Western Writers Chat Newsletter May 2005
MAY Vol. 9 No. 5
MEMORIAL DAY 2005
Three years after the Civil War ended, on May 5, 1868, the head of an organization of Union veterans - the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) -- established Decoration Day as a time for the nation to decorate the graves of the war dead with flowers. Maj. Gen. John A. Logan declared it should be May 30. It is believed the date was chosen because flowers would be in bloom all over the country. The first large observance was held that year at Arlington National Cemetery, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C.
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Years Gone By ~ ~
May 12, 1832, Fur trader William Sublette heads west. The fur trader William Sublette leads a pack train out of Independence, Missouri, heading west for a disastrous rendezvous at Pierre's Hole, Idaho.
On May 1, 1880 the Tombstone Epitaph, the oldest continuously published newspaper in Arizona, was begun. (still in print)
NEW SHERIFF, NEW MAYOR
by Frazer Williamson
Congress town council didn't like the way Marshall Clay had foisted Con Davies upon them as Sheriff.
"And," said Jake Goldfarb, "we got Ben Routledge as Mayor the same way. I propose we hold an election for a new Sheriff and Mayor."
Jake looked around for a backer. Silence. It wasn't forgotten that Jake informed on the ones who'd gunned down the Morgans. Surprisingly, Ben Routledge said, "I second that proposal, I wasn't too happy to have this greatness thrust upon me."
The motion was carried.
"Get this into your paper, Steve," Horace Holmes said to Stephen Andrews who'd come to Congress and set up the Congress Sentinel.
"Tomorrow," Andrews said.
"I tell you true," Horace said, hotly, "that Con Davies robbed my bank and gave the money to farmers and small ranchers to pay off their mortgages."
"Hell, you were foreclosin' on them, Horace," Goldfarb said. "You ain't never goin' to prove it was Con Davies."
"Once we get a new Sheriff he won't be able to hide behind his tin star," Horace shouted.
"He'll still be a deputy Marshall," Jake reminded him.
The meeting broke up.
* * *
The Sentinel came out with the news of the election. That was the first Con Davies and John Clay knew about it.
"You goin' to run for Sheriff, Con?"
"Reckon not. I might even turn in my deputy Marshalls badge as well."
"Not hankerin' after your old ways?"
"New leaf. Mary and me," Con became shyly awkward. "Goin to be married."
Clays eyes lit up. "Hey, that's just great."
"Got us a quarter section. Goin' to put what I know about cattle breedin' to good use.
"I'm glad for you, Con."
* * *
There was disturbing news in the Sentinel but folks had got election fever. A bunch of bandits were robbing banks and burning towns and were heading towards Congress. What everybody was asking was: "Who's Josiah Spriggs? And why ain't Ben Routledge running for Mayor? He was doin' a pretty good job. And who the hell would vote for Jake Goldfarb?"
Steve Andrews and his sister Virginia who ran the school weren't the only newcomers to Congress. Another was Doctor Albrecht, who was not only a sawbones, and physician, but could also straighten out twisted heads just by getting folks to lie on a couch and talk about what happened to them while they were children.
Not many went to him for that but he'd taken an interest in Soapy when he'd visited the Boot Hill Project. They got talking and Soapy told him why he had to stay drunk.
"I like to kill people when I'm sober, Doc."
"How'd you like to stay sober and not like to kill people?" Albrecht asked.
"I couldn't."
"With my help I know you could." There was such certainty in Doc Alhbrechts tone that Soapy was filled with hope.
"Cant afford to pay you, Doc."
Doc said heed do it for nothing.
* * *
Soapy sobered up. At first he wanted to kill Doc Albrecht, but Doc said that was normal because Doc kept him strapped down without drink. One day he took the straps off Soapy.
"You are Josiah Spriggs again," Doc told him. "Do you still feel like killing me or anyone else?"
"Not at the moment," Josiah said. "What now?"
"Now, what sort of a woman was your mother?"
* * *
The change in Soapy was remarkable. He became clean, well groomed, and orderly. He held his head high when he walked, and he stepped off the boardwalks in deference to ladies. He spoke with a new assurance and treated everyone with dignity and respect. He kept his temper with roughnecks who tried to hackle him as if he was still the town drunk. He added his name to the list of candidates for Sheriff.
"Why, Josiah?" Doc Albrecht asked.
