News Page

NEWS

You can receive an occasional e-mail newsletter, which will describe the progress of the Bright Angel proposal, by contacting us through the item on the Main Menu entitled "send us e-mail." Just click on that, and then use the word "subscribe" somewhere in the title of your message.

February 12, 2007: An effort is underway in South Dakota to create a national heritage area that will focus on nineteenth century prairie towns. People from the Bright Angel project played an important role in setting this effort in motion, although, since it involves settled farmland rather than the undeveloped West, it has evolved in distinctive directions under local leadership. A coalition of business people, academics, and public officials has developed a two-phase proposal for the southeastern part of the state. Their initial, primary project would be to designate a heritage area, covering three counties, focused on the towns of Brookings, Madison, and De Smet. This is today an area of rich farmland and classic nineteenth century towns, with remnants of the earlier ecology in scattered ice age lakes and stands of tall grass. The Dakota Prairie National Heritage Area would commemorate, anong other things, the works of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the author of "Little House on the Prairie," who lived here in her childhood and set several of her books here; De Smet is the original "Little Town on the Prairie." This heritage area could tell the story of the frontier as it evolved on the Great Plains. Then, later on, a second phase of the project could study the possible creation of about four "town parks," each one a village that would present the architecture and culture of a particular year in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. A suitable route could connect these parks with each other and with existing towns. The second phase of the proposal is dependent on favorable findings as to economic feasibility, political acceptability, and the availability of suitable townsites from willing donors or willing sellers. If they are feasible and desired by the people in the area, the new town parks would be a memorable addition to the heritage area; but if not, then the heritage area can stand without them. Thus far the organizers of the proposal have gotten endorsements from one of the counties and virtually all of the towns in the area.

August 4, 2006: Neil Averitt has returned from a week on Mount Athos, Greece, a time-warped monastic republic (and a surviving unit of the Byzantine Empire!) about the same size, shape, and population as the proposed Bright Angel valley. An account of the trip was published in the Washington Post (here) and later, in slightly more detail, in the San Francisco Chronicle (here).

January 5, 2005: After several months of consideration, we have concluded that the best way to conduct the study requested by the Nye County Commissioners would be under the organizational umbrella of a "national heritage area." A heritage area is an established and familiar form of land designation, geographically larger than our proposed historic valley but considerably less strict in its terms. The reasons for thinking this a good vehicle for the Bright Angel project (and also something worth considering in its own right) are set out on the revised web page, Specific Place: Nye County, Nevada.
January 6, 2004: The County Commissioners of Nye County, Nevada, unanimously passed a resolution expressing interest in the single-valley version of the Bright Angel proposal, and support for exploring it further. The Commissioners expressly reserved the right to form their final opinion after seeing the results of a feasibility study, but their initial disposition toward the concept of a frontier area seems solidly favorable. The Resolution noted that Nye County residents "are proud of their heritage and the contributions of previous generations to the development of our nation," and that the Board "wishes to help the present generation and future generations to understand and appreciate those contributions." For the full text of the resolution see www.brightangel.org/NyeResolution.htm

December 14, 2003: We have just completed a substantial reorganization of the website, to focus on how the Bright Angel concept can be implemented through a chain of towns along the length of a single valley rather than through the larger regional model using concentric land-use rings. Under this new approach the sequencing of the towns will itself provide the "thinning out" of civilization, as the towns begin with a place relatively accessible by steam train, and then become progressively smaller, more remote, and following models from further back in the past. The shift to a single valley follows an evolution of thought that has taken place over the last two years. While smaller than the original regional model, this approach seems to have to most support among local governments, and the greatest likelihood of achieving concrete results. And the area involved would still be by no means small: a suitable valley would be several miles wide and anythere from thirty to seventy miles long.

