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Building in Hell: Conflict and Compromise between Engineers and Environmentalists along the Logan Canyon Highway, 1961-1995
Building in Hell: Conflict and Compromise Between Engineers and Environmentalists Along the Logan Canyon Highway, 1961-1995
BY CLINT PUMPHREY
On September 13, 1960, readers of Logan, Utah’s Herald Journal awoke to the headline, “Blasts to Interrupt Logan Canyon Highway Traffic.” Crews planned to dynamite rock from the canyon walls for several days in an effort to straighten and widen U.S. Highway 89, which travels through the scenic gorge. The placement of the minor headline and accompanying four-paragraph story, tucked away on the lower left side of the newspaper’s front page, indicated how little the community was concerned about the project at the time. For most residents of the small Cache Valley town, nestled at the foot of the Bear River Range, the rumble of collapsing debris in the canyon was the sound of hard-earned progress.
While this utilitarian mindset still prevailed among Cache Valley residents, some in the community began to adopt new attitudes toward the environment. Prior to the 1960s, the locals’ approach to environmental protection was “conservationist” at best, meaning that they only supported environmental regulation primarily intended to maximize resource use or protect private property. Meanwhile, a growing segment of the national population began to espouse a more aesthetic mindset. Represented by groups like the Wilderness Society and Sierra Club, these “preservationists” took the conservationists’ aim of responsible resource use to a new level, advocating the unconditional protection of certain natural landscapes and the plant and animal life that they supported. The first major victory for this “activist brand of conservation” that became known as “environmentalism” was the defeat of a proposed dam at Echo Park, Colorado, in the mid-1950s. 1
Crews perform cut and fill work for the Logan Canyon Highway near Beaver Mountain, 1939.
SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AND ARCHIVES, MERRILL-CAZIER LIBRARY, USU
In Cache Valley, the initial clash between the utilitarian goals of public works promoters and the preservationist ideals of environmentalists occurred several years later, in the 1960s, during a series of construction projects on the Logan Canyon highway. The two sides disagreed over the extent to which the canyon should be altered in order to accommodate what highway proponents termed “improvements”: straighter curves, wider shoulders, and passing lanes. This contentious debate raged on for twentyfive years, and in the process fundamentally changed the highway design and construction process in Cache Valley.
The Logan Canyon highway controversy emerged in a region where residents have long experienced a close connection with the environment. Like much of the West, Cache Valley is one of the “frontiers of real or perceived abundance whose regional identities have eventually been shaped by the experience of emerging scarcity.” 2 Early settlers initially praised the valley’s bounty upon their arrival in the 1850s, only to struggle with the effects of widespread overgrazing and deforestation by the end of the century. The creation of federal forest reserves in the early 1900s helped local residents adapt to this scarcity and implement better policies for resource utilization. After World War II, the growth of tourism among the middle class made the scenery of the valley and its adjacent canyons an important resource just as the timber and grazing range had been in the previous century. The perceived threat to the aesthetic abundance of the landscape and the delicate habitat it supported was an important motivation for those opposed to the Logan Canyon highway construction beginning in the 1960s.
Among the earliest and most enthusiastic reports of Cache Valley’s abundance came from Mormon explorers sent north by Brigham Young in August 1847. They described “a most beautiful valley, having seen the most timber of any place explored. From 9 miles to 17 ½ miles from Camp are 12 Streams running thro a good country to the Salt Lake.” 3 The valley was not permanently settled until April 1859, when Peter Maughan led a small group of Mormons to an outpost near present-day Wellsville named Maughan’s Fort. The early settler boasted of the valley’s bounty in an 1859 Deseret News article, calling it “the best watered valley I have ever seen in these mountains” with “a reasonable amount of grass land in the vicinity of each settlement” and “plenty of timber consisting chiefly of pine, maple and quackenasp.” 4 Brigham Young added his praise in a speech given at Richmond on June 6, 1860: “No other valley in the territory is equal to this. This has been my opinion ever since I first saw the valley.” 5
Thanks in part to these glowing accounts, the population of Cache County ballooned from about 100 families in 1859 to 18,139 residents by 1900, creating the scarcity that so often accompanied growth in the West. The rising demand for timber needed to construct buildings and heat homes led to extensive deforestation in areas like Temple Fork, Tabernacle Hollow, White Pine Hollow, Blacksmith Fork Canyon, Millville Canyon, Blind Hollow, Brush Canyon, Beaver Canyon, and many others. One estimate suggests that crews extracted one-half billion board feet of lumber from the mountains surrounding Cache Valley between 1870 and 1900. Widespread overgrazing further stressed the region; between 1890 and 1900, the number of cattle in Cache County increased from 10,637 to 24,007, and the number of sheep jumped from 5,262 to 85,817.
Albert Potter, a former Arizona stockman sent by the United States Bureau of Forestry to survey the area and report on its condition, documented the damage caused by timber and grazing activities in his 1902 diary. 6 His observations, which included descriptions of clear-cut canyons and range denuded by sheep herds, were validated by the opinion of George L. Swendsen, a hydraulic engineer at the Agricultural College of Utah. Potter noted that Swendsen
Despite intense cooperation among Utah’s early Mormons, such evidence of scarcity in turn-of-the-century Cache Valley supports the assertion that they were unable to prevent widespread environmental degradation in their early settlements. 8
Because of problems associated with deforestation and overgrazing, local residents showed cautious support for a federal forest reserve in the mountains surrounding Cache Valley. While the idea of individual control was strong in Utah as in other parts of the West, competition for range and the deterioration of water quality were problems that many locals felt could only be solved through government intervention. Area livestock owners sought restrictions concerning transient herds that passed through Cache Valley and the surrounding mountains, which vied for already-stressed rangeland and caused cutthroat rivalries between herders. 9
Other residents showed concern about water quality issues. Albert Potter, after meeting with citizens in favor of the forest reserve on July 3, 1902, noted that “they think the health of the town is endangered by stock dying near the stream and by the pollution of the water by the manure and the urine.” 10 The following day, another supporter “said the sheep fouled the water and tramped the range up so that the amount of silt in the streams was much greater after a heavy rain than it was formerly.” 11 Interestingly, Potter wrote that the residents did not seem concerned about deforestation; rather, he observed “all evils being charged to stock.” 12 With the support of the Logan city council and Mayor William Edwards, as well as U.S. congressman Joseph Howell of Utah’s first district, the federal government created the Logan Forest Reserve on May 29, 1903. While this could be considered Cache Valley’s first large-scale venture into conservation, the citizens’ reasons for protecting the forest showed the utilitarian mindset that influenced their actions. 13
Much of the timber and grazing activity occurring in the mountains east of Logan was possible thanks to the construction of a road through Logan Canyon. The first mention of this undertaking was in the journal of Henry Ballard, a prominent early settler of Cache Valley. On February 23, 1862, he wrote, “Br. [Ezra Taft] Benson proposed that we open Logan Kanyon [sic] and A Committee was appointed to go and Explore it.” 14 He and others began work just a few weeks later on March 17, clearing trees and large rocks to build what might best be described as a trail by today’s standards. Progress was slow and difficult. Ballard noted a significant setback on June 15: “it had been raining for two Days and then a Cloud Burst on the Mountain between the Green Kanyon and Logan Kanyon Part of the Water coming each way it washed all the Bridges away and all the Dug ways in Logan Kanyon that we had just made this Spring.” 15
