which, for the most part, the BLM itself identified and must manage as wilderness until Congress has the opportunity to grant — or deny — them formal protection. Instead, they’re more like proposed wilderness study areas: wilderness-quality lands that the agency missed during its own inventories.

During the Clinton administration, the BLM agreed to take another look before permitting potentially damaging activities on these lands. According to Dave Alberswerth, who served as a special assistant to the Interior Department’s head of land and mineral management during the Clinton administration, and now works for The Wilderness Society, "The idea was to try to protect — within the secretary of the Interior’s discretion — the wilderness, roadless, undeveloped character of lands proposed for wilderness designation. For a while, it became known as the ‘take-care’ policy."

The BLM wasn’t required to protect these areas as wilderness, but it could impose stipulations on development projects, to minimize their impacts on wilderness character, or recommend postponing such projects. And in practice, the BLM frequently denied mineral leases on these lands.

Clinton’s secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt, gave citizens’ wilderness proposals their most explicit recognition in Utah. In its initial inventory in the 1980s, the Utah BLM identified only 3.2 million acres — which remain protected as wilderness study areas, because Congress has yet to pass a BLM wilderness bill for the state. Not satisfied with this, activists did their own inventory, spurring the agency to designate an additional 2.6 million acres as "wilderness inventory areas," bringing interim protection to a total of about 5.7 million acres.

Wilderness advocates scored a similar victory in Colorado, where in 1997, the BLM agreed to take a "second look" at a total of 600,000 acres proposed for wilderness protection by the Colorado Environmental Coalition.

In both Colorado and Utah, the BLM began to consider giving citizen-proposed wilderness more formal protection. In January 2001, Babbitt issued the BLM Wilderness Handbook, which laid out a standardized, nationwide procedure for determining which lands were eligible for "upgrading" from citizen-proposed inventory areas to official wilderness study areas.

But the Handbook was issued without an opportunity for public comment, in a wave of controversial last-minute directives just 10 days before President Clinton left office. The Utah government, and the oil and gas companies, saw the Handbook as a circumvention of public process.

"There is a big difference between BLM giving essentially policy effect to environmental groups drawing their private line on the map, and the public process of oil and gas leasing," says John Andrews, associate director and general counsel of Utah’s School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration, who fought the rule.

And the Handbook played straight into an intensifying debate over FLPMA. Wilderness foes contend that the BLM had a one-shot opportunity to recommend potential wilderness to Congress — and that the opportunity ended with FLPMA’s 1991 deadline. By their reckoning, the citizens’ wilderness proposals were moot; they’d come in too late.

Again, the locus of that fight has been Utah. In 1996, the state sued the U.S. Department of the Interior, arguing that the BLM didn’t have the authority to add areas it missed the first time around. But two years later, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals rebuffed the state when it ruled that the "plain language" of FLPMA required the BLM to continue to inventory potential wilderness.

The ruling only fueled frustration among oil and gas companies. "People had a horrible time getting (drilling permits) through. It was this endless cycle of review," says Connie Brooks, a Denver lawyer who represented Utah in the wilderness case. The citizen-proposed wilderness in Utah, she says, "was the land in between. It was basically off-limits for oil and gas leasing. (BLM) would actually use pages from Wilderness on the Edge" — a compendium of citizen-proposed wilderness put together by the Utah Wilderness Coalition — "and they’d redraw the boundaries (of leases offered for sale). We had them cold on it."

According to the Utah BLM, between November 1999 and April 2003, energy companies sought leases on 214,170 acres of wilderness inventory areas and citizen-proposed wilderness. The BLM turned down all of them.

But last March, Gov. Leavitt resurrected Utah’s legal challenge — and got a very different reaction from the Bush-appointed leaders in the Interior Department. Late in the day on Friday, April 11 — just two weeks after Utah refiled the lawsuit — Secretary Norton signed the settlement agreement that stripped interim protection from Utah’s 2.6 million acres of wilderness inventory areas and invalidated Babbitt’s Wilderness Handbook.

"We looked at the concerns Utah was raising, and took a close look at the law," says Lynn Scarlett, the Interior Department’s assistant secretary of Policy, Management, and Budget. "People might have hoped it said something different, but our read is that Congress said, ‘There’s the process, and it’s 15 years, and that’s the end of that.’ "

On Sept. 29, BLM Director Kathleen Clarke officially rescinded the interim-protection policy nationwide, removing protection from millions of acres and dealing a serious blow to two decades of citizens’ effort to save the West’s last wild places.