September 14, 2003: We have added an outline describing another place in which a frontier area could be created on a relatively modest scale. This would involve a string of six or seven small villages in the canyons downstream from Grand Junction, Colorado. This location has some particular advantages in that the canyons do not have roads that would have to be removed, but they do already have train tracks for the right distance to give access to the first towns. This outline can can be found under the menu heading for "smaller scale applications" of the Bright Angel idea.

April 25, 2003: The additional material on the San Rafael Swell, sent to the BLM last December, has now been posted on the San Rafael section of the website. This includes not only a general discussion of how the Bright Angel principles might apply, but now also a tentative outline of some of the specific planning elements that might be used.

December 29, 2002: We sent a letter to the Price, Utah, office of the BLM, suggesting that the Bright Angel land-management principles might be usefully applied on a local scale in one valley of the San Rafael Swell. Doing so would not only permit a practical trial of the concepts, but would also help to resolve land-use disputes in one particularly striking and important area.

July 16, 2002: This day's New York Times has an article on the return of predators to the Flathead River near Glacier National Park. Diane Boyd, recently of the University of Montana, was quoted as attributing this to the unique contiguousness of this remote area, and the absence of roads. The Bright Angel project aims to create a similar contiguousness and absence of motorized traffic.

June 7, 2002: Today's New York Times reported on the "Slow Cities" movement in Italy, under which some small older cities have moved back toward their traditional cultures. The major of the town of Greve reports that it "is thriving selling its uniqueness. Unemployment has been replaced by a labor shortage, and while the young once emigrated for jobs, they are returning."

May 7, 2002: The Emery County Progress newspaper has published a relatively elaborate, half-page commentary by us, which suggests that some elements of the Bright Angel proposal could be used on a smaller scale as part of a new San Rafael Swell National Monument. The idea is that the pioneer-era towns of Bright Angel could be established along the course of a single valley, with their size and visitation rates thinning out as the visitor moves toward the head of the valley. This would make for an interesting corner of the Monument, and one that would serve the statutory goal of preserving cultural history. It would also make for a good practical test of the Bright Angel ideas, since the valley would be a little world of its own, and we could then see in actual practice how well it will serve the various interest groups involved. A slightly modified version of the column has been posted on the website, and is separately listed on the main menu under the title of "A Test Project in the San Rafael Swell."

February 25, 2002: A column on the Bright Angel proposal appeared in today's edition of the Salt Lake Enterprise, a weekly newspaper for the business and construction communities. The article was co-authored by Andres Duany and Neil Averitt. Duany's contribution was particularly welcome due to his long and successful experience as a planner of new neo-traditional towns, such as Seaside in Florida and Kentlands in Maryland.

August 19, 2001: The Bright Angel proposal was discussed in a column in the Sunday commentary section of the Salt Lake Tribune. With this, both of Utah statewide papers have now aired the idea. (The Deseret News ran an earlier column in March of 1998).

May 20, 2001: A speaker from the Bright Angel project gave the final talk at the Alliance for America's twelfth Fly-In conference in Washington. This annual event brings together a variety of grass-roots groups from the local-autonomy, multiple-use, economic-development end of the spectrum. The topic of the talk was "Different Perspectives on Finding Common Ground and Solutions." We would like to be able to report that the talk was greeted with unanimous acclaim. What would be closer to the mark, however, is to say that it was heard with courtesy by all those present and struck a responsive chord with some of them.

October 31, 2000: The October issue of Urban Land magazine contains a very nice layout discussing the Bright Angel proposal. This magazine is the house publication of the Urban Land Institute (www.uli.org), and is the principal jourmal for the development, smart-growth, New Urbanism and land-planning communities. With this, the proposal has reached a set of people who have not only the skills and resources to carry out the needed construction projects, but also the perspective and temperament to carry them out in a way that will mesh with other, environmental goals.

September 25, 2000: The Spectrum, the principal newspaper in southwestern Utah, has published a feature story describing the Bright Angel proposal.