"Insurance, Doc. If I was Sheriff and got the urge to kill people, there are people out there who're wanted dead or alive. Like these bandits that are supposed to be headed this way."
"I don't think you'll have a relapse."
"I'm not so sure, Doc."
* * *
The bandits shot some of Cliff Alexanders cattle. In this way they drew Marshall Clay and his deputy out of town. They rode in shouting, shooting, and creating noise and confusion. Made straight for Horace Holmes bank.
Josiah Spriggs ran in through the back door of Jake Goldfarbs general store and broke open a couple of boxes of dynamite.
"Hey!" Jake protested.
"Three inch fuses. Cut 'em. Stick 'em in.
Jake started to argue.
"This could make you Mayor," Josiah said.
"Three inch fuses," Jake said and began to cut.
* * *
The bandits were still at the bank. They'd sent Horace and his tellers scurrying out to take to their heels as bullets kicked up dust behind them.
The bandits inside came out with sacks bulging with money. Nobody saw Josiah lob the first stick of dynamite. It exploded at the bandit's feet.
Jake lit fuses and Josiah threw. Six more explosions brought the front of the bank down on the outlaws and killed and wounded horses and men.
As bandits who were still able to move came stumbling from the swirl of smoke and dust, Josiah picked them off with a Winchester. When the smoke cleared Spriggs went over to where the dying lay. He aimed his rifle at one groaning man, but Doc Albrecht who was now beside him, said: "No, Josiah. Hes a prisoner. Bring survivors to the jail Ill attend them there."
Josiah shot a dying horse. Other town folks helped get the wounded into the jailhouse while Horace Holmes and his tellers ran up and down the street after money that was blowing in the wind. Jake Goldfarb made the most of how hed helped save the town from being robbed and burned. Opinion swung and he was voted in as Mayor.
Josiah Spriggs got more votes than Governor Raymond Tates man, and the town councils candidate, and became Sheriff.
FROM AFRICA TO THE AMERICAN WEST
THE BLACK COWBOY AND AFRICAN CULTURE
by Allen L. Lee
In the opening scenes of "Gone With The Wind," Black slaves are depicted herding cattle on the Tara Plantation, this depiction represents what some believe is the origins of the Black cowboy. There is an earlier origin for the Black cowboy in Africa, and the book, "Nomads of Niger" by American photographer Carol Beckwith and Belgian Anthropologist Marion Van Offelen captures this view quite well. This book presents the history of the Fulani people of Africa by taking the reader back to approximately 5000 years old rock cave paintings in the Algerian Sahara. Van Offelen believes the paintings depict people herding cattle in a way similar to the way the
Fulani nomads herd their cattle today, a link that would span from African
antiquity through the Euro-African slave trade era to modern times. "Nomads
of Niger" also presents the contemporary beauty of the Fulani people in an
excellent photo essay and I find the cover photo of a Fulani cowboy herding
cattle on a camel most interesting.
The camel "Africa to America" link exists via former Confederate President Jefferson Davis and a man named George Perkins Marsh. They spearheaded the purchase of camels to be used by the U.S. military in California, Arizona and Texas before the Civil War, with thirty-three of those camels coming from the African country of Tunisia. The camels brought to Texas came into contact with African-Americans both slave and free according to an article titled The Camels Of Camp Verde by Kenn Knopp. After the Civil War the Texas camels went into entertainment and were the lead attraction in the Austin Mardi Gras. Thirty-two camels escorted by costumed Negroes pulled the King Of The Carnivals float of the Austin Mardi Gras. An important side-note to the The Camels Of Camp Verde, article is an inference that somehow African slaves were also being brought into Texas under the cover of importing the camels, the following excerpt is from this article:
"In the late 1850s responding to the publicity that camels were desired in
Texas, ship loads arrived at Texas ports. Emmetts research indicates that
these camels were the perfect cover to deflect attention of other
commodities to Texas ports, namely African slaves. Texans were growing
more and more wary of accepting slaves as Federal Law prohibited their
importations."
http://www.texfiles.com/ERAjune02/camel.htm
I'd like to present two sources that also discuss the African/Black cowboy
link. The first is an article titled "Africanisms In America" on the Website, transafricaforum; the following is from that article;
"...The annual north-south migratory pattern followed by the cowboy is
unlike the cattle-keeping patterns in Europe but analogous to the migratory
patterns of the Fulani cattle herders who live scattered from the Senegambia
through Nigeria and Niger to the Sudan. Early descriptions of Senegambian
patterns strikingly resemble later descriptions of cattle herding in the
South Carolina hinterland. Texas longhorns and African cattle were brought
to America with Fulani slaves. Many details of cowboy life work, and even
material culture can be traced to Fulani antecedents, but there has been
little work on the question by historians of the west."