The Utah territorial legislature formalized the Logan Canyon road construction effort when it approved the incorporation of the Logan Cañon Road Company on January 19, 1866. The act assigned William Hyde, Thomas E. Ricks, William Budge, George Ferrel, and Thomas Tarbitt with the task of organizing the company to construct and maintain a road from Logan to the Rich County line. To accomplish this undertaking, the legislature gave the company the power to erect a toll gate, and on March 5, 1867, the Cache County government set the toll at a maximum of one dollar for a four-horse team and seventy-five cents for one pair of horses. 16
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, under the direction of Brigham Young, was a strong proponent of Logan Canyon road construction. Young wanted to expand settlement of the Bear Lake region, and in a June 24, 1869, address to Logan residents, he “spoke upon the subject of the work of wisdom and cooperation and called upon us to open Logan Kanyon through to Bear Lake and put up the telegraph line through the Kanyon to Bear Lake Valley.” 17 On October 25 of that year, Henry Ballard reported that he, Peter Maughan, and a crew of 270 men had completed the road to Ricks Spring. Meanwhile, Bear Lake residents worked to open the road from the eastern end. They initially constructed a route that originated in St. Charles, Idaho, and wound southwest through the mountains to Logan Canyon. Apparently, this road was not yet complete on August 24, 1870, when William Budge, of Paris, Idaho, reported to the Deseret News: “As soon as the harvesting is over, the people of Bear Lake calculate to go to in earnest and construct their portion of the Logan Kanyon road, connecting Rich and Cache counties.” 18 However, a letter to the editor of the paper dated January 31, 1871, suggested that they had finished the route, noting, “Cache Valley is not far distant from St. Charles, via the Logan road.” 19 By 1880, workers forged an alternate route that traveled west from Garden City and connected with the original road at Beaver Creek, following a course similar to present-day U.S. Highway 89. 20
In addition to its role as an important connection between Logan and the Bear Lake Valley, the Logan Canyon road served a number of other purposes in the latter half of the nineteenth century. In 1877, builders began traveling up the road to harvest timber from Temple Fork, a side canyon of the right hand fork of the Logan River, to build the Logan LDS temple. To pay for repairs necessitated by increased use, the Logan Cañon Road Company set up four toll gates along the route by August 1880, each charging twenty cents for passage. Additional traffic came in the 1890s when mining discoveries at places such as Devil’s Gate, Amazon Mine, and Cache Mammoth created a brief flurry of mineral extraction in Logan Canyon. Though traffic between Logan and Bear Lake increased, travel on the road was not necessarily easy. Logan’s newspaper, the Journal, printed an editorial on September 3, 1892, describing the road as “hardly passable. Here and there huge bolders [sic] adorn the drive way, while deep mudholes and dangerous washouts render a ride by that route somewhat exciting.” The author implored the Cache County government to make the repairs needed to encourage trade with the agricultural and mining interests in the Bear Lake area. A week later the county court made the canyon route a county road and approved $500 for immediate repairs. Logan City also helped pay for maintenance in the ensuing decades, as evidenced by a November 23, 1903, agreement between the county and Logan’s mayor, Lorenzo Hansen, that required the city to pay “one-half cost repairing Logan Canon [sic] Road.” 21 By 1913, support for a state road connecting Cache and Rich counties grew among government officials and prominent citizens of both regions. The idea was particularly popular with the Logan Commercial-Boosters Club, which passed a resolution endorsing legislation to fund the project on February 19, in the hope that the new road would become a popular route for the increasing number of automobile tourists driving from Salt Lake City and Ogden to vacation at Bear Lake. These groups, together with the Utah State Road Commission, then chose which of the existing routes to Bear Lake the new road would follow: the one up the left hand fork of the Logan River to Garden City or another up the right hand fork of the Logan River to Meadowville. 22 Officials ultimately settled on the former option, designating it as a state road in 1914 and ensuring its place today as the main thoroughfare from Logan to Bear Lake. 23
The Logan Canyon Highway, from Logan to Garden City.
UTAH DIVISION OF STATE HISTORY
The first round of construction on the “Cache–Rich” or “Logan– Garden City” road began in 1919. Because it was considered a “forest road project,” the United States Bureau of Public Roads supervised the work but shared the cost with the Utah State Road Commission. 24 Crews finished construction, which included grading and widening the earthen road as well as installing new culverts and bridges, by 1922 at a total cost of $151,788.75. 25 After these modifications and several years of annual maintenance, the Utah State Road Commission described the thoroughfare as an “improved road generally good in all weather” in 1930. 26
On December 11, 1925, the Logan Chamber of Commerce (formerly known as the Commercial-Boosters Club) Roads Committee moved to examine the cost of “surfacing and repairing certain places in Logan Canyon,” signaling its desire for further construction on the road. This wish became a reality in the 1930s and early 1940s, when the state and federal governments again collaborated to update the Logan Canyon road, this time through a series of fifteen building projects that cost a combined total of $900,000. 27 Segment by segment, crews first laid a gravel base for the road and then paved it with a light-duty mixed bituminous surface. Gravelling took place between 1930 and 1939, while paving commenced in 1933 and concluded in 1941. With most of the work complete, the American Association of State Highway Officials designated the Logan Canyon road as a part of U.S. Highway 89 during their annual convention in Dallas, Texas, in December 1938. 28 By the winter of 1940–1941, crews used plows to keep the road open year-round for the first time. These developments, together with the construction projects that made them possible, facilitated a significant increase in traffic. Usage increased from 66 vehicles per day in 1929–1930 to 821 in 1940. 29
While construction on the Logan Canyon highway proceeded without resistance throughout the 1930s and 1940s, road work in such environmentally sensitive areas would face increased opposition in the second half of the twentieth century. Such preservationist sentiment was rooted in three broad changes to outdoor recreation that occurred between the end of World War I and the beginning of World War II: the proliferation of the automobile, an increased emphasis on consumerism, and the willingness of governments to fund highway projects. These developments certainly gave Americans a greater appreciation for nature, but they also made it more difficult for tourists to find the pristine landscapes and solitude they often sought. For this reason the concept of wilderness and other preservationist ideals were “more a response to than a product of the ways in which Americans were coming to know nature through leisure during the interwar years.” 30
Each of these changes in outdoor recreation was present in northern Utah during the interwar period. The number of vehicle registrations in the state rose dramatically, from 32,273 in 1918 to 150,493 in 1941. Consumerism among outdoor enthusiasts was alive and well in Logan, which, by 1941, boasted four tourist courts and a commercial ski area in the Sinks area of nearby Logan Canyon. 31 Finally, by working cooperatively to pave the Logan Canyon highway, both the state and federal governments indicated their commitment to fund highway projects. It was this continued willingness to expand and realign this road to accommodate greater numbers of tourists and outdoor enthusiasts that drew the initial ire of Cache Valley environmentalists in the 1960s.