All of the citizens’ wilderness proposals that fell under the old policy "had a chance to be protected as wilderness," says Ted Zukoski, a lawyer for Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law firm. "Now, BLM is saying, ‘We can’t and we won’t plan to protect that character in terms of creating (wilderness study areas).’ BLM is making those decisions now that will make it impossible for those areas to be protected in the future. That’s what we’re losing."

Now, as at Big Ridge, the oil and gas industry is beginning to move drill rigs onto lands it already has leased. And it’s looking to lease more: One series of proposed wilderness lands has already hit the auction block, and a second is coming in a matter of days.

Legal settlement blows away a homespun wilderness proposal

Thirty miles west of Big Ridge, just south of Vernal, Utah, lies another area that’s long been torn between wilderness and energy development. Here, the White River cuts through the Uinta Formation on its way to the Green River, creating towering turrets and battlements. On the benchlands above the river, golden eagles roost atop old sheepherders’ cairns on sandstone outcrops.

Back in 1871, explorer Frederick Dellenbaugh, who was part of John Wesley Powell’s expedition, wrote of the area: "Beautiful is the wilderness at all times, at all times lovely, but under the spell of twilight it seems to enfold one in a tender embrace, pushing back the sordid, the commonplace, and obliterating those magnified nothings that form the weary burden of civilised man."

Starting in the 1950s, the Vernal area was largely overrun by oil and gas development. But the area around the White River came to stand at the center of a truly homegrown wilderness proposal. In 1985, a doctor named Will Durant and an oil and gas driller named Doug Hatch ran the river with Clay Johnson, a local machinist — who found the spot Dellenbaugh described, with the help of a postage-stamp sized sketch in the fold of another explorer’s journal.

The following winter, says Durant, "We sat down at Doug Hatch’s kitchen table, and pulled out the topo maps and started drawing lines. We shrunk it as much as we could to avoid anything that would interfere with the proposal."

On paper, they came up with about 9,000 acres, which they then checked on the ground to be sure that no roads or wells would disqualify them from protection. "We’d go out and get lost and wander around, and then we’d try to figure out where we went. We were pretty satisfied that everything was copacetic," Durant says.

As it turned out, their proposal wasn’t perfect: An oil company held a lease within the area. But they were able to stave off development of the lease in an exhausting fight that went all the way to an Interior appeals board in Washington, D.C. Later, Durant’s Uintah Mountain Club teamed up with the Salt Lake City-based Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, which expanded the club’s proposal to about 19,000 acres, and incorporated it into what is now a 9.1-million acre statewide wilderness proposal. In 1999, the BLM designated 15,800 acres of land around the White River as a wilderness inventory area.

In the 3.3 million acres of land that the BLM’s Vernal field office administers, a 15,800-acre wilderness inventory area was a small but important contrast to the rest of the well-dotted landscape. Many in the agency realized its significance. While the BLM couldn’t deny a company’s "valid existing right" to drill, which comes with a lease, it could refrain from issuing new leases, and it could quietly allow existing ones to expire. And that’s what it did.

"I think the BLM realized how important it was to us," says Durant, "and I think there were some people in the BLM who wanted to see more balance."

But the expanded 15,800-acre area brought more trouble, because some of the newly incorporated land was already leased for oil and gas development. And in 1997, the consortium that owned those leases, the Resource Development Group, started pushing to drill.

The Uintah Mountain Club may have felt it had BLM support in the earlier fight, but all that changed following the Norton-Leavitt settlement. Last summer, three months after the settlement, the BLM released a draft environmental impact statement that would allow 423 wells south of Vernal, including 15 wells in the White River wilderness inventory area, and 35 more in the citizen-proposed areas nearby. A final environmental impact statement should be completed before this summer, and drilling could start any time after that.

"Up until recently," says one agency insider, "it looked like, of any place in the state, (White River) was going to be wilderness."

Now, that looks unlikely.

Oil and gas companies rush onto wild lands

Last October, Pete Kolbenschlag of the Colorado Environmental Coalition (CEC) wrangled a spot in an oil-and-gas leasing course put on by the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation. Kolbenschlag found himself filling out a worksheet on how to bid for an oil and gas lease in an area proposed by his group for wilderness protection.

The exercise, written by Craig Carver, a Denver lawyer who represented Marathon Oil in a mid-’90s wilderness battle against CEC, reads: "The current Secretary of the Interior has determined to turn over management of the surface and subsurface resources of the CEC lands to those friends of the Vice-President who served on his energy advisory board. You can’t find out who those folks are, but they tell us to lease the CEC tracts come hell or high water."

