Western towns must think beyond their booms

By Todd Wilkinson
regional columnist and author

In a new report hot off the presses from the Sonoran Institute, a case study is made of Custer County, Idaho, a province found on the other side of the mountains from Ketchum and Sun Valley.


Residents of Pinedale and Jackson Hole, or maybe Columbus and Red Lodge, or perhaps, say, Roundup and Big Timber, would do well to give it a read, for it paints a provocative portrait of the West: Past, present, future.

It recounts the Faustian choice of Challis and Mackay, two towns that kowtowed to the mining industry for decades, only to suffer after the last resources were extracted. Today, those communities are "impoverished, with low education rates, little economic diversification and no access to larger population centers," the report suggests.

Now, peering back across the mountains, Custer County inhabitants finally understand the enduring value of environmental protection and maintaining inspiring landscapes versus the downside of greedily—and hastily— courting a boom yet ignoring what happens when inevitably it turns to bust.

In 2004,Custer County finds itself as a crossroads and guess what, rural folk in historically one of the most conservative, anti-federal government, anti-environmental states in the West, confess that creating a new federal wilderness may help rescue their hardluck economy. And they're getting help from Republican lawmakers.

But, as the Sonoran Report notes, folks there have no ambition of emulating the glitter of Hemingway's former playground in Ketchum and Sun Valley.

"We have a better idea of what we DON'T want ot become than what we want to become," suggests Gynni Gilliam, director of the Lemhi/Custer Economic Development Corp. "We don't want to become another Sun Valley or Jackson Hole. We don't want to look like Eddie Bauer when we're done."

For Ray Rasker, one of the report's authors from Bozeman and a prominent New West economist, there's a strong analogy being offered up for Teton County, Wyo., and its two neighbors to the south, Sublette and Lincoln. But the comparison holds to other areas, like the Powder River country.

Ground zero to one of the largest energy industry booms ever in the West, Rasker says Sublette and Lincoln can either ride the wave smart on its own terms, or suffer the after-the-fact consequences that could afflict the Green River Basin for generations.

"Economic specialization is not a good idea," he notes, basing his observation on Westwide analysis focused on previous booms and busts. "A dependency on one industry may look good for a few years, bit if you don't diversify and prepare for what is coming next, you may reap the temporary spoils of the boom, but it's what you're left with that counts."

Given the wealth that large mining outfits pulled from beneath Custer County's feet, the citizens of Challis and Mackay could have built a bridge to the future by forcing the extractors to pony up for new schools, better public services, an airport, a technology infrastructure, and funds for a county planning department that created an attractive community, but they didn't. They let the mining companies dictate the terms of the land's surrender.

Sublette and Lincoln counties before the current gas boom were actually developing reputations as two of the prettiest up-and-coming pastoral settings in the Rockies, appealing to global entrepreneurs.

Now there is a blight expanding outside of town. What remains after the gas is gone — a supply, it should be noted, that could meet America's energy appetite for a year — will be the legacy of either regressive or progressive planning.

In the Sonoran Report, titled "Prosperity in the 21st Century West: The Role of Protected Public Lands," Rasker points to the value of healthy public lands as assets. He identifies three Wests within one: the urban West and all of its competitive market advantages; the rural West, which is a captive to its own isolation; and the semi-rural West, which includes evolving old frontier towns like Jackson, Red Lodge, Sheridan and Cody.

On the surface, Jackson and Red Lodge may seem only two-dimensional, playing on the twin notes of a recreation and tourism economy. Sheridan and Buffalo as well may seem to be dependent only on ranching. But because of the quality of public wildlands, they have cultivated far more by attracting entrepreneurs who settle in places that are aestheticically attractive, which, in turn, brings a dynamic economy.

"People tend to judge their economy by what they see through the windshield as they drive around the town square (in communities like Jackson, Red Lodge, Sheridan and Buffalo)," Rasker notes. "What they don't see are the engineers, the venture capitalists, the management consultants. They are usually located inconspicuously in the offices on the second floor behind the Western facade."

Today, Challis and Mackay, Sun Valley and Ketchum symbolically are cementing, whether they choose to consciously embrace the decision or not, what they will become, and they are providing a lesson for us all.

"There are other places in the world that are booming, like parts of Europe, where they have high technology and a high standard of living," Rasker adds. "But they don't have the quality of life we do in the American West and the reason is they don't have access to wildlands. What sets us apart economically, what gives us our competitive advantage in the West, is the attractiveness of our public lands."

Some may disagree with Rasker but the report provides plenty of fodder for a kind of discussion about the West that isn't limited by partisan politics.