Researched by Maurice Mitchell and Carrie Solages, Interns-TransAfrica Forum November 1999 www.transafricaforum.org
The second source is from Bennie J. McRae, Jr., who also mentions the
Africa/Black cowboy link via Gambia in an article titled "BLACK COWBOYS.... also worked on the ranches and rode the cattle trails " The following is from his article:
"The history of the Black cowboys began long before the establishment of large ranches with cattle grazing in the late nineteenth century. Gambia and some other African countries were known to be lands of large cattle herds with the natives possessing innate skills in controlling and managing the movement of the animals. They were not called cowboys at that time, but merely herders.
Throughout the slave trade, ranchers and farmers (slaveowners) with large herds of cattle in the lower south were attracted to this particular groups that had been captured in those African countries."
http://www.coax.net/people/lwf/bkcwboy2.htm
The cultural exchange between Sub Saharan Africans and North Africans led to some of the greatest horse societies in Africa, the Songhia, the Hausa,
the Oyo and the Dahomey, to name a few. While accounts describe cattle
herding in some African cultures as gender specific towards the male, a
wealth of information exists about gender specific roles for African women
and horses. Africa seems to have spurred several epic warrior classes of
females, the most famous being the Dahomey Amazon warriors witnessed by
Europeans like Sir Richard Burton in the 1860's. Information from
www.gendergap.com tells of a Libyan Queen "Myrene" who led a North African female cavalry of thirty-thousand into battle in the 6th century. This
female warrior mentality made it to the Americas in the name of two Haitian
women, Cécile Fatiman and Princess Amethyste, who helped lead the Haitian Revolution of 1791 and one American Buffalo Soldier named Cathy Williams (1866-1868). Cathy Williams served around New Mexico disguised as a man for two years until she became ill and a physical revealed her gender. She eventually settled near the Colorado-New Mexico border town of Trinidad. An excellent site to learn about Cathy Williams is:
www.buffalosoldier.net/CathayWilliamsFemaleBuffaloSoldierWithDocuments.htm.
There are several ways to approach the origin and evolution of the Black
cowboy and one of my favorite documentations about the Black vaquero comes from a paper written by Vincent Mayer Jr. titled "The Black On New Spain's Northern Frontier - San Jose de Parral 1631 to 1641," the following is from this paper:
"Apart from the Negro slaves who worked in the mines or on the haciendas of their master, there was also a significant number of free Blacks and mulattos. In the last quarter of the sixteenth century, many of these
Blacks, along with a growing number of mestizos, constituted a vagabond
class which plagued the North. However, this group of men also made up an
important portion of the wage labor and vaqueros needed on the haciendas.
Stockmen were especially dependent on them since no labor was available for the great cattle roundups.... By 1579, they were demanding fifty to two
hundred pesos a year. "
Another reference to African cowboys in the colonial Caribbean comes from the article, "Out Of Many Cultures -The People Who Came-The Arrival Of The Africans" By Dr. Rebecca Tortello
"...Up until the early 1690s Jamaica's population was relatively equally
mixed between white and black. (Senior, 2003, p. 446.) The first Africans to
arrive came in 1513 from the Iberian Peninsula after having been taken from
West Africa by the Spanish and the Portuguese. They were servants, cowboys, herders of cattle, pigs and horses, as well as hunters."
http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/pages/history/story0059.htm
An evolutionary view focuses on a Texas Black cowboy born into slavery in 1860 named Daniel Webster Wallace, nicknamed "80 John" from the ranch he worked on. The information of Daniel Webster Wallace is from the Website: www.texancultures.utsa.edu/ publications/
texansoneandall/africanamerican.htm. Wallace worked his way up as a cowboy working for a White man named Clay Mann, saving his typical cowboy pay until he bought enough cows and land to start his own ranch. Texas historians say that this Black cowboy eventually became "Boss' and died a millionaire in 1939, a far stretch from the 200 pesos a year the Black vaqueros of sixteenth century New Spain earned.