As industry dives in, BLM offices have clear direction from Washington, D.C., to make oil and gas their first priority. Four months after taking office, President Bush issued two back-to-back executive orders, directing government agencies to expedite energy projects, and ordering agency managers to produce extensive documentation any time they deny a project. At the same time, Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force called for expediting development in the Rocky Mountain states. This summer, the Bush administration established the Rocky Mountain Energy Council to fast-track oil and gas projects.

Not all of this started with Bush. In November 2000, President Clinton signed the Energy Policy and Conservation Act Amendments (EPCA), which required the Departments of Interior, Agriculture and Energy to study oil and gas reserves on federal lands, and "restrictions or impediments" to their development. That report was released last January, and the April wilderness settlement knocked a lot of "impediments" out of the way. In August, BLM Director Kathleen Clarke issued a memo to agency managers, requiring them to re-evaluate restrictions "in areas where access to public lands and energy minerals is severely restricted."

Washington is also taking a much more hands-on approach. "People at the very local level are getting phone calls from these political people within the (Interior) department, saying what to do," says Martha Hahn, the former BLM state director in Idaho. "(As) a state director, you constantly try to buffer everything that’s being shot at you and your employees (from Washington, D.C.) and keep your employees on task. The political types in the department are going around that buffer. It’s driving the state directors crazy."

Hahn was pushed out of her position with the BLM in 2002 under pressure from Sen. Larry Craig (HCN, 3/18/02: BLM director forced to resign). She later lost a job at the Argonne National Laboratory, after she was quoted in a Vanity Fair article critical of J. Steven Griles, the former oil-and-gas industry lawyer who is now second-in-command of the Interior Department.

The political types have made it clear that dissent will not be tolerated. In an appearance before the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission in Reno, Nev., last October, BLM Director Clarke said land managers in her agency had "lost some discipline, lost some accountability, did a lot of freelancing." According to The Associated Press, Clarke vowed to send a "team to look at some of our more problematic field offices."

It’s almost impossible to get BLM staffers to talk about life inside the agency these days. Two current BLM state directors contacted for this story declined interviews, and only a handful of BLM employees would comment on the record.

"The pressure, in terms of them not saying anything, is so huge it’s obvious," says Hahn. "People are just terrified right now." But the shift within the agencies is clear: In the wake of the April wilderness settlement, the BLM has been moving to get citizens’ wilderness lands back into the leasing line-up — first and foremost in Utah. A July 2003 briefing for BLM Director Clarke noted that Washington sees Utah as "leading the way" in leasing such areas. The memo proposed establishing a "SWAT team" to conduct the environmental analysis for leasing "backlogged" wilderness inventory and citizen-proposed wilderness areas.

This November, the first of the Utah wilderness inventory areas hit the auction block in the BLM’s quarterly oil and gas lease sale. Several found no buyers. But several parcels in a former wilderness inventory area in Desolation Canyon on the Green River — best-known as a boaters’ paradise, but also on the edge of a large oil and gas field — were actually purchased. (The BLM did defer five parcels for further analysis of their "wilderness characteristics.")

"A lot of the areas that are moving forward with potential leasing activity are adjacent to long-standing oil and gas activity," says Interior’s Lynn Scarlett. "In many instances, the leases are smack-dab next to (existing) oil and gas activity."

A much bigger round of parcels will be leased from late January to mid-February, including parts of citizen-proposed wilderness in four states (see list at left).

In Vernal, the first rumblings of change came last year, with a massive seismic exploration project that, in part, targeted two wilderness inventory areas and four citizen-proposed wildernesses. "I think (that) was just an eye-opener for what was getting ready to happen," says Mary Hammer, a former Vernal BLM wildlife biologist. "As soon as that (Norton-Leavitt) settlement was reached, it was like, ‘Bingo! We’re gonna go in.’ "

One BLM employee says that in areas like Vernal, "Up until recently, industry was pretty cooperative. Even if they had a lease in one of these areas, they wouldn’t exercise it. But right now, because they’re being politically pushed, they’re coming in right and left."

John Andrews, of Utah’s School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration, downplays the leases. "Don’t buy into the concept that, if lands are leased, ruin and destruction are actually happening. From leasing to any sort of significant development involves a lot of what-ifs, and the percentage of leases that ultimately have much activity on them is very, very limited."

Nonetheless, these new energy leases are the biggest threat to the future of wilderness. "Undoing" leases is next to impossible, buying them out is extremely expensive, and they give companies a right to drill. They lay a nearly bomb-proof foundation for future development.

