![]() Then a federal stop order stopped them.įLORA: I went to Jarbidge after the county did their little - their little work. They diverted the river back over where it belongs, and then fixed the road. JOYAL: So they came in and they put it back in. So the Elko, Nevada, county commissioners decided to take matters into their own hands. And without it, how can people too old to hike or too poor to rent horses reach favorite campsites they've always used for hunting and fishing and picnics? But the Forest Service held firm. The road is needed, they said, for rescue and fire protection. WEISMAN: The river's fish have coexisted with the road for more than a century, residents argue. ![]() And that is one of the things that makes us pretty unhappy. They're accepting what they're getting from one or two people as gospel. They're not even coming over here to find out what they're talking about. JOYAL: So you've got people up at the higher level of government that are not listening to the people. After two years of study, the Forest Service decided not to restore the road after all, but instead to build a hiking and horse trail above the canyon bottom. The Jarbidge River, they claimed, is the southernmost habitat for the bull trout, a living Ice Age relic considered threatened under the Endangered Species Act. WEISMAN: Before the Forest Service made good on its promise, a conservation group called Trout Unlimited protested. And then along comes the bull trout issue and that stopped the whole thing. JOYAL: They said they're going to do it next spring or whenever. Forest Service had often repaired the road. WEISMAN: In fact, over the years the U.S. And they did a study and said fine, we will put it back in, we have the money. And we said to the Forest Service, we'd like to have it back in. WEISMAN: In 1995, a flood obliterated South Canyon Road, as it had done many times before. The river, you can see how it comes around, it got diverted up here about, oh, 900 feet or so. JOYAL: Now this is where the problem started. It used to lead three miles upriver to the trailhead of the Jarbidge wilderness. Now in his late 70s, Phil Joyal remembers driving on South Canyon Road as a boy. ![]() Phil Joyal and Butch Smith, dressed in fleece-lined denim rough-outs and snowmobile pants, mount their Skidoos and ride to the end of the line. WEISMAN: The old gold mining settlement of Jarbidge is a tiny jumble of wooden cabins and tin buildings. SMITH: I primed it once and it started right up. Jarbidge Canyon is home to martens, wolverines, several kinds of trout, about 30 year-round human residents, mostly retired, and, lately, to controversy. Its steep, rooster-comb ridges and glowing granite spires tower over a cold, clear river that snakes through stands of black cottonwoods, mountain mahogany and tall, conical fir trees. WEISMAN: This is the Jarbidge River Gorge, formed back in glacial times. Instead you have to drive into Idaho, cross a snow-swept grassland so big that the sky itself can't seem to put a lid on it, and then dip south toward a black slash that suddenly splits the horizon. WEISMAN: Northern Nevada's Jarbidge wilderness is so remote that much of the year you can't get here from anywhere else in the state. From northern Nevada, Alan Weisman has our report. Forest Service, whom many thought could become the first woman to head the agency. And the battle has already claimed one significant casualty: the career of a rising star in the U.S. For the federal government, it's a test of a major shift toward protecting natural resources on public lands in the West. For local residents it's a last-stand crusade to protect the basic values which define their communities. The question is whether or not to rebuild a road in a sensitive ecosystem. But the tale of what happened after the Jarbidge River flood of 1995 has taken on the flavor of an epic western, with fierce battles over the land and who owns it, and fierce "this town ain't big enough for the both of us" rhetoric. It was just an ordinary flood that knocked out an ordinary road in an ordinary stretch of backcountry in Nevada.
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