August 16, 2000: The Bright Angel proposal was the topic for a two-hour radio talk show this morning. Our thanks again to the Radio For the Family Network, and to Sam Bushman of the originating station KNAK-AM in Delta, Utah.

June 28, 2000: The idea of managing lands on a large scale in order to re-create the conditions of the original frontier has been taken up in some of the northern prairie lands. Earlier this spring, North Dakota's monthly labor market newsletter, Labor Market Advisor, contained an article by Greg Wald suggesting that rural towns might profit from visitors wishing to view the indigenous wildlife on some forms of large reserves. It concluded that "maybe it is time to embrace what makes us unique and use that to our advantage."

June 8, 2000: As predicted in this space on March 5, the San Rafael Swell bill (H.R. 3605), which would have created a conservation area and western legacy district in central Utah, has failed to become law. The bill's sponsors in the state congressional delegation pulled it from further consideration on the House floor when the votes on preliminary amendments made clear that they did not have enough support to pass it over the opposition of the conservation community.

May 23, 2000: A spokesman for the Bright Angel Frontier Project was interviewed for forty-five minutes this morning as a guest on the talk-show program "Radio for the Family." This show airs on approximately twenty stations of the Radio For the Family Network, including two in Utah. Our thanks to show host Sam Bushman of station KNAK-AM in Delta, Utah, for making this opportunity available. Please click here for more information on the network.

May 7, 2000: Today's Washington Post contains an article discussing the development and maturation of the New Urbanism movement, and speculating on how this movement may come to have an effect on distinctly rural areas as well. "New Urbanism" is a school of thought, pioneered by Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, which suggests that big-city suburbs should incorporate those features (such as front porches and stores within walking distance of houses) that once made traditional small towns so successful. This new learning can also be relevant to the design of new freestanding towns, of course. The article makes this connection, observing in its closing paragraphs that we may soon come to see neotraditional towns being built in pleasant rural areas, such as the Front Range of the Rockies. This isn't quite the same thing as the Nineteenth Century towns of Bright Angel, but it is related, and a long way from traditional patterns of Western development. The article is written by Joel Garreau, a Post staff writer and the author of "Edge City: Life on the New Frontier." Click here for a link to the text.

March 5, 2000: The traditional competing bills in Congress have moved somewhat closer together this year, although they are probably still too far apart to let either one become law. On the one hand, the conservation community is again supporting the Red Rock Wilderness Act (H.R. 1732), but has not sufficiently considered non-wilderness forms of land protection to get action on it in a Republican Congress. On the other hand, the Utah state and county governments testified in favor of a new version of the San Rafael Swell legislation in hearings on March 2. Their bill, entitled the "San Rafael Western Legacy District and National Conservation Act" (H.R. 3605), has several things going for it: it would specifically aim at preserving pioneer-era history, as well as pursuing more traditional land-conservation goals, and it has the support of the Administration. Ultimately, however, the bill seems too procedural in focus, and too short on operational specifics to win support from the conservation community. Thus the deadlock seems likely to continue, and to underscore the need for the Bright Angel legislation as the only true compromise proposal in this area.

February 17, 2000: Greg Aplet and some colleagues at The Wilderness Society are completing work on a paper that maps the lower 48 states in terms of "Indicators of Wildness," such as remoteness from roads, naturalness of vegetation, and the like, and then combines all these attributes into a single indicator of wildness. Click here for a link to their work, and then click on "Indicators of Wildness" for this particular project, complete with many full-color maps. This work is significant in that it maps the land in terms of its actual, functional characteristics, rather than focusing on its formal legal designation as wilderness area, National Forest, or whatever. Not surprisingly, the consolidated map shows that the proposed Bright Angel frontier would occupy what is probably the least developed sizeable tract of land in the country.