And if there’s a sense of urgency in the rush to drill, it may be because the Norton-Leavitt settlement has not gone unchallenged. A coalition of environmental groups, represented by Earthjustice and including The Wilderness Society, SUWA, the Colorado Environmental Coalition, and several other state wilderness groups, has asked the federal courts to overturn the settlement. The challenge is now before the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver — the same court that shot down the state’s anti-wilderness lawsuit in 1998.

The industry is pushing hard to buy leases before that challenge gets heard by a judge, says CEC’s Kolbenschlag. "They want their drilling permits approved, they want to get those leases in — they want to have all that stuff ready to go, because they know they can get it in now."

The battle rages on in the courts

To some extent, the legal challenge to the Leavitt-Norton settlement may be tempering the rush into wild areas.

"I think it’s a very great disincentive," says Craig Carver, the Denver lawyer who wrote the exercise teaching companies to lease proposed wilderness areas. "Industry doesn’t like controversy; it’s not a good place to invest money."

Now, conservation groups are engaged in the legal equivalent of hand-to-hand combat, challenging every lease and drilling permit application. The Colorado Environmental Coalition has appealed El Paso’s wells on Big Ridge to the Interior Department’s Board of Land Appeals. The Resource Development Group’s proposal to drill in the White River area will almost certainly be challenged. And the November lease sales in Utah are under litigation by SUWA.

Earthjustice and The Wilderness Society have also sued to gain access to the records of the negotiations between the Department of the Interior and Utah that resulted in the Norton-Leavitt wilderness settlement. But challenging even one specific project requires tremendous resources. And for some spots, such as Colorado’s Big Ridge, it may already be too late.

Back at Big Ridge, Seidenberg, Morris and I walk up to the first well El Paso drilled and abandoned. We’re in no hurry: Occasionally, we step off the road to weave through old-growth piñon, the ground beneath the trees dappled with snow and rich moss. When we finally reach the well, we find that the pad is in the first stages of a long recovery. Shredded piñon and junipers have been raked across the ground, but the scar is unmistakable.

As the sun begins to dip and the cold sets in, we linger a while. We take in Big Ridge itself, rising to the east. And we talk about that question of balance that follows the wilderness movement, always.

In the Rocky Mountain states, about 2.5 percent of the land is protected as wilderness. Roughly 64 percent of the public land is open to leasing. "Look at what we’re trying to save vs. what oil and gas companies have access to," says Morris. "Oil and gas wants all of it. We want to protect 5 percent."

Big Ridge is by no means the last chance for the gas companies — there’s plenty more land, even around here, for them to take a stab at. But here in the Piceance Basin, Big Ridge may be the last chance for wilderness. And for now, it looks as if that chance has been lost.

Interior’s Lynn Scarlett points out that, in oil and gas leasing and development, "there’s a lot of points of public engagement as you march along in the process" — points where concerned citizens can intervene to shape the fate of wild places. But while the public still has a voice with the BLM on how those areas will be developed, protecting them as wilderness is no longer an option.

In the painfully delicate balancing act called multiple use, wilderness — and its citizen supporters — have been cut out of the picture. "Why is it that you can keep leasing forever?" Seidenberg asks as we begin to trudge back through the snow and mud. "You can keep finding oil. But you can’t find any more wilderness."

Matt Jenkins is associate editor for High Country News.
These stories were made possible with support from the following individuals: Grant Heilman, Farwell Smith, Nelle Tobias and Andy Wiessner.

Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance 801-486-3161, www.suwa.org

Colorado Wilderness Network 970-385-8509, www.cowildernessnetwork.org

The Wilderness Society 800-843-9453, www.wilderness.org

Campaign for America’s Wilderness 202-544-3691, www.leaveitwild.org

Earthjustice 510-550-6700, www.earthjustice.org

U.S. Department of the Interior 202-208-3100, www.doi.gov

Bureau of Land Management 202-452-5125, www.blm.gov

Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States 303-623-0987, www.ipams.org

The Oil and Gas Accountability Project posts a list and maps of BLM parcels being offered for sale (including details about which of them overlap with citizen-proposed wilderness) at www.ogap.org, under "lease sale maps."

TRIP OF THE WEEK: Goffs a forgotten town that's now drawing visitors

Las Vegas Review-Journal

Dozens of trains a day roll through old Goffs on the double tracks of the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railroad across the Mojave Desert in California. None of them stop there these days. They no longer need the facilities of little trackside watering stops such as Goffs.