The Utah State Department of Highways (USDH) finalized plans for a new round of Logan Canyon highway construction on September 7, 1960. The plans included specifications to widen five miles of U.S. Highway 89 from 1500 East in Logan to Spring Hollow, resurface it with four inches of asphalt, and straighten out some of its curves. On August 2, the State of Utah awarded the contract to the Jack B. Parson Company of Smithfield at a bid of $527,737. The absence of legal obstacles and minimal environmental protest enabled the contractor to begin construction just one month after the plans were finalized. 32 The sole voice of opposition came from the State Department of Fish and Game, which feared consequences to fish habitat along the proposed route. The concern was over the Logan River and three small dam-formed lakes, which shared the canyon bottom with the road segment in question. One ecological concern was the straightening and rechanneling of the river, which could increase water velocity and its erosive ability, causing siltation that endangers aquatic vegetation and spawning beds. The removal of overhanging vegetation was also problematic; such plant life provides shade, food, and a habitat structure in aquatic systems. Because of these threats, the United States Forest Service (USFS), which had to issue special use permits for construction projects in areas under its control, insisted that USDH compromise with the State Department of Fish and Game on its original plans. However, partly because of the public’s indifference, the final design failed to prevent the majority of environmental malfeasance. Most notably, one-third of the lake at Third Dam was filled in order to straighten a curve. 33
Though the public did nothing to alter, delay, or halt the construction, it did not go entirely unnoticed. Once the work began, several columnists, local citizens, and past tourists offered their opinions on the editorial page of the Herald Journal. Local residents, especially, supported the construction and foresaw no negative effects. “Whether we like it or not, Logan Canyon is a commercial route,” stated Alan Conrad, a Logan resident. “The necessity of trailing behind a large, slow truck or a slow sight-seer’s car is not conducive to business efficiency.” 34 Owen Brown of Logan added his approval: “I can say, after driving through the construction area, that no harm is coming to Logan or its people through this project.” 35
The opposition, though less local in its composition, was equally confident in its stance. Some blamed commercialism and consumption for the decision to modify the highway. Virgil Walker, a Missourian who had once visited the area with his family, lamented the threat to the canyon and hoped it would not be “debased or dissipated in the pursuit of the ‘almighty dollar.’” 36 Another man, a Washington, D.C., writer named John Bulger, cynically charged that USDH’s goal was simply “to get people into Logan City faster so they have more time to spend their money.” 37 Others questioned the necessity of a faster, straighter road. “Who wants a speedway to drive so fast you can’t see or enjoy the beautiful canyon?” asked Mrs. Floyd Kendrick of Providence, Utah. 38 Most notable among those opposed to the canyon construction was Dr. Jack H. Berryman, a wildlife management specialist at Utah State University (USU). Berryman had just returned to Logan after a stint with the Federal Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife in Minnesota, and he was appalled by the public’s seeming indifference to the alterations in the canyon. “Cache Valley residents can now see at first hand the effects of straightening and widening the highway up Logan Canyon,” he wrote. “If this scene of the first phase of the work is projected on up the canyon, it should give every Cache resident—and in fact, every Utah resident—cause for serious reflection.” 39 For the next five years, Berryman used his position at the university to promote this awareness. 40
Jack H. Berryman, a USU wildlife management specialist, circa 1960.
SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AND ARCHIVES, MERRILL-CAZIER LIBRARY, USU
Not long after the bulldozers rolled out of the canyon, the College of Forest, Range, and Wildlife Management, under the direction of Berryman and Dean J. Whitney Floyd, decided to study the impact of highway construction on land and resource use. In a letter dated March 28, 1961, Floyd announced to C. Taylor Burton, USDH Director of Highways, the appointment of two faculty committees: one to examine “the broad regional and state-wide implications of highway development with respect to urban and rural development, resource use, outdoor recreation, and other factors” and another to study “the impact of the proposed road construction on the fishery resource and fisherman utilization of the Logan River.” 41
The result of this effort was a university publication entitled, “Road Construction and Resource Use,” printed in late 1961. Whether he intended to or not, Chase put his school squarely in the center of the Logan Canyon highway controversy with this work, declaring in the foreword: “It is my belief that universities have educational responsibilities that go beyond the campus—responsibilities for creating an informed public aware of issues and prepared to act intelligently.” 42 In the following pages, the booklet dealt with the impact of highways on “three major resource groups: (1) Forest, range, and watershed resources; (2) Wildlife resources, and (3) Scenic and recreational resources.” The first section mainly addressed the unnatural erosion caused by highway cuts and fills and the effect of such erosion on aquatic wildlife; this was reminiscent of the concerns expressed the previous year by the State Department of Fish and Game. The next section emphasized the role of highways as barriers to migrating species and the often-fatal result when animals try to cross them. The writers of the final section focused on the need to preserve the scenic nature of highway corridors for the sake of those who seek out such beauty for recreational purposes. The book concluded with recommendations for coordinated planning among the public and private interests of agriculture, wildlife, and recreation. 43
Though penned exclusively by university faculty, the manifesto served as a concrete sign that organized environmentalism was beginning to take hold in Cache Valley. Burton, of the USDH, saw the publication as an attack on the Logan Canyon project and aired his frustration in a letter to President Chase dated November 20, 1961: “It is extremely disheartening to those of us engaged in the very complex and demanding endeavor of highway building to have such a statement issued under your sponsorship at a time when more heat than light has been generated on the subject by demand and counter demands relating to Logan Canyon.” 44 Floyd responded a few days later, assuring Burton that the university committees wanted the road in Logan Canyon to be completed and would not involve themselves in administrative decisions regarding the project. He and his colleagues simply expressed the hope that the state agencies involved could find a solution that included “a satisfactory design, adequate financing, with minimum damage to the natural resources affected.” 45 Nevertheless, it was clear that the USDH’s decisions would no longer go unchallenged.