January 31, 2000: The rural western counties have begun to organize more comprehensively to resist what they see as excessive demands for wilderness. They have formed the Wilderness Act Reform Coalition (www.wildernessreform.com), using some of the same organizational resources as the Blue Ribbon Coalition, and have received the backing of a number of counties in Nevada and the Four Corners states. We are in touch with this group to explore the possibility that they might wish to pursue their agenda through a multiple-use but nonetheless structured format like the Bright Angel Frontier, which includes some provisions for wilderness, rather than through the more freewheeling business libertarianism that the West pursued in the previous generation.

November 3, 1999: The land-management community is looking foward to the conference on Recreation and Resource Capacity, to be held at the end of this month under the sponsorship of Professors Glenn Haas and Michael Manfredo of Colorado State University. This meeting will consider whether some public lands are being over-used, and, if so, what can be done about it. The concentric-ring structure of the Bright Angel Frontier would provide an unobtrusive solution to any problems that might exist today, and to the greater problems that can be anticipated in the next century: (1) Slowing down travel by using older technologies in the Nineteenth Century areas will increase the time needed for visits to some places, and so will reduce the number of visitors present on any one day. (2) Slowing down travel will also effectively reduce the space that each visitor occupies, and so will increase the carrying capactiy of any given area. (3) The large wilderness area in Nevada will thin out visitation through the sheer physical barriers of dryness and distance. (4) The loop railroad can be laid out so as to encourage travelers to begin their visit at certain points and not at others. All of these measures will allow us to address the real concerns of overuse, but in non-coercive ways that respect individual decisionmaking, and that are very different from the systems of reservations and allocations that have been proposed for other areas.

September 12, 1999: Some of the concepts introduced by the Bright Angel Frontier Project appear to be finding their way into the mainstream news media. The "Week in Review" section in today's New York Times contains a column entitled "The Definition of Wilderness is Increasingly Elusive." This includes the following passage: "Implicit in the [last ten years' Utah wilderness] debate is the concept that wilderness and humans should have nothing to do with each other -- that people have no place in wild country, except as occasional visitors. Some conservationists now say it may be time to allow a greater human presence in the wild [through extended stays or even living there], which could actually open up more land for protection." While we can't be certain exactly what the reporter had in mind, this does sound quite a bit like the Nineteenth Century rings of Bright Angel.

September 3, 1999: Professor Paul Lorah of the University of St. Thomas has published a fascinating and provocative set of maps on his webpage. These illustrate several qualities of the contemporary "frontier," such as the counties with fewer than two people per square mile, the areas more than 100 miles from a major highway, the lands of these sorts that are owned by the federal government, and the thinly-populated counties that are now filling in quickly. All this information tends to show why the inner rings proposed for the Bright Angel Frontier are located where they are, and why the Bright Angel area must be established relatively soon if it is to be created at all. Click here for a link to the map collection.

August 23, 1999: We have identified a list of topics on which further empirical research would be particularly useful, such as the tourism potential of the Nineteenth Century towns, the degree to which these towns would be compatible with native wildlife, and the balance of public opinion as between Bright Angel and other forms of land-use management for this area. These might make good research subjects for papers at graduate schools or institutions with research budgets, in addition to helping our project. Click here for the list of topics.

July 14, 1999: Some further research sources have emerged, shedding more light on how the economic potential of historic (or "heritage") tourism compares with that of traditional industries. This is the kind of travel that would be involved in visits to the Nineteenth Century rings. The Center for the Rocky Mountain West, at the University of Montana, performed a study of a 24-county area in the Yellowstone River Valley. They reached the following conclusions: "The region's $205 million in annual labor income generated from nonresident travel is close to the $225 million in labor income generated by the region's entire manufacturing sector. In addition, it is greater than the net income received by the region's entire farm and ranch sector. And the region's travel sector is growing rapidly -- up nearly 70 percent since the late '80s." Surveys of these travelers suggested that 40 percent of them could be considered heritage tourists. A similar study by the Utah Travel Division suggests that 21 percent of domestic visitors go to historic sites, only slightly less than the 25 percent that go to State or National Parks, and far more than the 7 percent who go skiing.