Diminished, but not forgotten, Goffs today serves other purposes. The ghost town marks a major entry point for the vast Mojave National Preserve. It lies along a well-kept portion of historic Route 66, drawing a growing number of road enthusiasts. It boasts a cultural center and museum housed in a beautifully restored mission-style schoolhouse and extensive outdoor historical displays.

Located about 30 miles from the Colorado River, Goffs occupies the top of a gradual rise in open arid country, noted when survey and mapping parties crossed the Mojave Desert in the mid-1800s. Free of steep grades and mountain passes, the route proved favorable when the railroad sought routes in the 1870s. By 1883, the Southern Pacific built the line, establishing Goffs to service the trains. The railroad built a depot in 1902.

Lanfair Road, heading northward from Goffs, roughly parallels another railroad, now disappeared. From 1893 to 1927, the Nevada Southern short line railroad ran to Searchlight, then central to many active mines. Today, Lanfair Road forms part of a network of remote roads accessing the rugged landscapes of the Mojave National Preserve.

To reach Goffs, about 110 miles from Las Vegas, drive south on U.S. 95 toward Needles. Where the highway crosses the railroad tracks, watch for the well-marked junction with historic Route 66, the original paved highway across the Mojave Desert. On a recent Sunday, Goffs welcomed a road rally of PT Cruisers, just one of many groups making nostalgia runs along portions of old Route 66.

After the railroads converted to diesel locomotives, which did not require the frequent watering stops needed by steam-powered trains, towns such as Goffs began to decline. However, Goffs could still rely on the U.S. 66 traffic to generate business for its garages, filling stations, hotel and eateries. That changed when the highway was relocated a few miles south in 1931.

Today, the handsome restored one-room schoolhouse built in 1914 appears much as it did when constructed by San Bernardino County. It stands as the only reminder of the days when Goffs was home to a couple of hundred people and served a larger population scattered over a huge area. The building doubled as a community center and lending library after school for grades one through eight.

Children attended Goffs School until 1937. The building thereafter fell into private hands. Sometimes lived in, often vacant, the building gradually deteriorated. A couple acquiring it for a home in the 1980s began serious reconstruction, saving the classroom roof from caving in. Repairs continued when Mojave Desert expert and champion Dennis Casebier and his wife bought the school and surrounding acreage in 1990. Casebier brought along his extensive library of books, maps and research concentrating on the Mojave Desert and its history.

The new owners envisioned restoring the schoolhouse to its original state, using historic photos and plans. The sturdy building of wood frame covered by stucco over steel mesh had generous porches for shade, expansive windows for light into the 800 square foot classroom and a fenced acre of playground.

The Casebiers knew they couldn't do it alone. They worked to create the Mojave Desert Heritage and Cultural Association in 1993. In 2001, Goffs Schoolhouse attained listing on the National Register of Historic Places as a result of work done by a graduate class from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Now owned by the volunteer, nonprofit group, the museum opens for visitation the first weekend of each month except July, August and September. The schoolhouse museum continues to add materials to its archives and artifacts to its impressive collections. Research includes recording first person historical accounts alluding to the area. The future of the once-derelict schoolhouse now looks bright.

Public land-use issues discussed at meeting

By CHUCK MUELLER, Staff Writer
San Bernardino Sun

VICTORVILLE - Acknowledging that federal and local interests are often at odds over use of public lands, the Bureau of Land Management's top administrator called Tuesday for working in harmony toward mutual goals.

"California is intense and complex, with new demands and impacts," said bureau director Kathleen Clarke. "Government is best when it's open, and the best ideas frequently come from business leaders.

"These lands belong to all the people and we need to manage them so we can enhance our lives," she told a group of civic leaders here. "I think we can work in harmony toward a common ground."

Clarke stopped here on the second day of a High Desert tour of public lands with Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon, R-Santa Clarita.

The congressman focused on a number of issues involving public lands, including the Endangered Species Act and the proposed California Wild Heritage Act.

"Many of us in Congress would like to see changes in the Endangered Species Act, but I don't think we have the necessary votes," McKeon said.

He said he sees little likelihood of passage of the Wild Heritage Act, reintroduced last year by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., to conserve up to 9 million acres of wild lands in the state.

"If people can come together with something smaller, I would help work with them. But (this) acreage on top of what we already have set aside is too much."

Meanwhile, Clarke envisions some changes in the Endangered Species Act that "would ease the process."

She added, "We support the act, but are looking at ways it is applied."