By the end of 1961, mounting concern for the environmental integrity of Logan Canyon brought the phase-two design process to an impasse. The USFS refused to issue a special-use permit, even though the State Road Commission and the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads had approved a redesign of the Spring Hollow-to-Right Hand Fork construction that included an additional $100,000 for resource protection work. Their studies indicated that the proposed highway alignment would encroach too far into the Logan River channel, damaging its aquatic habitat. Citing the potential displacement of the natural pools and vegetation necessary for the survival of the river’s trout population, the USFS recommended another $127,000 of work needed to meet what they called “‘minimum damage’ requirements.” “I cannot,” Regional Forester Floyd Iverson concluded, “in the absence of the facts to the contrary, agree to a proposal set at a level below that which meets the ‘minimum’ resource protection need.” 46
A July 1963 article in National Parks Magazine, written by Jack Berryman, brought the Logan Canyon controversy to a national audience. In this four-page spread, complete with maps and photographs, Berryman argued that “we must have a modern highway network. This, however, cannot continue to be engineered at the expense of irreplaceable public resources.” He went on to call for “mandatory coordination between highway planning agencies and public and private organizations concerned with resource use,” legislation to protect natural resources, and increased public involvement. 47 Given the increasing publicity of the highway project, the USDH eventually bent to the pressure of the USFS and again modified its designs. They accepted the USFS requirements to avoid the most significant riverbed disturbance, and by 1968 work was underway on the 4.2-mile stretch of U.S. Highway 89 from Spring Hollow to Right Hand Fork. While environmentalists might not have received all of the concessions they wanted, in comparison to the 1961 project, the 1968 construction represented an important compromise. 48
Following the reasonably contentious debate with the USFS, the USDH, intent on improving safety in the canyon, did not wait long to resume their highway alteration efforts in Logan Canyon. On August 27, 1969, the State Road Commission of Utah quietly held a public meeting to discuss the design features of a section of U.S. Highway 89 from Right Hand Fork to Twin Bridges. This proposal resulted in another article from National Parks Magazine, written by the conservationist George Alderson, which criticized the 1968 construction as “the same old cut-and-fill job”—despite the compromise between the USDH and the USFS. Alderson also condemned the most recent proposal, arguing that by funding a portion of the highway construction, the U.S. government was irrationally using federal money to destroy federal land. With enough public pressure, Alderson hoped that “Logan Canyon can be the proving ground for a new concept of scenic road conservation.” 49
Indeed, the third phase of construction would play out much differently, thanks to potent legal weapons provided by new federal legislation, namely the recently signed National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA). Debated by Congress in 1968 and 1969 and signed into law by President Richard Nixon on January 1, 1970, NEPA fulfilled the need for an encompassing strategy of environmental consideration and protection for the country’s invaluable wildlife and habitats. Section 102, part C, of the legislation required “all agencies of the Federal Government” to
The “detailed statement” required by NEPA—which officials eventually termed an environmental impact statement—pushed ecological concern to the forefront of highway planning. 51
This significant adjustment in federal environmental policy was accompanied by a change in leadership for those fighting Logan Canyon highway construction. When Jack Berryman departed USU in 1965, William T. Helm, an associate professor of wildlife resources, assumed the reins of the Logan Canyon cause. In June 1970, Helm formed a new faculty group known as the Northern Utah Environmental Advisory Committee to review the latest plans. He then forwarded a list of questions about the ecological, recreational, and scenic impacts of the latest project to the head of each agency required to approve designs for construction: Ross Plant, Utah State Road Commission; Vern Hamre, USFS; and George Bohn, U.S. Bureau of Public Roads. Unlike Berryman’s committee in the 1960s, Helm’s committee consisted of many members outside the College of Forest, Range, and Wildlife Management. Participation by engineers, botanists, social scientists, and a philosopher attested to the widening appeal of environmentalism in Cache Valley, though such interest remained concentrated at the university. 52
Despite initially positive correspondence, Helm’s committee and the USFS soon found themselves opposite the highway agencies on many key issues. By August 1970 both the Utah State Road Commission and the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads had approved the plans without the execution of any environmental analysis. Believing that the work would lack the environmental consequence necessary for extensive study, Ross Plant suggested in a letter to Helm that “provisions of the Environmental Policy Act probably do not apply to construction in Logan Canyon.” 53 Nevertheless, Helm and his committee had several aesthetic and ecological concerns. Like Berryman before him, Helm feared the disruption of canyon scenery and the intrusion of the road into the river, this time due to the USDH’s initial proposal to widen each lane from twelve feet to sixteen feet to add six-foot shoulders to the existing alignment. He also rejected the department’s assertion that straightening and widening the road would make it safer, suggesting instead that such modifications would encourage motorists to drive faster and would thereby increase accidents. Helm recommended widening the road by only a few feet and adding passing lanes only where room permitted. “Moderate improvements are needed,” he said, “but not a new road.” 54
With pressure mounting on the USDH, the USFS issued an “environmental analysis report” in April 1971, which the author claimed “responds directly to the intention and direction given by the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969.” 55 The report made fifty-three recommendations to minimize the road’s impact on the canyon, from landscaping disturbed areas to avoiding alterations of the Logan River channel. The Utah State Road Commission continued to push for the construction until 1972, when the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) decided that the Logan Canyon project required the preparation of an environmental impact statement (EIS). This decision represented a setback for the Utah State Road Commission and the USDH, which did little to promote the construction for several years. 56
The Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) seemed ready for another fight in April 1979 when it reproposed highway alterations between Right Hand Fork and Ricks Spring in a Class III “non-major” federal action category, thus exempting the project from the necessity of a full EIS. Reaction to the recommendation was swift and stern. The Utah Chapter of the Sierra Club expressed apprehension over UDOT’s compliance with NEPA guidelines. Utah First District Representative Gunn McKay echoed this concern, writing to George Bohn, the division administrator of the FHWA, “There are those who feel that the assignment of a Category III classification does not reflect a correct assessment of the changes which are to be made in the canyon.” 57 The controversy also drew attention from the Citizens for the Protection of Logan Canyon (CPLC), a local group of concerned residents that organized in 1976 to oppose development in Stump Hollow. The group compiled “an analysis of the proposed re-alignment of U.S. 89 in Logan Canyon, Utah,” and presented it to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on August 20, 1979. The document’s authors, who included USU professors Jack Spence and William Helm, noted apparent errors and discrepancies in UDOT’s traffic forecasts and accident statistics, the foundation of the agency’s argument for road improvements. They also explored the potential environmental impact of the project on Logan Canyon, particularly its riparian habitat. 58
With pressure from the FHWA, UDOT decided to accept the added costs of the full EIS and upgrade the project to the Class I “major” category in December 1979. Politicians and businessmen who supported the highway construction criticized this decision, including state senator Charles Bullen, who represented Cache and Rich counties at the time. “We have been studying that roadway for 15 years and nothing has been done,” Bullen said. “I’m recommending to the governor that we not put any more money into the project and that we just not do it period.” 59
Just one week after approval of the EIS, a bleak state roads budget and continuing environmental opposition led UDOT to abandon its decision to perform an environmental study on the highway. It would instead begin work on plans to improve guardrails and signage, which the agency completed in 1984 and implemented the next year. Interestingly, not even these minor modifications went up without criticism. “The Sierra Club is concerned about the numerous new reflectors and posts that were placed along the lower portion of Logan Canyon Highway,” read a June 16, 1986, letter from Rudy Lukez of the Sierra Club’s Cache Group to UDOT’s Lynn Zolinger. “We feel that these closely spaced markers are very unsightly.” 60
The new guardrails, reflectors, and signs were hardly in the ground before UDOT regrouped and began to again push for more extensive changes to the unmodified stretch of the Logan Canyon highway from Right Hand Fork to Garden City. In June 1986 UDOT, in cooperation with the USFS, awarded the environmental and engineering consulting firm CH2M Hill with $530,000 to complete “a comprehensive, year-long study” of this twenty-eight-mile stretch. Because of the FHWA’s past assertion that proposed construction in the canyon required the completion of a full EIS, the contract stipulated that the report be prepared as a less-intensive “environmental assessment” with the expectation that a full EIS might ultimately be required. 61
The three main goals of the study were “to identify locations on the road where problems exist in safety, maintenance, road design, and capacity; to propose several alternative means, through repair or improvements, to the problems; and to conduct an analysis of the potential impacts on the environment of the proposed alternatives.” 62 UDOT, conscious of the controversy CH2M’s recommendations would stir, soon assembled an “interdisciplinary team” charged with reviewing the firm’s findings and presenting them to the public and other government agencies as part of a “public involvement program.” The team consisted of representatives from UDOT, CH2M Hill, the USFS, the FHWA, and representatives of the environmental community, including Jack Spence and Rudy Lukez of the Sierra Club, Tom Lyon of the Utah Wilderness Association, Steve Flint of the Bridgerland Audubon Association, and William Helm of USU’s wildlife resources program. Most of these men were also involved with the Citizens for the Protection of Logan Canyon, and all but Lukez, a rocket scientist at Morton Thiokol in Brigham City, were affiliated with USU. 63
A public scoping meeting concerning the Logan Canyon environmental study, Logan City Hall, March 4, 1987.
SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AND ARCHIVES, MERRILL-CAZIER LIBRARY, USU
In the fall of 1986, UDOT held two public meetings to allow Logan and Garden City residents to air their opinions. At these hearings groups supporting and opposing canyon construction coalesced in much the same way that they had in the past. On one side were environmentalists (many of them affiliated with USU) and some members of the USFS, who both felt that little or nothing should be done to the highway. The other side consisted of business owners, elected officials, and citizens who regularly traveled the canyon and viewed the highway as inadequate and in need of repair. The concerns of the first group hinged mainly on the preservation of the scenic beauty and river habitat in the canyon. “You might talk about change rather than improvement, or if you want another word that is loaded use bulldoze rather than improvement,” quipped Wendell Anderson, a USU professor of political science. The latter group consisted mostly of people who traveled the canyon on a regular basis and had an understandable interest in safety. “There are some damn serious places in that canyon,” said Ted Seeholzer from Beaver Mountain Ski Area, addressing the assembly. “I’ve had family members who have been injured because of severe turns, and I’m sure a lot of you have.” 64 This type of comment was largely echoed in the Garden City meeting. “How many lawsuits do we have to file to get this sub-standard road improved?” asked one frustrated resident. 65
Pressured by the growing controversy, the FHWA upgraded the incomplete Environmental Assessment to a full EIS in December 1986. Financially overextended by the rising expectations, CH2M Hill requested and received an additional $90,240 in 1987 and $91,000 in 1988, bringing the report’s total price tag to over $700,000. What was originally intended to be a year-long study slowly became more costly in both time and money. 66
As the public awaited the delayed release of the draft EIS, the controversy over the Logan Canyon highway construction intensified. The Cache Chamber of Commerce board of directors voted to make the road project a “priority.” 67 The city councils of both Smithfield and Logan approved limited improvements to the canyon, including the replacement of narrow bridges and the addition of several turnouts. In March 1987 UDOT held another pair of public meetings in Logan and Garden City addressing the highway construction. Thanks to a heavy turnout at the Logan meeting by representatives and members of the Utah Wilderness Association, Cache Group Sierra Club, Friends of Bear Lake, Bridgerland Audubon Society, and Citizens for the Protection of Logan Canyon, most of the comments called on UDOT to either leave the canyon alone or make only minor safety improvements. Throughout the summer of 1987, these groups circulated newsletters, organized publicity events, and wrote numerous letters to UDOT and the USFS in opposition to the construction. Many shared the sentiment of the CPLC that “protection of Logan Canyon’s scenic beauty, fish and wildlife habitat, rare plants, recreation sites, and naturalness must be a prime concern.” 68
As the draft EIS neared completion, environmentalists felt that UDOT was increasingly ignoring their concerns over the proposed Logan Canyon highway construction. Although the interdisciplinary team held twenty-five meetings between June 1986 and July 1987, environmentalists did not meet formally with highway officials again until a “citizens’ review committee” convened in September and November 1989. This group—appointed by UDOT to ensure that the draft EIS was “understandable” and “appropriately addressed” environmental and safety concerns—included just one environmentalist, Bruce Pendery of the CPLC. The other four members represented the Cache County Chamber of Commerce, the City of Logan, and the Cache and Rich county commissions. Like the interdisciplinary team, the citizens’ review committee provided UDOT with input for the design plan but had no role in the final approval of the project. That decision would be made by UDOT, USFS, and FHWA. 69
Activists from the CPLC mark the new road alignments under consideration in the canyon, June 1987.
SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AND ARCHIVES, MERRILL-CAZIER LIBRARY, USU
In November 1990, CH2M Hill finally completed and released the much-anticipated draft EIS. The document included eight alternatives, ranging from no action to a recommendation that ignored environmental concerns, to bring the highway in line with national standards. However, the two main alternatives fell between these extremes: the “composite alternative,” agreed upon by the FHWA, UDOT, and USFS; and the “conservationists’ alternative,” a more environmentally conscious approach spearheaded by CPLC. Both accepted the notion that the highway needed to be modified with consideration for the beauty of the canyon and its environment, but differed on what the extent of those changes should be. 70
The composite alternative and the conservationists’ alternative began with similar plans for the highway just north of Right Hand Fork, but the proposals became increasingly dissimilar as the highway continued toward Garden City. In the Middle Canyon (Right Hand Fork to 1.8 miles east of Ricks Spring), both alternatives recommended that the road retain its original 23-foot width and 25 miles-per-hour design speed for the first four miles. Beyond this point, the composite alternative called for straighter curves and a 34-foot pavement width in order to increase the design speed to 35 miles per hour, while the conservationists’ alternative sought to maintain the same road width and design speed throughout the entire section. Both plans included the replacement of five bridges, and neither required the river to be rechanneled. For the upper canyon (1.8 miles east of Ricks Spring to the Rich County line), both alternatives endorsed the replacement of six bridges and the construction of three passing lanes, but that is where the agreement ended. The composite alternative recommended that the road be widened from 23 feet to 40 feet and four curves be straightened to increase the design speed from 40 to 50 miles per hour. The conservationists’ alternative rejected all of these changes. Perhaps the most significant point of contention was the composite alternative’s plan to rechannel Beaver Creek, a suggestion that the CPLC’s Tom Lyon called “an environmental outrage.” 71 There was even less overlap in the alternative’s designs for the Rich County segment (Rich County line to Garden City). The conservationists’ alternative did not include any changes to the highway’s 23-foot pavement width or the alignment of its curves, leaving the road’s 25 miles-per-hour design speed unchanged. The composite alternative, on the other hand, called for a pavement width of 47 feet and the flattening of 16 curves, increasing the design speed from 40 to 50 miles per hour. 72
Clearly, highway officials and environmentalists had yet to reach a compromise. UDOT and CH2M Hill cosponsored a public hearing at Mount Logan Middle School on January 15, 1991. More than 150 environmentalists and construction advocates attended the four-hour meeting. “The loss of wetlands, reduction of fish population, threats to plants and loss of migratory species—to me is not worth the five or 10 minutes we will save traveling through Logan Canyon,” said Logan resident William Stone, echoing the concerns Cache Valley environmentalists had expressed for three decades. Supporters of the construction also chimed in with recycled appeals. “The road through Logan Canyon is truly our lifeline,” said Laketown City Council member Craig Floyd. “Our economic present and economic future hinge on this lifeline.” 73