Africans in the Western hemisphere, even in slave status were not
completely mind-washed of their culture and re-made in the image of their
masters. Europeanized Africans who came as free colonizers had even less
cause to hide their multi-cultural Euro-African agrarian skills. Most sources show that some African migrants to the Western hemisphere were involved with cattle and horses well before the thematic historical intersection of American and Hispanic cattle and horse cultures in what we know as the American West, and I say this not to prove who did what first, but to ask others to always consider this link when writing about the Black cowboy.
Thanks for reading,
Allen L. Lee
NIPPER'S GRAMMAR NITS
by Pat Nipper
Lesson 2. Correct Verb Usage with the Word None
This lesson involves using is or are with the word "none," when it's followed by a plural noun. You can think of "none" as a contraction of "not one," as in, "of the five nominees, none [not one] is qualified." You can also try writing around the situation, as in "All five nominees lack qualification."
Modern style allows either the singular or the plural verb, in order to make the sentence sound more natural. ("None of the letters is..." or "None of the letters are...") Usually the plural sounds better unless you're trying to emphasize the idea of "not one," or if the words that follow are singular. With group nouns, always use the singular verb, as in "none of the class is..."
One other Nipper nit: The adverb "badly" does not explain how you feel unless you have something wrong with your sense of touch. You feel "bad" when something goes wrong.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
NIPPER'S GRAMMAR NITS
by Pat Nipper
Adverbs and Style
Do any writers use adverbs any more? Do fiction writers today use terms like, "She said coyly?" Or, "he smiled wickedly?" In modern writing style, adverbs are used more and more sparingly; however, a good author can still use adverbs well. Some excellent examples are given at the end of this article.
Overall, it's hard to write without adverbs. They are some of the most often-used parts of speech. Adverbs can modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs. They can be placed at the beginning, middle, or end of a sentence.
Adverbs tell "how" something happens, such as quickly, sharply. They tell "when" something happens, such as yesterday, tomorrow, now. Adverbs explain frequency, such as always, regularly, sometimes. And Adverbs tell "where" an incident takes place, such as southwards, downstairs, here, there.
Most often adverbs of degree are the easiest to identify and arguably most distasteful to some teachers of creative writing, who insist that adverbs are old-fashioned and should never be used. These words include spectacularly, extremely, just, very, really. Many of these adverbs end in "-ly" and are possibly the most overused and misused of all adverbs.
Adverbs or lack thereof indicate style trends. In most recent books they are used judiciously, but are still important to the understanding of a sentence. Moreover, they can indicate beautiful writing without which we'd be the poorer.
In 2001, Elmer Kelton wrote in his Spur-award-winning book The Way
of the Coyote: "Blessing watched him quizzically." And even better:
"The breach between him and The People, already broad, would be
irretrievably unbridgeable after this."
In Win Blevins' book Stone Song, another Spur winner, written in 1995, "The people were smiling broadly..." and "Crazy Horse waggled his
head foolishly." Would we want those words deleted or muted by writing
around them?
The farther back you go in time, the more adverbs are used. Perhaps
one of the most lovely uses of adverbs is found in The Harker File, written in 1976 by Nathan Hollander: "She sighed gently. The gesture was as lovely as a sunset."
In 1956, A. B. GuthrieJr., in his book These Thousand Hills:
"Jehu nodded gravely." Further on he wrote: "She laughed lightly." and
"'Yup,' Hector answered agreeably." All of these adverbs are important
and all appropriately used.
Going farther back there's a plethora of adverbs. In Ramona, for
example, a novel written in the late 1800s by Helen Hunt Jackson, you
find: "Piteously he fixed his eyes on her..." and, "Yes," said
Alexandro reflexively..." and, he went on "irresolutely..." and "Sighing
deeply..." The text is full of lush adverbs and adjectives. This shows
a matter of style and marks the book as outdated by today's standards.
So back to the question: Is the adverb dead in today's fiction?
Not likely. But its use has been definitely diminished.
RIDING FOR A FALL
by Margaret Bzovy
Known as a good shot, Reuben "Rube" Houston Burrows had a price on his head so tempting that he worried that his own gang might want to take advantage of the reward. The total price the Pinkerton Detectives offered for Rube Burrows, dead or alive was $7,500, enough to make Rube sleep, if he could manage it, with his finger on the trigger.
Rube Burrows was born in 1854 in Lamar County, Alabama. A tall, six foot, lean farm boy with nervous cold, blue eyes that never looked another man in the face. His light sandy hair and thin mustache were sometimes colored dark in an attempt to hide his identity. He was considered a good horseman with quick action in a get away.
