Volume 6,  Number 4 • April, 1998

Cover Article
Stealing the
Silver State's Story

The U.S. Forest Service Tries to Rewrite History

by Steve Miller

It was the story of Nevada all over the state … or at least so we thought. Whether Virginia City, or Austin, or Aurora, or Midas, local history usually started more or less the same way.
    The prospector saw some sparkle, located a ledge, and recorded his claim. And then, when the news leaked out, from all over the Pacific slope lots of other folks rushed in, feverish with dreams of wealth, wanting to try their luck, too.
    They were Irishmen pushing wheelbarrows, bratwurst-frying mining experts from Baden-Wurttemberg, painted Jezebels from older, played-out mining camps, and lawyers following their nostrils toward the scent of lucrative litigation.
    There were pick-ax laborers, Frisco capitalists rumbling in on the fastest stage, scuzzy journalists, and—sooner or later, if the ore lasted—folks setting up ranches and truck farms to supply the boomtown with hay for the horses and food for the folks.
    That, time and again, is the Silver State Story as recounted in old newspapers, history books and, indeed, movies. It is not the Nevada story as the U.S. Forest Service has been seeking to recast it, especially in documents the agency has been quietly filing since at least the mid-1980s.   [more]

Wayne Hage's War

How the Monitor Valley Adjudication Came to Be

by Diane Alden

The problem and the scary thing is the lack of understanding of the American people as a whole, notes rancher Wayne Hage: " I look at my country today and say if they just understood it ... our grandparents understood ... that if the government takes, they have to pay."
   Hage’s heartfelt belief is that if the American people understood what has happened to him over the last 20 years at the hands of the federal government they would be outraged.    [more]

What Every Nevadan
Should Know About
Western Water Law

The "ins," "outs" and unexpected wrinkles of an especially arcane area of law are explained by water rights specialist Carl Haas.   [the article]

Go for the Social Security
'Opt Out' Resolution?

Paul Farago of the Cascade Policy Institute explains Oregon's plan to bid farewell to Uncle Sam's antiquated Social Security retirement plan.   [the article]

Feed Me! Feed Me!

Concerned citizen and political activist Lois Gross relates the full story behind Clark County's expensive voting machine fiasco.   [the article]

Politicians Battle to Prove Congress Can’t Be Trusted

Citizen Alert’s "Mobile Chernobyl" show wasn’t much of a crowd generator when it came through Elko last month. The official count at the rally around the "mock nuclear waste cask" parked at Great Basin College was "a few students." ....   [more]

Crime and Punishment

The United States prison and jail population grew by another six percent last year, from an estimated 1.6 million inmates as of June 30, 1996 to 1.7 million as of June 30, 1997. As measured and reported annually by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, last year’s jump was slightly smaller than the increases recorded in the immediately preceding years, but none-the-less gave the United States the distinction of having one of every 155 U.S. residents behind bars. ....   [more]

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