Unwilling to fold in the face of controversy for a third time, UDOT decided in June 1991 to push the process forward and move ahead with the final EIS. Angered, environmentalists heightened their protest of the impending construction. In April 1992, four hundred protesters gathered in Logan Canyon wielding signs that read “UDOT, Go Build in Hell” and “We Don’t Prefer It.” Amid threats of a lengthy court battle, UDOT and CH2M Hill completed the final EIS in March 1993. 74
The final EIS referred to the design recommendations of UDOT and the FHWA as the “preferred alternative,” a slightly updated version of the composite alternative in the draft EIS. This new set of proposals included some changes sought by environmentalists, including the elimination of a passing lane on a narrow section of road in the middle canyon known as
“the dugway” and a retraction of the previous plan to rechannel Beaver Creek. However, the preferred alternative did include the straightening of nineteen curves along the Rich County segment, an increase from the sixteen recommended in the composite alternative. In an effort to hammer out a final compromise, UDOT invited representatives of the CPLC to participate in a series of meetings held between December 1993 and October 1994. These sessions resulted in one last significant concession to the environmentalists: UDOT agreed to narrow the pavement width in the first eight miles of the Upper Canyon from forty feet to thirty-four feet. With this change the CPLC offered its "provisional and conditional approval" of the preferred alternative, though it still opposed many of the design proposals and ultimately remained unconvinced of the project's necessity. In January 1995 the FHWD and UDOT approved the final "record of decision," recommending the modified preferred alternative as a guideline for the highway modifications. The USFS released its own Record of Decision in March, accepting the preferred alternative and ostensibly brining an end to the twenty-five-year battle over the Logan Canyon road construction. 75
This design was emblazoned on T-shirts for the 1993 Giardia Run, a fundraising event once held annually in Loga. The logo features a giardia protozoan holding a monkey wrench-a symbol of environmental protest-and kicking a UDOT construction cone. It also alludes to the Branch Davidians, a cult besieged by state and federal law enforcement outside of Waco, Texas, just months earlier. Proceeds from the 1993 run benefitted groups opposed to UDOT's Logan Canyon Highway efforts.
PHOTO BY JENNIKA ANDERSON
Not everyone readily accepted the preferred alternative, however. A group of environmentalists frustrated by the CPLC’s willingness to compromise formed the Logan Canyon Coalition (LCC) in 1995 “to seek further modifications through the Forest Service appeals process.” 76 The LCC, in conjunction with the Utah Rivers Conservation Council, submitted an appeal on May 10, 1995, which claimed that “the Forest Service’s Record of Decision violates guidelines within the Wasatch-Cache National Forest Land and Resources Management Plan concerning wildlife, fisheries habitat, road construction, water quality, and economic impacts.” 77 The USFS promptly denied the petition on June 29, 1995. “We have carefully examined the decisions and mitigation measures taken by the Regional Forester and find them reasonable and supportable,” insisted Sterling J. Wilcox, the USFS appeal deciding officer, in a response letter. “Accordingly, Regional Forester Bosworth’s March 31, 1995, decision for the U.S. Highway 89 rehabilitation project is affirmed.” 78 This was the for Burnt and Lower Twin Bridges that same year and unveiled the next. The Logan Canyon highway was under construction for the following decade. 79
Steve Flint of Citizens for the Protection of Logan Canyon final word in the matter; plans were completed leading a protest meeting at the Guinavah amphitheater in the canyon, May 1993.
SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AND ARCHIVES, MERRILL-CAZIER LIBRARY, USU
From humble origins on the editorial pages of the Herald Journal, concern over the Logan Canyon highway grew into an organized and influential protest that changed the highway design process in Cache Valley. Jack Berryman’s group of professors from the College of Forest, Range, and Wildlife Management was an unusually active and organized environmental association for the time. Their scientifically reasoned protest encouraged unprecedented compromise from the Utah State Department of Highways in 1968. The successor to Berryman’s group, the Northern Utah Environmental Advisory Committee, experienced even greater success, effectively heading off construction plans in 1971. By 1979 new citizen action groups, like the Citizens for the Protection of Logan Canyon, formed to fight the continuing possibility of highway modifications. Their demands for the completion of an EIS once again hindered the highway department’s intentions. The deterioration of bridges and of the road surface convinced UDOT in 1986 that something had to be done. Still, UDOT was met at every turn by a growing number of concerned citizens willing to attend public meetings, stage protests, and even file legal appeals. When UDOT made its final decision in 1995, the details were partly a product of a strong environmental voice that had been muted in the original 1969 proposal and nearly absent in 1960.
The result of Logan Canyon highway debate should not be characterized as an environmentalist victory over UDOT, however. Certainly, UDOT became more open to the importance of protecting certain ecological and aesthetic resources. “Thirty years ago, we were not as environmentally conscious,” conceded UDOT’s Logan Canyon project engineer, Luke Mildon, in August 1998. “We have undergone a philosophical change, and we recognize that there has to be a balance. Not all people have the same values.” 80 But environmentalists also came to acknowledge the necessity of certain alterations to the Logan Canyon highway. In a brochure produced after the 1993 release of the final EIS, Citizens for a Safe and Scenic Canyon (a group associated with Citizens for the Protection of Logan Canyon) conceded, “We support making the canyon safe by replacing and widening bridges; constructing more pullouts for slow drivers; adding several climbing lanes, turning lanes, and parking areas; and putting more and better signage in the canyon.” 81
In the end neither side got everything it wanted. There was no winner— but there was no loser, either. The final outcome of the Logan Canyon controversy was a compromise: a product of federal legislation that gave each side a place at the negotiating table.
Clint Pumphrey is the manuscript curator in the Special Collections and Archives division of Utah State University’s Merrill-Cazier Library.
NOTES
1 Hal K. Rothman, The Greening of a Nation? Environmentalism in the United States Since 1945 (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1998), 48; Mark Harvey, A Symbol of Wilderness: Echo Park and the American Conservation Movement (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994), xv.
2 William Cronon, “Landscapes of Abundance and Scarcity,” in The Oxford History of the American West, eds. Clyde A. Milner II, Carol A. O’Connor, and Martha Sandweiss (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 604.
3 Thomas Bullock, Journal, August 14, 1847, in The Pioneer Camp of the Saints, ed. Will Bagley (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2001), 256.
4 Joel Edward Ricks, The Beginnings of Settlement in Cache Valley (Logan: Utah State Agricultural College, 1953), 17.
5 Ricks, Beginnings, 17.
6 After surveying the area in the summer of 1902, Potter estimated that the number of sheep grazing in Cache County was closer to 150,000, thanks to “tramp” sheep brought in from other counties to summer in the mountains surrounding the valley.
7 “Diary of Albert F. Potter: former associate chief of Forest Service: July 1, 1902–November 22, 1902,” July 18, 1902, Special Collections and Archives, Merrill-Cazier Library, Utah State University, Logan, Utah (hereafter USUSCA).