Rube and his brother, Jim had grown tired of farm work and went hell-bent into the Oklahoma Indian territory to do some rustling. Their nervous energy sought excitement. It soon proved to be too risky an operation when the Indians refused to give up their animals and gave chase to these two farm lads. The boys rode for Texas in order to loose their excited, wild pursuers.
The Burrow brothers took a liking to the Texas railroads after they found out how much money was being transported over the rails. They soon began to stop the trains and relieve them of their money box. The train robberies paid off good money and the thrill of stopping the huge black, smoking engine was just the challenge Rube enjoyed.
Rube managed to meet a few unsavory men to help him and his brother with their new enterprise and every train through the Texas area was getting the Burrows treatment. The Pinkerton Detective agency was soon hired to end the train robberies. It didn't take the lawmen long to locate the
whereabouts of the Burrows gang and on January 20, 1888, when Rube and his followers stopped their next train, the Pinkertons were there in wait. Rube shot his way free, but his brother Jim was captured along with some of the other men. Jim was thrown into jail where he served 9 months. His only path of escape was on the coat tails of death. Jim came down with a serious fever and died.
Rube ran all the way back to Lamar County, Alabama to hide himself. He rubbed a darkener in his hair and changed into different type of clothes and sulked around the family farm for a while. He missed his brother Jim and began to look around for men he felt he could trust. He found a couple of men to hang around with and the Burrows gang was back stopping trains. Rube shot and killed a passenger who unfortunately got in his way and the postmaster who refused to give up the money box.
The Pinkertons were hot on Rube's trail. The killing of the postmaster didn't set well and they were more than ever determined to bring Rube Burrows and his gang to a final end. The lawmen watched all the railroad lines through out Alabama.
One by one Rube's followers fell away. They were either killed, captured or disappeared voluntarily. Rube found himself alone. Still, this didn't stop Rube. He decided to hold up the Louisville and Nashville train by himself. He had heard a good sum of money was being transported. Rube had stopped trains long enough to know what to do and he believed he could easily do it by himself. He was ready at a location where the train had to slow down and he loped along beside the mail car rapping with the butt of his gun on the door. "Open up. Got a load for ya,'" Rube hollered. To his call the door slide open and Rube jumped aboard. He robbed the mail car without any interference and dropped off the train with several thousands dollars.
Time came when Rube had to face the ultimate fact of realism. The reward on his head was too good to pass off and a man named Carter drew his gun on Rube. There was a short skirmish and Carter shot and killed Rube.
It was a cloudy, gray afternoon on October 2, 1890, when Rube collapsed face down in the dust. He was thirty-six years old. The whistle from the passing train engine echoed across the land, but Rube Burrows would not be around to stop the smoking, black beast.
(nonfiction)
 B O O K S
Our Ladies of the Tenderloin
published by Caxton Press
by Linda R. Wommack
Western Writers of America
Our Ladies of the Tenderloin is a unique look at life in the oldest profession in early day Colorado. Linda Wommack tells the story of the women who made the night life come alive and brought excitement to the new frontier. Wommack puts the women of the hog ranches of the eastern plains and the houses of the Rocky Mountain mining camps into their rightful place in history as pioneers. The author brings Colorados soiled doves to life through in-depth research and never-before-seen photographs. History and folklore are wrestled apart so readers can focus on the prostitute as a member of frontier society, rather than a mere footnote in accounts of the wild west. Linda Wommack's book is now available at your local book store.
Author Linda Wommack information:
http://www.harpercollins.com/pc/author_xml.asp?authorID=27710
Caxton Press Presents Our Ladies of tenderloin -- Colorado Legend in Lace
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hawke: Showdown at Dead End Canyon
by Robert Vaughan
There's no peace for Mason Hawke from the ghosts of his past. A drifter and a loner, he's not looking for trouble when he rides into Wyoming Territory -- but it's waiting for him nonetheless. Coming to the rescue of a wealthy landowner's daughter who was kidnapped by a pair of inept outlaws, Hawke finds himself an unlikely hero in a town called Green River.
But his unsought celebrity has earned him some powerful enemies, including a land-hungry lady with a crooked official in her pocket and a ruthless killer on a leash. Justice, it seems, is an illusion in this place where fraud and fortune hunting dance with cold-blooded murder. But all that is about to change in a brutal hail of gunfire now that Hawke has come to play.