Attention then shifted to the controversial West Mojave Plan, the nation's largest habitat conservation proposal. Now in in its final stages, the plan is designed to protect endangered species like the desert tortoise while streamlining procedures to develop land in the vast western Mojave Desert.

Twenty-eight entities including federal, state and county governments, and various cities and special interest groups have worked jointly for a decade to find ways to protect sensitive species from urban encroachment while allowing other uses, such as mining and off-road vehicle activities, to continue.

Mojave milestones

Braving the perils of the historic road -- and nearly succeeding.

By Susan Spano, Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times

A bullet-riddled street sign on Old Mojave Road marks a turn near the Piute Range. (Robert Gauthier / LAT)

Baker, Calif. — Some people love the desert. They love it at 110 degrees with the AC off. They love rusted junk, abandoned mines, sand traps, rattlesnakes, old bones and dry washes. You're pretty sure they're touched until you go there with them, as I did in October with my brother, John.

He'd been wanting to drive the 130-mile Old Mojave Road, a dirt, rock and sand path across Mojave National Preserve that passes landscapes you don't get to see on paved roads. It was the historic route from the Colorado River to Barstow for Native Americans, explorers, stagecoach drivers and the Army.

When the railroad laid tracks to the south, the old road was all but forgotten until Dennis G. Casebier, a Navy physicist from Corona with a passion for desert history, decided it should be re-opened for recreation.

In the early 1980s, the Friends of the Mojave Road, founded by Casebier, mapped, repaired and erected stone cairns along the desert route. But with the creation of the 1.6-million-acre Mojave National Preserve in 1994, the group's custodial role diminished.

Now Casebier has moved on to tending a historic schoolhouse museum in the Mojave Desert hamlet of Goffs and collecting oral histories from people who once lived in the East Mojave Desert. But he still sometimes checks the mailbox his group installed near Kelbaker Road, where people record their passage over the old road. Casebier estimates that several thousand make the trip annually.

One tends to think all deserts are the same, places that get only a scant amount of rain. But in North America there are four kinds: the Great Basin, Sonoran, Chihuahuan and relatively small Mojave, all in Mexico and the U.S. Southwest.

Deer keep their distance at the Mid Hills Campground in the Mojave National Preserve. (Robert Gauthier / LAT)

Sailing the desert in an SUV

The Mojave National Preserve has some of the tallest sand dunes and thickest Joshua tree forests on the continent and, better still, a combination of elements — lava cones, dry lake beds, basin and range topography that make it a kind of desert primer.

If a desert has something to teach, I want to learn. Then too, I like tagging along with John on hiking and backcountry driving trips. He has the skills and gear, although when camping he would eat protein bars for breakfast, lunch and dinner if I didn't bring along some real food. For protection in the wilderness, he takes my grandfather's World War I saber, about as deadly as a papier-mâché prop in an operetta. He pores over maps before setting out and then basically ignores them in order, I think, to give expeditions a sense of discovery and adventure.

John told me this would be a very rough trip — two days of driving and one night of camping — and that I better not wimp out, the way I did a few years ago when I made him turn back on the appallingly rugged road that leads to the Maze District of Utah's Canyonlands National Park.

I rented a beige Ford Expedition with four-wheel drive and left a day ahead of John so I could see a few sights, including Kelso Depot. This desert oasis at Kelbaker and Kelso-Cima roads (two of the paved arteries that cross the preserve) was born with the completion of the railroad between Salt Lake City and L.A. in 1906, when there was considerable mining in the area.

But passenger trains began bypassing the little settlement after World War II. The handsome early '20s Spanish Revival train station, with its restaurant and regal stand of palm trees, was left to molder.

Now the National Park Service is in the final stages of renovating the building as an interpretive center and museum, scheduled to open this summer. It's a good rest stop between visits to the Cinder Cone Lava Beds about 15 miles north and Kelso Dunes to the south.

Then I headed up Kelso-Cima Road, which rounds the south side of gently sloping, astonishingly symmetrical Cima Dome, a 75-square-mile area of volcanic uplift in the wild heart of the preserve. The two-lane highway, often used as a shortcut between Palm Springs and Las Vegas, is straight and flat, paralleling railroad tracks before branching off across the Ivanpah Valley.

The sun was setting in a pink puddle by the time I reached Nipton, on the northeast side of the preserve, with its bushy tamarisks, pint-sized hotel and general store. I chatted with the clerk and drank a soda before heading for the Avi Resort & Casino, on the Colorado River about midway between Needles, Calif., and Laughlin, Nev.