8 Ralph B. Roberts, “History, Cache National Forest, Volume No. 1,” unpublished typescript, Cache National Forest papers (unprocessed), USUSCA; Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900: Number and Total Value of Specified Domestic Animals on Farms and Ranges: Utah (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1902), 487; Albert F. Potter, photocopy of original diary, July 18, 1902, USUSCA; Dan L. Flores, “Zion in Eden: Phases of the Environmental History of Utah,” Environmental Review, 7, no. 4 (Winter 1983): 325–44.
9 Roberts, “History, Cache National Forest.”
10 “Diary of Albert F. Potter,” July 3, 1902, USUSCA.
11 “Diary of Albert F. Potter,” July 4, 1902, USUSCA.
12 “Diary of Albert F. Potter,” July 3, 1902, USUSCA.
13 Charles Peterson and Linda E. Speth, “A History of the Wasatch-Cache National Forest” (Logan: Utah State University, 1980), 43.
14 Henry Ballard, transcribed journal, February 23, 1862, in Joel E. Ricks, Joel E. Ricks Collection of Transcriptions (from Diaries and Journals of Pioneers Who Settled in Cache Valley) (Logan: Library of the Utah State Agricultural College, 1955).
15 Ballard, transcribed journal, June 15, 1862.
16 Acts, Resolutions and Memorials, Passed at the Several Annual Sessions of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Utah (Salt Lake City: Henry McEwan, 1866), 218–19; County Book A, 1857–1878, 979.212 C113, USUSCA.
17 Ballard, transcribed journal, June 24, 1869.
18 Deseret News, August 24, 1870.
19 Deseret News, February 8, 1871.
20 Leonard Arrington, Charles C. Rich, Mormon General and Western Frontiersman (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1974), 274.
21 Ballard, transcribed diary, October 25, 1869; F. Ross Peterson, A History of Cache County (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society and Cache County Commission, 1997), 181–84; Journal (Logan, UT), September 10, 1892; County of Cache to Logan, Utah, February 12, 1904, Cache County Records, box 8, fd. 23, USUSCA.
22 Formed in 1909, the Utah State Road Commission created the Utah State Department of Highways in 1959 to assist in the planning and construction of roads throughout the state. Effective July 1, 1975, the newly formed Transportation Commission and Utah Department of Transportation absorbed the responsibilities of these agencies.
23 Commercial-Boosters Club Minutes, September 19, 1913, October 13, 1915, Series I, box 3, fd. 1, Cache Chamber of Commerce Papers, COLL MSS 293, USUSCA; State Road Commission, Third Biennial Report: 1913 and 1914 (Salt Lake City: Arrow Press, 1915), 77.
24 The Bureau of Public Roads was first created as the Office of Road Inquiry in 1893. Housed under the Department of Agriculture, it was known successively as the Office of Public Road Inquiries, the Office of Public Roads, and the Office of Public Roads and Rural Engineering before assuming the name Bureau of Public Roads in 1918. In 1939, the bureau was absorbed into the Federal Works Agency and became known as the Public Roads Administration. Transferred to the Department of Commerce in 1949, it was again referred to as the Bureau of Public Roads. Beginning in 1967 the bureau briefly operated under the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) before its functions were completely absorbed by the FHWA on August 10, 1970. “Records of the Bureau of Public Roads,” National Archives, accessed October 15, 2013, http://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/030.html.
25 Federal funds supplied $79,468.75 of the cost; $72,320.00 came from the state.
26 State Road Commission, Sixth Biennial Report: 1919–1920 (Kaysville, UT: Inland Printing, n.d.), 60; State Road Commission, Seventh Biennial Report: 1921–1922 (Salt Lake City: Arrow Press, n.d.), 47, 77, 103; State Road Commission, Eleventh Biennial Report: 1929–1930 (n.p., n.d.), rear map insert.
27 “Special Meeting of Roads Committee,” December 11, 1925, Series I, box 3, fd. 4, Cache Chamber of Commerce Papers, COLL MSS 293, USUSCA.
28 The Utah and Idaho road commissions had a long-standing dispute with the Wyoming commission over the routing of U.S. Highway 89 between Provo and Yellowstone National Park. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, Utah and Idaho’s commissions wanted the highway to travel from Provo to Salt Lake City, Ogden, Brigham City, Logan, Garden City, Montpelier, Star Valley, and the Grand Canyon of the Snake River to Yellowstone. Wyoming’s commission preferred that the route travel from Provo to Heber, Coalville, Echo Junction, Evanston, Kemmerer, and Big Piney to Yellowstone. When the American Association of State Highway Officials designated the former route as U.S. Highway 89, they labeled the latter route as U.S. Highway 189. Salt Lake Tribune, December 13, 1938.
29 Salt Lake Tribune, December 13, 1938; Federal Works Agency, Public Road Administration, “Plans for Proposed Project 1-A10,” 1947, located at the Utah Department of Transportation Region One office, Ogden, Utah (hereafter UDOT); State Road Commission, Seventeenth Biennial Report: 1941–1942 (n.p., n.d.), 65, 145; State Road Commission, Twelfth Biennial Report: 1931–1932 (Salt Lake City: Arrow Press, n.d.), 197; State Road Commission, Sixteenth Biennial Report: 1939–1940 (n.p., n.d.), 190.
30 Paul S. Sutter, Driven Wild: How the Fight against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002), 20.
31 United States Department of Commerce, Statistical Abstract of the United States (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1921), 355; United States Department of Commerce, Statistical Abstract of the United States (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1942), 472; Logan City and Cache County Directory, 1939–1940 (Salt Lake City: R. L. Polk, 1939); Logan (UT) Herald Journal, January 17, 1941.
32 Utah State Department of Highways design plans, project F-021-1, 1960, UDOT; Logan (UT) Herald Journal, August 3, September 2, 1960.
33 Jack H. Berryman, “Logan Canyon Road Controversy, Anatomy of a Principle,” National Parks Magazine, July 1963, 13, 14; Richard T. T. Forman et. al., Road Ecology: Science and Solutions (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2003), 340.
34 Logan (UT) Herald Journal, October 9, 1960.
35 Logan (UT) Herald Journal, October 3, 1960.
36 Logan (UT) Herald Journal, October 18, 1960.
37 Logan (UT) Herald Journal, August 13, 1960.
38 Logan (UT) Herald Journal, October 3, 1960.
39 Logan (UT) Herald Journal, September 16, 1960.
40 Vitae and biographical sketches, box 1, fd. 1, Jack H. Berryman Papers, COLL MSS 289, USUSCA.
41 J. Whitney Floyd to C. Taylor Burton, June 23, 1961, Historical Materials, College of Natural Resources, University Archives 14.7:17, box 8, USUSCA.
42 College of Forest, Range, and Wildlife Management, “Road Construction and Resource Use,” No. 3 Land-Grant Centennial Diamond Jubilee Series, 1961, 4, USUSCA.
43 College of Forest, Range, and Wildlife Management, “Road Construction and Resource Use,” 9–15.
44 C. Taylor Burton to Daryl Chase, November 20, 1961, Historical Materials, College of Natural Resources, box 8, USUSCA.