June 9, 1999: Over the past few months the Bright Angel website has been cited by groups at both ends of the spectrum of views on western land management. It was included as one of the "picks of the week" in the Buzz section on the website of the Natural Resources Defense Council (and remained up for two weeks, even . . .). It is also included in the "links" section of the website for the Blub Ribbon Coalition, the principal advocacy group for off-road vehicles. Obviously, the BAF is not the preferred land-use solution for either of these groups, and in fact is not affirmatively endorsed by either one. However, it seems interesting and encouraging that these two groups, which can agree on so few other things, both feel that the Bright Angel approach contains points worth considering. This reinforces our sense that we are on the track of a workable, centrist solution.

March 30, 1999: The Albuquerque Tribune published a new, medium length version of our proposal, with the photo from the title page of the website memorably reproduced in full color across the full width of the front page of the commentary section. The Bright Angel proposal has now been published in all five of the states that would be affected by it.

February 3, 1999: We have located two studies that at least roughly quantify the extent and economic benefits of "heritage tourism," and give some indication of how important the pre-industrial rings could be to the business base of the counties where they are located. One study sponsored by the Department of Agriculture reports that the Amish areas in Pennsylvania are visited by 3.5 to 5.0 million tourists a year, generating annual revenue of about $ 500 million. Click here for that study. A second study by the Travel Industry Association of America reports that people participating in heritage travel tend to stay longer at their destination and to spend more money than others. The typical heritage traveler spends $ 688 per trip compared to $ 425 for all U.S. travelers. Click here for this study. Neither of these studies is conclusive about the potential of the sort of pre-industrial areas proposed here (which will be something unique), but they do suggest that it might be worthwhile for the affected state and local governments to organize a research project that will focus specifically on that issue. The other features of the Bright Angel proposal should, of course, help enable the area to absorb this increased visitation without undue harm to its frontier and wilderness values.

February 3, 1999: The Bureau of Land Management is nearing the end of its period for public comment on the proposed Grand Staircase -- Escalante management plan. This National Monument is important to the Bright Angel Frontier proposal because a significant part of the pre-industrial and wilderness areas would be located here. The proposed management plan probably does not require comment at present. The plan seems to reflect considerable sensitivity to local feelings, which were upset by the way the Monument was created without local notice, and the plan therefore seems inclined to play things safe and to make relatively few changes in current land use, thus leaving the Bright Angel issue open for future resolution. If anyone does want to comment, however, it might be useful to suggest that BLM establish two preindustrial towns about ten miles apart, as a small-scale test and demonstration of the concept. The proposed BLM management plan and an electronic link for sending comments can both be found on the Grand Staircase -- Escalante website, which is in our "Links" section. [After an extension, comments are now due by March 15.]

December 14, 1998: We have posted on the website a more detailed map of the Bright Angel Frontier, which shows how the individual rings might be contoured. The specifics of this map remain provisional; one of the main purposes of the proposed directed study statute is to develop information that will allow these boundaries to be drawn more definitively. We also welcome input from readers. (We would particularly value suggestions for areas in Nevada that would be suitable for pre-industrial communities.) But the general layout of the map does express our vision for the frontier.

November 30, 1998: An opinion column was published in today's San Francisco Chronicle, inviting the Sierra Club to consider the Bright Angel approach in the coming session of Congress. Click here for a link to the column.

October 21, 1998: Congress has now recessed without passing either of the major Southwestern land bills. Senator Bennett did introduce the San Rafael Swell bill in the Senate, but it did not reach the floor. The Red Rock Wilderness bill, sponsored primarily by Democrats, did not reach a vote in either chamber. The time therefore seems right for compromise legislation such as Bright Angel.