I am not much of a gambler and had never been to the Needles-Laughlin area, where the tamed Colorado River is a bathtub favored by motor boaters and water skiers. But the eastern portal of the Old Mojave Road is near the Avi, which is owned by the Mojave Indians who settled the river's flood plain and helped blaze the trail that became the road.

They led Spanish explorer Father Francisco Garcés across the desert in 1776 and did the same for the American trapper Jedediah Strong Smith in 1826. But eventually, relations turned hostile between newly arriving white people and the Indians. As a result, in the 1860s the U.S. government built a chain of forts along the old desert trail, which by then had become a rump-blistering wagon road carrying supplies and mail.

I doubt the people at the Avi, propped at slot machines with plastic cups full of quarters, were thinking about history. Together with the casino's garish lights and the gorging at the Native Harvest Buffet, they vaguely depressed me, so I went to my room — big, clean, simply furnished, not bad for about $25 on a weeknight — and went to sleep, anticipating a rendezvous the next morning with John, who wasn't able to leave L.A. until after work.

I banged on his door at 9 a.m. and had a map spread out on a table in Avi's Feathers Café when he showed up for breakfast. Our plan was to drive half of the road that day, camp overnight and finish the next day, coming out at Afton Canyon just south of I-15 between Barstow and Baker. Then we would head back to the Avi, where we were leaving John's car, for a dip in the pool, another go at the buffet and beds with clean sheets.

But we were in no hurry, because two days of driving would easily get us over the road, with time to stop and explore such features as Soda Dry Lake on the west side of the preserve. After rainy weather, it becomes a vast, tire-swamping mud flat. When John saw the Expedition, he said it was probably too heavy to make it across the playa, but he cheered up when I told him it was insured for every conceivable mishap.

We packed the water, food and gear John had brought, spent a cool $50 filling the gas tank and set out. The unmarked turn-off west across the desert was about three miles north of the Avi; we found it with the help of Casebier's "Mojave Road Guide," annotated mile by mile. John made me manage the wheel at the beginning, to prove I could do it. Like most novice dirt-road drivers, I tended to take my foot off the gas when we came to sand. But my brother kept saying, "Follow the ruts. Keep going. Don't stop."

Then he cracked open a liter of Coke and yelled out the window, "No problem anyway! We're fully insured!"

That day was a pure desert joy from start to finish. The temperature was about 80 degrees when we left, and the sky was mounded with clouds. A lop-eared jackrabbit jumped out of a nest of creosote, birds tittered, the air smelled like a spice rack.

And, suddenly, everything sharpened up, as it will in the desert, from the yellow rabbitbrush to the brittle Piute Mountains, as if I'd just had Lasik surgery.

About 23 miles west of the Colorado River (using Casebier's distance calculations), we reached Ft. Piute, one of the military redoubts built on the road in the 1860s. It sits in the shadow of Jedediah Smith Butte, above dependable Piute Creek, and once harbored 18 enlisted men of Company D of the 9th U.S. Infantry.

John went looking for Native American petroglyphs in the creek bed while I ate a packaged cheese-and-cold-cut snack on the knee-high stone walls that are the remnants of the fort. Just before we relaunched our Old Mojave Road sortie, he did a saber dance in front of the Expedition with Grandpa's sword.

The setting sun colors the Marl Mountains in the central section of the Mojave National Preserve, about 200 miles northeast of Los Angeles.(Robert Gauthier / LAT)

Mysterious turnoffs

With John driving, we climbed 3,412-foot Piute Pass, infamously rough in the old wagon road days. The view west swoops over the Lanfair Valley, where homesteaders tried to make the Mojave bloom in the early 20th century, to range upon range of desert mountains, separated by basins, in a Western geography lesson.

From there, we tooled across the valley, so thick with Joshua trees you would think they had been propagated. Here and there we saw old stuff scattered over the desert, including a wrecked school bus that made me think of the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine."

There were also mysterious turnoffs that John said could lead to crystal methamphetamine labs. He likes to put me on edge. When I asked if we needed gasoline, he routinely said we were about to run out.

We crossed paved Ivanpah Road at Casebier mile mark 41.7 and caught graded Cedar Canyon Road west to avoid a more treacherous stretch of the Old Mojave Road along Watson Wash. Eventually, we reached Government Holes, where one of the last gunfights in the West took place in 1925. It's a pretty place in the Round Valley, with a windmill and abandoned corral, and we considered making camp. But it was starting to get chilly and there were no windbreaks, so we turned south on Black Canyon Road, heading for Mid Hills Campground in aromatic forests of pinyon pine and juniper.

