The Ibapah band of the Goshute Nation will throw its support behind an $85 million potash works in its appeal of a Bureau of Land Management decision.
“It is pretty ironic that we have to learn about these things from the newspaper,” said Goshute Tribal Chairman Ed Naranjo. “We never heard anything from the BLM and we certainly didn’t hear anything from the pioneers. We are all for the economic development of our land.”
Last month under heavy pressure from a wagon train historical group the BLM rejected a prospecting permit application for a Canadian company that wants to build an $85 million potash extraction plant near Pilot Mountain 15 miles north of Wendover.
Opposition to the project which would have created at least 40 very long term high paying jobs was spearheaded by the Oregon-California Trails Association which began a letter campaign against the proposed mine because of its proximity to the Hastings Cutoff, the “shortcut” taken by the infamous Donner Party as well as four other wagon trains in the mid 1800’s.
The Oregon-California Trails Association is the nation’s largest and most influential organization dedicated to the preservation and protection of overland emigrant trails and the emigrant experience.
In their effort to kill the project the OCTA enlisted the aid of the Sierra Club and other environmental groups. The opposition dovetailed nicely with recent efforts to set aside millions of acres of Utah lands as wilderness and therefore untouchable to any industry.
However the fact that alleged ruts left by some of the wagons might still be seen not far from the potash works’ proposed site left little impression on Naranjo.
“They call it history, we call it a tragedy,” Naranjo said. “We should have set up a gate and charged a toll when they were coming through.”
In addition to the Goshutes in Ibapah the Northern Shoshone have also expressed support for the project and a distinct distaste for so called historical and environmental groups efforts to preserve the past.
“This group the (OCTA) reminds me of all the others that want to dictate how to manage our ancestral land,” said Jason Walker of the Northern Shoshone. “For us the coming of the wagon trains was not something to celebrate but a disaster.”
Indeed many in the native American community liken environmental groups efforts to maintain “wilderness” as just another form of colonialism or as one Ely Shoshone said after a coal fired electric plant was shut down: “The whites are telling us again what to do in our own country.”
The efforts of BLM and the OCTA to maintain the ‘purity’ of the wagon trail do contrast greatly with recent discoveries of paleo Indian campsites discovered in the Wendover area.
According to archeological survey conducted some 15 years ago, two sites dating back over 12,000 years and perhaps even older were identified just south of Wendover.
The dating is important because if older than 12,000 it would challenge the Clovis theory of the settlement of the Americas.
Those campsites have not been excavated, have no marker and certainly have no support group to demand they be preserved.
While grateful for the new allies, Mesa Mining CEO Foster Wilson was not holding out much hope.
“We haven’t given up,” he said in a Tuesday interview. “We are still working on our appeal but we have been told we have just a five percent chance of getting it overturned.”
BOOOO!!!! Is it not “IRONIC” that the Goshute People are supporting more enviromental destruction? They have been helped and supported in the past from people who care about the enviroment and when a company comes along who is willing to give them a few coins from their millions they are all of a sudden in support for jobs. Give it up. Stick to helping your own people. Care for the enviroment. You were worried about your water. What do you think this is going to do the the water of the Wendover People? Does that not concern you? Think about it. Boo to the Chairman of the Tribe. You should be ASHAMED of yourself.
I’ve seen this same story reported in a number of publications and I just want to set the record straight regarding the misleading historical information it contains. There were a lot more than four wagon trains that used the Hastings Cutoff. Maybe there were four in the same the year (1846) the Donners used the trail, but it continued to be used until at least 1850. I think in 1850 alone about 12 trains used it. If you want to see what a landscape looks like after unrestricted use, check out what Eastern Europe looked like when we got our first good look at it after the fall of the Iron Curtain. What about the over 90,000 abandoned mines in Nevada alone, that we are NOW trying to cleanup because, originally, there was no government control to force companies to do it properly in the first place. When profit is the motivation, land and the “little” people are paid lip-service and are ultimately exploited. Learn from your history folks, don’t just blindly chase the almighty dollar.