Travel briefs
By: North County Times - | ∞
Fossil collection donated to Lehi museum
PROVO, Utah (AP) ---- The Lehi Hutchings Museum will add 25,000 fossils to its collection ---- a half-million dollar gift from a Utah man who spent his life collecting the specimens.
The donation from Lloyd Gunther is the largest since the museum opened in 1955 with John Hutchings' own collection, museum director Susan Whittaker told The Daily Herald.
Gunther, an 89-year-old retired wildlife manager, was introduced to fossil collection as a young boy by Hutchings himself.
Gunther spent his life traveling the United States for work and collected the minerals and fossils wherever he went. The collection has an appraised value of $3.5 million.
Most of his collection is housed at Utah State University, but thousands of other pieces are in the Smithsonian, the British Museum, Yale University, the University of Utah and other museums, Gunther said.
"He is known worldwide for his collection," said Whittaker.
Gunther's specimens, some of which have been in storage for 70 years, include crinoids, trilobites, nantiloids, petrified wood, othoceras and ammonites, and minerals.
He's now working on cataloging the items he's donated to the Lehi museum, which already has some Gunther pieces on display.
The new exhibit is expected to open in April, Whittaker said.
Hotel association protests
Philadelphia magazine crime story
PHILADELPHIA (AP) ---- A regional hotel association is urging its members to think twice before putting the latest edition of Philadelphia magazine in guest rooms, saying the cover story on the city's homicide rate could scare away visitors, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.
The Greater Philadelphia Hotel Association represents 85 members in the Delaware Valley, including the operators of nearly all of Center City's 10,200 hotel rooms.
Ed Grose, the group's executive director, said the article could end up hurting business.
"I recommend that you review your position on what effect this article and cover will have on your guests who are staying in your guest rooms," Grose wrote in the letter. "I feel that sensationalizing the murder rate in our city will have a negative effect on our customers."
Ordinarily, about 6,000 free copies of the glossy monthly are distributed in local hotel rooms. But Grose urged hotels to reconsider this month, citing a cover that depicts a single handgun and reads "Murder. One terrifying night on the streets ---- and why everything we're doing to stop the shooting won't work." The issue hit newsstands on Oct. 27.
Through Oct. 26, there had been 330 homicides in the city this year, a 6.5 percent increase from the same point in 2005.
Larry Platt, the magazine's editor, denied accusations that the story was sensational.
"This is a Philadelphia problem, and great cities tackle their problems head-on," he said.
New herd of Fiberglas pronghorns ordered for Rawlins festival
RAWLINS, Wyo. (AP) ---- The Pronghorn Pride Initiative has ordered 30 new Fiberglas pronghorns that will be painted and placed around town to raise money for a proposed national antelope interpretive and visitors center.
More than 2,000 people viewed last year's selection during the Pronghorn Festival in June.
Each pronghorn costs about $700 wholesale, and artists are paid $300 to paint them. The project raises money by soliciting individuals and companies to sponsor the fiberglass animals, and by auctioning them.
"The creativity and ingenuity of the painted pronghorn has beautified the towns of Carbon County," Ed Juno, chairman of the Pronghorn Pride committee, said in a letter.
"All moneys raised from this project will be used toward the development of the Pronghorn Interpretive and Visitors Center. The center will utilize one of the areas underdeveloped resources, Interstate 80, to further develop tourism in Carbon County."
The new pronghorns will be on display at the Depot in Rawlins starting June 16, culminating with the parade of pronghorns and auction June 30.
Rocky Flats museum could be open by 2009
GOLDEN, Colo. (AP) ---- Backers of a proposed museum on the site of the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant have begun collecting artifacts to fill the space, including a "resistance" teepee erected in 1978 over railroad tracks at the site.
Construction could begin in 2008, and the museum could open by 2009.
Museum board members told The Daily Camera that they hope to raise up to $4 million for the interactive archive to document the history of Rocky Flats, which made plutonium cores for hydrogen bombs from 1952 to 1989.
The plant was shut down in 1989, after the FBI raided offices for evidence of alleged environmental crimes. Plant operators eventually reached an $18.5 million plea deal with the government. A $7 billion, decade-long cleanup effort was declared complete a year ago, and much of the site's 6,200 acres is to become a national wildlife refuge.
Activists who pushed for the plant's closure and cleanup believe it is important to preserve its history to educate people about its role in the Cold War.
"We have new players in a nuclear age, and it's important to preserve the message that we have learned," said Jan Pilcher, who organized an effort to stop incineration of plutonium-laced waste.
Patrick Malone of the Rocky Flats Truth Force, which presented the teepee to the museum board, said displaying the artifacts will show the importance of taking a strong stand for one's beliefs.
Proposed system of tunnels and cables to connect Utah ski resorts
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) ---- Gov. Jon Huntsman is calling together government and resort officials to discuss a system of tunnels, snow sheds or cable systems connecting seven Wasatch Range ski resorts, an idea that's been kicked around for years.
Skiers could drive or ride between resorts in minutes, avoiding traffic-heavy canyon roads and highways that can shut down to avalanches.
An investment banker put out a "talking points" memo to shape the discussion at the governor's office on linking resorts in Big and Little Cottonwood canyons ---- Alta, Brighton, Snowbird and Solitude ---- with the Park City and Deer Valley resorts on the east side of the Wasatch range.
The resorts' borders are separated by no more than 1 1/2 miles, but driving from one side of the Wasatch range to the other can take an hour. Ski Utah offers an Interconnect tour in which you ski to all six of the resorts in a day, demonstrating how close they are to one another.
If the resorts were linked with tunnels and the like, it could bring together 12,000 acres of skiing and make for North America's largest skiing complex ---- more than twice the size of either Vail or Whistler Blackcomb in British Columbia.
It could be accomplished with a few strategically placed chair lifts, but Goldman Sachs & Co. vice president Jeffrey D. Holt is promoting a more ambitious, expensive project.
In his unsolicited memo, Holt advocates a $250 million tunnel between Big and Little Cottonwood canyons, plus another $150 million tunnel or year-round road over Guardsman pass between Brighton and Park City ski areas.
Holt, a San Francisco-based banker specializing in infrastructure projects, even offered a name for the single-bore tunnel, the AltaBright, and another, CottonPark, for the Guardsman pass link, now a summer road.
But the cost has been a stumbling block since 1990, when the Mountainlands Association of Governments studied options from traffic tunnels to cable tramways. The report was shelved as too grandiose, but time has only drawn the resorts closer together.
Spurred by the 2002 Winter Olympics, many of the Wasatch resorts added high-speed lifts and expanded their borders, making interconnecting trails a cinch. Already, neighbors Alta and Snowbird offer a joint pass, along with Brighton and Solitude.
Water officials for Salt Lake City, which controls the Cottonwood canyons, have said they generally oppose any larger developments in the canyons and could stop them. But they may not be able to stop new transportation systems.
Gale Dick, the 79-year-old patriarch of Save Our Canyons, has made the case against any elaborate ski resort links, saying more chair lifts would spoil the high-elevation, moderately sloped terrain prized by backcountry skiers for deep, stable snow. The resorts ring this limited range of the craggy Wasatch that offers the finest skiing.
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