45 J. Whitney Floyd to C. Taylor Burton, Harold S. Crane, Floyd Iverson, and Grant E. Meyers, November 25, 1961, Historical Materials, College of Natural Resources, box 8, USUSCA.
46 Floyd Iverson to J. Whitney Floyd, December 4, 1961, Historical Materials, College of Natural Resources, box 8, USUSCA; Floyd Iverson, “The Forest Service Position on the Logan Canyon Highway,” Historical Materials, College of Natural Resources, box 8, USUSCA.
47 Berryman, “Logan Canyon,” 15.
48 Utah State Department of Highways design plans, project F-021-1(3), October 1967, UDOT.
49 Logan (UT) Herald Journal, September 10, 1970; George Alderson, “Logan Canyon: Standards for Destruction,” National Parks Magazine, November 1969, 20.
50 National Environmental Policy Act, sec. 102, 1970, accessed November 15, 2006, http://www.nepa.gov/nepa/regs/nepa/nepaqia.htm.
51 Ray Clark and Larry Canter, Environmental Policy and NEPA: Past, Present, and Future (Boca Raton, FL: St. Lucie Press, 1997), 10, 12.
52 William T. Helm to Ross Plant, Vern Hamre, and George Bohn, June 23, 1970, Logan Canyon Highway Reconstruction Correspondence, item MSS 78, USUSCA.
53 Ross Plant to William T. Helm, July 28, 1970, Logan Canyon Highway Reconstruction Correspondence, item MSS 78, USUSCA.
54 Logan (UT) Herald Journal, August 31, September 10, 1970; U.S. Forest Service, Environmental Analysis Report: Logan Canyon Highway, 1971, p. 26, Logan Canyon Highway Construction correspondence, item MSS 78, USUSCA; C. Arthur Geurts to Blaine J. Kay, October 8, 1970, Logan Canyon Highway Reconstruction correspondence, item MSS 78, USUSCA.
55 U.S. Forest Service, Environmental Analysis Report, 1.
56 Utah State Department of Highways design plans, project F-021-1(4), 1972, UDOT; Utah Department of Transportation and Federal Highway Administration, “U.S. Highway 89 Logan Canyon Highway Cache and Rich Counties, Utah: Final Environmental Impact Statement,” 1993, 1-1.
57 Gunn McKay to George W. Bohn, August 2, 1979, box 450, fd. 14, Gunn McKay Papers, COLL MSS 86, USUSCA.
58 Utah Statesman, December 5, 1979; Brian Beard to M. J. Roberts, November 21, 1979, Series VIII.B, box 28, fd. 8, Sierra Club, Utah Chapter archives, 1972–1986, COLL MSS 148, USUSCA; Citizens for the Protection of Logan Canyon, Logan Canyon Newsletter, November 8, 1976, box 1, fd. 4, Citizens for the Protection of Logan Canyon/Logan Canyon Coalition Papers (hereafter CPLC/LCC Papers), COLL MSS 314, USUSCA; Citizens for the Protection of Logan Canyon, “An Analysis of the Proposed Re-alignment of U.S. 89 in Logan Canyon, Utah,” August 20, 1979, Series VIII.B, box 28, fd. 12, Sierra Club archives, USUSCA.
59 Salt Lake Tribune, December 13, 1979.
60 Logan (UT) Herald Journal, December 15, 1978; Utah State Department of Highways design plans, 1984, UDOT; Rudy Lukez to Lynn Zolinger, June 16, 1986, Series VIII.B, box 27, fd. 9, Sierra Club archives, USUSCA.
61 Logan (UT) Herald Journal, August 10, 1986.
62 Logan (UT) Herald Journal, August 10, 1986.
63 “Agenda—Logan Canyon Study, Interdisciplinary Study Team, Meeting No. 2—Ogden, Utah, June 23, 1986—7:00 p.m.,” Series VIII.B, box 27, fd. 1, Sierra Club archives, USUSCA.64 Logan Canyon Environmental Study Public Meeting, Logan, Utah, September 23, 1986, Series VIII.B, box 27, fd. 10, Sierra Club archives, USUSCA.
64 Logan Canyon Environmental Study Public Meeting, Logan, Utah, September 23, 1986, Series VIII.B, box 27, fd. 10, Sierra Club Archives, USUSCA.
65 Logan Canyon Public Meeting, November 3, 1986, Series VIII.B, box 27, fd. 10, Sierra Club archives, USUSCA.
66 Logan (UT) Herald Journal, May 31, June 22, 1987, October 18, 1988.
67 Paula O. Bell to Todd G. Weston, January 7, 1987, Series VIII.B, box 27, fd. 9, Sierra Club archives, USUSCA.
68 Logan (UT) Herald Journal, March 4, 12, April 15, 1987; Citizens for the Protection of Logan Canyon, Logan Canyon Bulletin, February 1987, box 1, fd. 4, CPLC/LCC Papers, USUSCA.
69 Utah Department of Transportation, “U.S. Highway Route 89 Logan Canyon Highway Cache and Rich Counties, Utah: Draft Environmental Impact Statement,” 1990, 7-2 to 7-6; Salt Lake Tribune, December 8, 1987; Logan (UT) Herald Journal, January 1, 1988.
70 Utah Department of Transportation, “Draft Environmental Impact Statement,” 2-1 to 2-56.
71 Thomas J. Lyon to Dave Baumgartner, January 17, 1989, box 1, fd. 1, CPLC/LCC Papers, USUSCA.
72 Utah Department of Transportation, “Draft Environmental Impact Statement,” 2-21 to 2-36, 2-38 to 2-56.
73 Salt Lake Tribune, January 17, 1991.
74 Salt Lake Tribune, June 2, 1991, April 26, 1992, March 3, 1993.
75 Utah Department of Transportation, “Draft Environmental Impact Statement,” 2-54; UDOT and FHWA “Final Environmental Impact Statement,” 2-2 to 2-16; Steering Committee, Citizens for the Protection of Logan Canyon, to David W. Berg, October 27, 1994, box 1, fd. 1, CPLC/LCC Papers, USUSCA; Utah Department of Transportation, “Record of Decision,” 1995, USUSCA; U.S. Forest Service, “Record of Decision,” 1995, Utah Wilderness Association Records, 1980–2000, box 6, fd. 7, COLL MSS 200, RG: Forest Service, Series: Wasatch National Forest, USUSCA.
76 Logan Canyon Coalition, Canyon Wind, August 1, 1995, box 1, fd. 8, CPLC/LCC Papers, USUSCA. Kevin Kobe, a USU employee, led the LCC.
77 Kevin Kobe to Jack Ward Thomas, May 10, 1995, box 1, fd. 7, CPLC/LCC Papers, USUSCA.
78 Sterling J. Wilcox to Kevin Kobe, June 29, 1995, box 1, fd. 7, CPLC/LCC Papers, USUSCA.
79 Logan Canyon Coalition, Canyon Wind, August 1, 1996, box 1, fd. 8, CPLC/LCC Papers, USUSCA.
80 Salt Lake Tribune, August 17, 1998.
81 “Logan Canyon: Make It Safe, Keep It Beautiful,” box 1, fd. 5, CPLC/LCC Papers, USUSCA.