September 10, 1998: After some discussion, and after an in-person visit to the affected section, we have decided to slightly modify the proposed initial boundaries of the Bright Angel Frontier. We now propose to link the San Juan Mountains in Colorado with the main Utah portion of the frontier through a corridor that will run along the still-wild valleys of the Dolores and San Miguel Rivers, rather than across the farmland north of Cortez. The model statute will be amended to reflect this change.

August 2, 1998: The short statement of the proposal was published today in the Sunday commentary section of the Arizona Republic. With this, our proposal has appeared on the op-ed pages of the principal statewide newspapers of the four states (Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Arizona) that would be most substantially affected by the Bright Angel Frontier.

July 21, 1998: It appears that the America's Red Rock Wilderness Act of 1997 is also unlikely to become law in the near future. This bill would create an extensive area of pure wilderness along the Colorado River in Utah, and is supported by important segments of the conservation community. As of this date the House version of the bill (H.R. 1500) has collected an impressive list of 139 sponsors. The Senate version (S.773), however, has only 12 sponsors -- probably too few to get the bill past the hostile western delegations even if Congress were to return to Democratic control. Given that neither the conservationist Red Rock Wilderness bill nor the development-minded San Rafael Swell bill are likely to become law, it underscores the desirability of finding a new, composite approach such as the Bright Angel Frontier.

June 25, 1998: A new page was added to the website today to respond to half a dozen frequently asked questions.

June 22, 1998: As of this date it appears unlikely that the San Rafael Swell National Heritage Area will become law. A bill to create this area (H.R. 3625) has been reported out of the House National Parks and Public Lands Subcommittee, but a parallel bill has not been introduced in the Senate, and it is now probably too close to the end of the session for such a bill to succeed. This is an outcome we view with mixed emotions. The San Rafael Swell National Heritage Area would lie on the northern borders of the Bright Angel area. The proposed legislation is interesting in its thoughtful, open-minded attempt to designate a graduated spectrum of land-use areas to accommodate different purposes. The legislation also seems significantly flawed, however, in the limited range of the use spectrum that it recognizes (it has no pre-industrial area), and in the excessive accommodation that it makes to local grazing interests (which appear to be protected not just in some places, but in all places). Perhaps the most appropriate bottom line is to congratulate the sponsors of the bill (Congressman Chris Cannon of Utah; Commissioner Randy Johnson of Emery County) on the creative imagination that they have brought to the task thus far, but to urge them that the project would benefit from further work.

May 28, 1998: Work on the model statutes was provisionally completed, and the statutes posted.

May 5, 1998: Dave Barry sent a postcard, which we swear we are not making up, saying that, if any advocate of this plan "wants a wild frontier, he should come to Miami."

April 20, 1998: The detailed statement of the proposal was published in the Legal Times of Washington, at page 26.

April 5, 1998: The short statement ran today in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which devoted virturally the entire front page of the Sunday commentary section to the idea.

April 3, 1998: People sometimes ask what they can do to help move the Bright Angel proposal forward. A short answer is that the project would benefit from whatever efforts any person has the time and inclination to take on. Our most pressing need at this time, however, is undoubtedly for increased visibility. Our proposal should do well on its own merits in any public discussion of land management, but in order to do that it must first become known. To help in this respect, it would be useful if you could download copies of the statement of the proposal, and then put these into the hands of the people in your own area who are in the best position to distribute the idea further. These might be news writers, the editors of outdoor club newsletters, teachers of land management subjects, or members of regional service clubs and chambers of commerce. It would also be useful to make our web address known to interested people on the relevant cyberspace bulletin boards.

March 30, 1998: The short statement of the Bright Angel proposal has now appeared on the op-ed pages of two newspapers in the Southwest. It was printed in the Denver Post on March 10, and in the Deseret News (of Salt Lake City) on March 27.

March 27, 1998: As of this date the Bright Angel home page began to be available, on a limited basis, for initial testing. We hope to have it more generally available within a week or ten days. Welcome!