ISBN: 0060725842; Imprint: HarperTorch; On Sale: 04/26/2005; Format: Mass Market PB; Trimsize: 4 3/16 x 6 3/4; Pages: 256; $5.99; $7.99(CAN)
Author Robert Vaughan information: http://www.harpercollins.com/pc/author_xml.asp?authorID=27710
HarperCollins Publishers -- Home of William Morrow, Avon, Perennial, Rayo, Amis
THE THREAT TO REGISTER ROCK
by Christopher Smith
Associated Press
CITY OF ROCKS, Idaho More than a century ago, wagon train travelers scrawled names, dates, even Wife Wanted in axle grease on the granite pinnacles lining this popular stopover on the trail to California's gold fields.
There are thousands of names here, pioneer Richard Augustus Keen wrote in an 1852 journal entry. I registered mine on a large rock.
Much of the historic graffiti is preserved in the National Park Service's City of Rocks National Reserve 200 miles southeast of Boise. But a sign reading Private Property No Trespassing sits in front of Register Rock, the towering gray monolith that contains the best-preserved inscriptions. And a sagging red-and-white For Sale sign in the sagebrush has been getting much of the attention in the federal park lately.
After five years of negotiations, the Park Service says it may be close to reaching a deal to buy the iconic fixture of western expansion from the Idaho rancher who owns the rock and a rutted section of the original California wagon trail.
William Loughmiller says if the Park Service can't meet his price, he'll try to use the land as a recreational vehicle campground even though it is completely enclosed within the reserve.
I don't want to be the guy with the bulldozer, but I had to do something to get them to come to the table, Loughmiller said. He bought the land from another rancher with the expectation the Park Service and state of Idaho would trade him for livestock grazing rights on land outside the reserve, he said. That's what they promised me, but when they didn't follow through, they forced me into the development game to recoup my losses, Loughmiller said.
Recently, the Park Service took the unusual step of offering to buy Loughmiller's 290 acres for more than the estimated fair market value of the land. Congress expects us to pay very close to what an appraisal would show it's worth, said Rick Wagner, chief of the NPS lands resources program center in Seattle. We are having to come up with ways to get him more money than what an appraisal would show, but they are within the bounds of law and policy.
The Park Service was able to boost its undisclosed purchase offer to Loughmiller with a $25,000 contribution from the Oregon-California Trails Association, a 3,000-member organization of overland trail buffs based headquartered in Independence, Mo.
Register Rock is one of several cases along the old wagon train routes where historic sites are sometimes threatened by the very development they helped usher in, said Dave Welch, the association's national preservation officer. Most of the time it's not the Wal-Marts and the oil companies that wipe trail resources out, Welch said. It's more unintentional, just someone not even knowing a trail is there and grading their farm field or expanding a city.
From 1841 to 1869, historians estimate the westward trails carried more than 500,000 settlers into the new frontier, forever changing the character of the land. In 1992, Congress designated 14,000 miles of the four major routes the Oregon, California, Pony Express and Mormon Pioneer trails as national historic paths to be preserved and promoted. The designated trails run through 13 different states.
The law doesn't prevent private landowners from bulldozing the remnants of the migration routes, however. In cases where construction is proposed on sections of trail crossing federally owned land, the National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management try to work with developers to mitigate the impact on to the routes and scenic vistas.
But when projects are built on trail sections located on private land, often times we find out too late to have a chance at making a difference, said Jere Krakow, superintendent of the National Trails System in Santa Fe, N.M.
Register Rock is an unusual case since it is private property located in the heart of a federal park. The Park Service has acquired about half of the 8,000 acres of private holdings within the park since the reserve was established in 1988, but Loughmiller's land is considered the most critical to preserving the historical integrity of the area.
It would be irresponsible if the Park Service did not try to acquire this important piece of the story, said Wallace Keck, superintendent of the reserve.
As a result of local zoning codes for land in the reserve, Loughmiller's proposals for developing the land have been stalled and a series of appraisals have not come up with a price tag comparable to the value of land being sold outside the reserve.
Mr. Loughmiller has been patient as we've tried to create a financial environment that still shows we are getting a good value for the taxpayers' dollar, said Wagner said.
Article submitted by John Legg (JackWriter@aol.com)
Our rider is down
He gave his life for his country
Remember Memorial Day with prayers
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