There we claimed site No. 25, with the preserve's best view of Cima Dome. A fire pit was stocked with wood, left by some friendly earlier camper, and there was a nice flat place for my tent. John set up his cot outside so he could see the stars. We had steak and apples for dinner, talked for a while and then went to sleep.

I slept like a sunken ship and awakened in time for sunrise over Cima Dome.

Another day in the desert ensued, not quite as good as the last. We lost our way, making an unintended detour north toward Death Valley Mine on a track that kept getting fainter and fainter. Finally, we reached the paved Kelso-Cima Road, where there's a little convenience store and post office run by tiny, wizened Irene Ausmus, who came to the Mojave with her husband in the 1960s and refused to sell out when the National Park Service arrived.

It wasn't hard to find the Old Mojave Road again, with Casebier's help. In fact, the road's rutted route can be seen for miles as it pushes west across Kelso Wash and rounds the Beale Mountains, named for explorer Edward F. Beale, who tried to introduce camels to the Mojave in 1857 but had to abandon the experiment because they frightened the horses.

The views north to Cima Dome and south to Kelso Dunes only got better. But just east of Marl Springs, John realized we had a flat, necessitating an hour of hot, dirty work mounting the humongous spare. There was some cursing, after which we decided to get to Kelbaker Road, about 20 miles west, as soon as possible, so we could drive to the town of Baker on I-15.

With the rigors of Soda Dry Lake ahead, it seemed prudent to get the blown tire fixed so we'd have a spare.

In Baker, we stopped at the Park Service information office, where a ranger gave us more bad news. Autumn rains had made passage over the playa dicey. Several vehicles had gotten stuck there recently, languishing for days awaiting rescue as the salt crust of the dry lake corroded their undercarriages.

John wanted to risk it, but the day was more than half gone. Over a lunch of hummus, fried calamari and gyros at the Mad Greek restaurant, I persuaded him to abort and head back to the Avi. So we can't say we drove the whole road. Our names don't appear in the record book at the Old Mojave Road mailbox, which we bypassed in our rush to Baker.

But John plans to return and conquer the playa. Maybe I'll go with him. I'm starting to understand why he loves the desert. Besides, I'd like to see him brandishing Grandpa's saber again.


Rocking and rolling across the Mojave

GETTING THERE:

Mojave National Preserve is about 200 miles northeast of Los Angeles. From L.A., take Interstate 15 northeast to Baker and turn south on Kelbaker Road, or take Interstate 40 east from Barstow and turn north on Kelbaker Road, to reach Kelso Depot, a major historical site in the preserve. The eastern portal of the Old Mojave Road is on Needles Highway about halfway between Needles, Calif., and Laughlin, Nev.

Spring and fall are the best seasons to drive the Old Mojave Road. Consult the Mojave National Preserve or "Mojave Road Guide," by Dennis G. Casebier (Tales of the Mojave Road Publishing Co., Essex, Calif.), for information on how to prepare for the trip.

WHERE TO STAY:

Two campgrounds in Mojave National Preserve, Mid Hills and Hole-in-the-Wall, have drinking water and toilet facilities. Sites are $12 per night. Roadside car camping is also permitted, with restrictions.

Avi Resort & Casino, P.O. Box 77011, 10000 Aha Macav Parkway, Laughlin, NV 89029; (800) 284-2946, http://www.avicasino.com/. This complex on the west bank of the Colorado River has rooms in a new tower or an older poolside building. Doubles start at $19 Sundays to Thursdays, $49 on weekends.

Hotel Nipton B&B, 107355 Nipton Road, HCR-1, Box 357, Nipton, CA 92364; (760) 856-2335, http://www.nipton.com/. This homey desert enclave is on the northeast side of the preserve. It has a general store and five guest rooms with shared baths. Doubles are $69.50, including breakfast.

WHERE TO EAT:

Laughlin and Needles have a range of casino and fast-food restaurants. But if you're driving through Baker on I-15, don't miss the Mad Greek, (760) 733-4354, for serendipitous gyros, souvlaki and fried calamari in the desert. Lunch for two about $20.

TO LEARN MORE:

Mojave National Preserve Headquarters, 222 E. Main St., Barstow, CA 92311; (760) 255-8801, http://www.nps.gov/moja, or the NPS Baker Information Center, 72157 Baker Blvd., Baker, CA 92309; (760) 733-4040.

Mojave Desert Heritage & Cultural Assn., Goff's Schoolhouse, 37198 Lanfair Road G-15, Essex, CA 92332; (760) 733-4482, http://www.mdhca.org/.