Eden on the Block / Book brings tales of developing Western U.S.
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No Comments [ Add Comment ]OGDEN -- Steve Trimble's new book, "Bargaining for Eden," is as much about his own conflicts with developing land in the West as it is about others doing the same thing.
The book, published earlier this year, is subtitled "The fight for the last open spaces in America." Large chunks of it discuss Utah businessman Earl Holding and his development of, among other things, Snowbasin Ski Resort in Ogden Valley.
The picture on the front of the book, a backhoe blade amid freshly ripped rock, however, was not taken at one of Holding's developments. It's a shot of work to build Trimble's new house on 30 acres of redrock mesa near Torrey, Utah.
Which, Trimble said to a crowd of nearly 100 people Wednesday at Weber State University, is why he finds himself conflicted.
"On some level, I am Earl," he said. "On some level we all are Earl, and I found myself living within a river of ironies as we went through the project."
Trimble is a free-lance photographer and author, recently named the Wallace Stegner Fellow at the University of Utah's Tanner Humanities Center.
He began researching his book on land development in 1997 when he took a job photographing the Snowbasin area before development for the 2002 Winter Olympic Games had begun.
In the process, he said, he found out about Holding, whose many development projects include Sun Valley, Idaho; Snowbasin and the Little America and Grand America hotels in Salt Lake City.
Holding also owns Sinclair Oil and, Trimble said, more than 500,000 acres of land in the western United States.
Trimble wanted to interview Holding for the book, but never could.
"And after trying for a couple of years, I decided I'm going to let Earl Holding be the man behind the curtain," he said, "a mythic figure in my book. He's not my enemy, he's not my nemesis. He's my character."
The other character in his book, he said, is himself. After spending three years, 1997 to 2000, researching the people fighting Holding's efforts to develop Snowbasin, and being sympathetic to their desire to keep the land undeveloped, Trimble found himself buying undeveloped land in Torrey to develop.
He watched Holding build Snowbasin, he said, putting in ski runs, cutting down trees, installing snowmaking machinery, and generally changing the face of the back of Mount Ogden.
Holding did it all legally, he said, adding several times that Holding is known for the quality of his work, "but I couldn't shake off the notion that I was witnessing a crime at some level."
Ultimately, he said, development of the West is a conversation everyone has to have. Residents of Ogden Valley were offended that Holding developed Snowbasin against their wishes, Trimble said, but he didn't take any votes among his neighbors in Torrey before building his home there, either.
More development will come in the West, Trimble said, and that is where the discussion needs to be.
He talked to a Torrey-area rancher who said the agricultural water rights to his ranchland would support more than 1,000 homes.
Whether it will be good for the community to build those homes, he said, is the talk the entire community has to hold.
"We have become accomplices in the domestication of the open spaces of the West."
Jock Glidden, an Ogden Sierra Club official, asked Trimble how he resolved his own personal conflict.
Trimble noted that there are differences between himself and Holding, such as part of his land being in a conservation easement, and other mitigating factors.
But ultimately, he said, "You'll have to read the book, because it takes me quite awhile to circle around it."
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