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Show THE OGDEN VALLEY NEWS Volume III, Issue V Page 11 January 1, 2001 Salt Lake Artist Writing Book on Earl Holding and the Mountain—Snowbasin Compiled by Shanna Francis Ogden Valley News Staff When Stephen Trimble first visited an obscure ski area in northern Utah called Snowbasin in 1997, he discovered a local gem—a money losing artifact on the slopes of Mount Ogden preserved in amber circa 1968, but on the brink of revolution. Only a few months before, Congress had passed a bill enabling the billionaire Snowbasin owner to trade for enough public land on the mountain to create the West’s largest resort after the 2002 Winter Olympics. Both horrified and intrigued, Trimble began listening to the stories of the people passionately engaged with this mountain. The stories he heard led to a new book that Trimble is in the midst of writing—BECOMING EARL: Landscape, Community, and Honor in the American West. The book takes a look at community and landscape in the New West, “where the powerful have their way and the grassroots must adapt, and where honor is not easily defined.” From an interview with Stephen Trimble in December, the author was generous enough to give readers of the OGDEN VALLEY NEWS a sneak preview of part of his work that will make up his newest book. The following is part of an introduction that will be part of the flap copy of his book, and pieces from the book that illustrate a perspective of Ogden Valley and the people who live there. About the Book Mount Ogden encapsulates the evolution of the West, from wildland to overused commons to reclaimed public land to resort. The heroes and survivors of the Tenth Mountain Division returned to these mountains after World War II to invent a new relationship with wildlands, a complicated mix of sport and business, entrepreneurial playfulness and single-mindedness, respect, and control. These veterans helped to define our attitudes toward mountains, from conservationist to corporate owner. Now, that owner is Earl Holding. A nineteenth-century oil and land baron in style, Holding always seems to have his way, buying and developing and building on land that he, in his way, also loves. Trimble gives a face to Holding and to the land-loving community, urban and rural, who oppose his lifelong drive for ownership and control. Trimble confronts the politicians who facilitate power and ignore people, asking them— for all of us—how they can justify replacing an ideal built on community with one based on profit. Trimble imagines his way into the desires of Earl Holding, a reclusive and mysterious man. Trimble finds a small business owner, a wild-eyed Libertarian born in Freedom, Utah, who battles Earl Holding to a standstill, quoting John Locke all the while. And he tells the tragic story of another man [from Ogden Canyon] whose sorrow and love for the mountain overwhelm him. Trimble’s exploration of the continuum between development and restoration gives hope to those who value community over control, the grass-roots over the bottom-line, and those who dream of uniting landscape and livability on the other side of crisis in a truly New West. Farmers in Eden any say against the interests of money On the backside of the mountain lies and power? a serene remnant of the rural West. I follow the elegant curves of the Ogden Valley looks like a miniature Trappers Loop down into Ogden Valley, Jackson Hole, but an unknown one. with its one incorporated town, Only now, as the West fills in, as the Huntsville, at 1,200 people, on the edge Olympics and Earl Holding bring the of the mirror of Pineview Reservoir. media floodlights to the Valley, will it Here, below Snowbasin, Ogden Valley become trendy. retains its hay farms, Mormon villages, What will this mean to the natives, and even a Trappist monastery. But neonatives, and newcomers who cherish change is coming fast. the place? How will insular Mormon In 1996, Ogden Valley came to the farm families cope? What are the prop- brink of instituting a visionary master er balances between open space and the plan that would have preserved its rural ranchettes of character by down Snowbasin’s and zoning and a variety Ogden’s bedroom of other thoughtful community? management The answers lead schemes. At the last us to the most minute, newly electthoughtful people in ed Weber County the Valley: Jim Commissioners Hasenyager, a memkilled the plan, ber of Save Our “succumbing to the Snowbasin, a politics of aggreslawyer, and founder sive landowners at a of the Ogden Valley crucial time.” Land Trust (In 1993, So said Ralph according to John Becker and Rulon Wright of Rocky Dutson, consultants Mountain Divide, to the planning Colorado had the process. The two most land trust of planners understand any Western state, the dilemma—the Utah the least. He Writer and Photographer Stephen long-term farmers adds further, that Trimble. and villagers love Utah was the last state to form a the beauty and peace of the valley, but Department of Natural Resources); these same values form the bait for the Preston Nibley, a distinguished elderly move-ins: “The very reason they want gentleman who tries time after time to their kids to live here will destroy it.” establish planning guidelines for the In Ogden Valley, the constant refrain Valley he loves; and Haynes Fuller, runs, “We don’t want to look like anothfarmer, state legislator, and raconteur. er Park City—a sea of roofs.” Most valley residents fear the plague of condos The Story that settled on the already-developed ski A vehicle whizzes by me on the resort of Park City just forty miles south. Trappers