Rocky Mountain High

COVER STORY

The energy boom brings soaring prospects—but some woes as well

"What do we want with this worthless area, this region of savages and wild beasts, of shifting sands and whirlwinds of dust, of cactus and prairie dogs? To what use could we ever hope to put these great deserts and these endless mountain ranges?" — Daniel Webster

When the esteemed U.S. Secretary of State from Massachusetts uttered those words in 1852, he was only echoing the haughty contempt that many Easterners felt toward what map makers then labeled the Great American Desert. Even today, the eight states strung out along the Rocky Mountains are collectively the nation's most thinly settled (12 inhabitants per square mile, vs. 62 overall in the U.S.) and the most arid (12 in. rainfall, vs. 29 nationwide). Yet in addition to their wild beauty, these Mountain States contain such a magnificent array of national treasures that they are now being developed at a rate that may within a lifetime enrich them, or ruin them, or both.

In the dusty Wyoming prairies, where Buffalo Bill Cody ended his pursuit of bison, the black rocker arms of oil wells thump to and fro through the night. In southern Montana, where the proud Sioux won their great victory, bulldozers scrape away the topsoil of cliffs to reveal vast seams of coal below. In western New Mexico, where legends tell of the Spanish explorer Coronado searching for the Seven Cities of Cibola, drills sink into the earth in search of uranium. The Mountain States hold vast deposits of the nation's coal, oil and uranium; they are at the heart of any U.S. energy program, and thus of the nation's future. The boom is sweeping far beyond the coalfields and oilfields. Construction cranes pierce the skies over Denver, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Albuquerque, Boise, cities that already bristle with high-rises undreamed of ten years ago. Modernistic electronics plants sprout alongside gleaming shopping malls and clusters of ranch houses. The new pioneers keep streaming in—young parents in station wagons, roustabouts in pickup trucks, elderly couples in trailers—to work and live among these mountains and deserts that Daniel Webster scorned. Says Colorado Governor Richard Lamm: "There is no hyperbole that can do justice to how fast the West is changing. We are seeing a decade of change take place every month. We have everything coming at us."

These soaring prospects fill many Westerners with a Panglossian sense that the boom provides the best of all possible worlds. "It's great," says Charles Page of Colorado's Gunnison County Chamber of Commerce about a planned molybdenum mine. "It will diversify the economy and give jobs to people who really want to work." But this same growth begets among other Westerners a fear that they may be witnessing not only the ravaging of their landscapes but also the destruction of values that they cherish: the unhurried pace of traditional Western life, the neighborly feeling of the small towns and above all the sense of individual independence. "There's a way of life disappearing," says Orson Rollins, 69, a retired rancher who now operates a service station in Craig, Colo. "We never used to lock our doors. That's gone." Says Postal Clerk Helen Stout, whose onetime sheep town of Parson, Wyo., is now filling