Comments on: Editor’s Note (winter 2016) https://westernconfluence.org/editors-note/ Natural Resource Science and Management in the West Tue, 31 Jan 2023 21:58:07 +0000 hourly 1 By: bob baker https://westernconfluence.org/editors-note/#comment-738 Thu, 04 Feb 2016 17:40:25 +0000 http://westernconfluence.org/?p=889#comment-738 I have appreciated reading Western Confluence as it relates much to my own experience here in Wyoming.
For example I to walked the ridge over the Ferris-Haggery mine in the late 1950s. I have in my possession one of the old oar buckets carried by the tram. I would enjoy seeing the new trees which have replaced the trees used to develop and maintain the copper mine. The trees are my passion today and these must now be 60 feet tall.

There is what I believe to be an untold story related to this old tramway. Because I have been learning and researching prisoner of war camps in Wyoming I learned that the Ryan Park prisoners helped to construct this ski area and the chair lift on Barret Ridge (mostly financed in part by the Sinclair Oil Refinery). The chair lift was constructed (late 1930s up to 1945) in part from the remains of the Ferris-Haggerty mine tram. It may be that the very existance of this ski area at Ryan Park, now gone, was the result of the Civilian Conservation Corp. labor,, the continued Italian and German prisoner of war labor and availability of materials from the Ferris Haggerty mine tram.
Bob Baker, Dubois

]]> By: bob baker https://westernconfluence.org/editors-note/#comment-629 Thu, 14 Jan 2016 05:15:24 +0000 http://westernconfluence.org/?p=889#comment-629 After 25 years of unsuccessfully trying to answer that question I haven’t quit trying. To solve that problem requires looking decades in the future and like a pension invest in planned expected occurrences with out placing all your eggs in one basket. Two decades ago Wyoming should have planned and begun investing a good portion of the taxes collected from its non-renewable resources in renewable resources. We have a history of being more creative when we are struggling. Water, tourism, grasslands, forests, wind, wildlife, recreation and people are renewable resources. All of these resources need to be made more productive not less productive as has often been the case. Increasing productivity (creativity) in Wyoming’s renewable resources will create more jobs for our grand children and more income for Wyoming.
The Ruckelshause Institute, who took on this responsibility over two decades ago, has certainly failed the Wyoming community of Dubois. How is the rest of Wyoming doing?

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