Loop highway, the Schwann John Wright puts it bluntly in Rocky man in his tank-like yellow refrigerator Mountain Divide: “Park City is today the track, delivering ice cream and frozen Hong Kong of Utah. It is an insular, meat to the farmers over the ridgeline in expensive recreational and retailing bucolic Ogden Valley, a 36-square-mile colony surrounded by a vastly different island of quiet a mile high. culture.” Pioneers called nearby villages Eden, In Park City’s Summit County, Liberty, and Paradise. growth exceeded 50 percent in the first [Rocky Mountain Divide, page 174: six years of the 1990s. Once the build“the Mormon town was truly a social, ing permit moratorium lifted in Ogden economic, educational, and religious Valley, housing units doubled from 1300 unit surrounded by a pastoral world. It to 2600 in six months. was a tangible artifact of the Edenic ideal Ralph Becker serves as a minority . . . The spatial form of the cultural land- Democrat in the Utah State Legislature, scape itself would remind Mormons how representing a densely urban Salt Lake to live. This reduced ambiguity and cer- City district, as well as working as a tified that the geographic thought of the planner—both often-thankless jobs. Prophet was true.”] When he tells of the near-miss solution But they named most of the land- in the valley, he shakes his head sadly: marks after their first Anglo describer— “Snowbasin and the Olympics make all Ogden Valley, with the Ogden River run- the development happen faster. You ning cold and sweet below Mount could have leveraged Snowbasin into a Ogden. Within five years of his 1825 regional plan. But politics and power visit, Peter Skene Ogden’s fur trapper and money all got in the way.” friends and rivals had nearly wiped out Ogden Valley residents struggle with the beaver in “Ogden’s Hole”—the first the momentum of these events so imporEuropean overuse of local resources. tant to them. Longtime locals, not newToday, Ogden Valley finds its rural comers with freshly purchased quiet endangered by a state careening ranchettes, led this first fight to curb toward maximum urbanization. For 170 growth. years, this place has formed a stage for Take Deyonne Walker. She moved to grappling with fundamental American the valley with her family 32 years ago, questions: Who owns the land? Do we craving a place with rural atmosphere. save it, use it, or balance competing val- “We moved up here and didn’t want the ues? Can we imagine holding back, city to follow us up.” She remains as enriching ourselves slowly from the spunky as she was on the day in the land’s bounty, or is the “boomer” men- 1940s when she stopped for a hitchhiker tality immutable? How do citizens have in a small town along the Wasatch Front—and picked up a good-looking young seaman who became her husband of fifty years. She says, “If you haven’t interrupted people’s comfort level, they won’t do anything to support change.” She is a classic grass-roots activist, driven by issues in her own backyard. As residents of unincorporated land within Weber County, she and her neighbors on the farms at the base of Snowbasin have felt powerless, ignored by the faraway three-member county commission in Ogden, over the mountain. Deyonne spearheaded the creation of East Huntsville Township, which includes Snowbasin, along with 1600 people and 200 square miles. She [pushed] to boost the commission from 3 to 7 members. As she says, “It’s a heck of a lot harder to buy four out of seven than it is two out of three.” Walker is a registered Republican, but she laments the out-of-balance political system in conservative Utah where Democrats are nearly powerless. “I’m really disillusioned about being in favor of the rights of a landowner who has forgotten that he has a stewardship. There is no input from the cross-section of the people.” She sighs. “I’m gradually turning into a Democrat.” Eden farmer Haynes Fuller says the same thing: “Our family was Republican, but we got so poor about twenty years ago that we turned into Democrats.” He and his brother, Gale, constitute the fourth generation of Fullers to farm in the valley. Haynes told me that “Now we have a lot of absentee owners—virtual owners. Showing them a shovel to clean out their irrigation ditches is like showing a cross to Dracula—scares them to death!” This new era arrived when “Olympic fever” hit in 1995, according to Haynes: “The valley has gone from being a refuge for the poor to being a refuge for the rich.” A woman approached Haynes about buying his pasture to build a house. Haynes said no. She scolded him: “You are selfish. This valley is too beautiful to farm.” His response: “At $3,000 an acre, she’s wrong. At $60,000 an acre she’s right.” Gale chimes in: “Our kids want the land—for one day. Then they’ll sell. They don’t want to farm. The marvel is, why don’t we sell?” Haynes gives me the answer: “Our farm was just good enough not to starve us off.” Haynes: “There hasn’t been any farmland here for more than 20 years. There’s just land being farmed. In Eden district, there are more llamas than dairy cows. I have more pigs than anybody does, and I have one! In twenty years, there will be gentlemen farming on estates. There won’t be any production on valley farms where production is a significant portion of their income.” Haynes takes a long view, one turning toward fatalism in his maturity: “It’s a transition that started when Peter Skene Ogden startled the Indians. The Olympics accelerated the changes, but it would have happened anyhow. The drawbridge group and the developer group can fight, but in the end, money has its way.” BOOK cont. on page 12 |