EL RANCHO, GALLUP, NEW MEXICO

The El Rancho Hotel (founded 1937) has been the home for numerous Movie Stars while filming in the New Mexico / Arizona border area, including John Wayne, Katherine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Errol Flynn, Kirk Douglas, Gregory Peck, Humphrey Bogart and numerous others.   In addition to movie stars, numerous political figures have stayed at the El Rancho including two Presidents: Reagan and Eisenhower.  It is the one stop I make whenever in Gallup.

LEAVING WENDOVER

Wendover Will was the last image I saw as I headed out of town toward Reno to meet with Bill Fox, Director of the Museum of Art and Environment, in Reno, Nevada.  Wendover Will is iconic to Wendover.  The sign was originally placed on the East side of town in 1952 but moved to the West end of town when the casinos sold (the new owners were not big fans).

The residency at Wendover was an enlightening and wonderful experience.  It was great to connect with Steve Rowell from Simparch and Chris Taylor from the Land Arts program out of the University of Texas, as well as my wonderful host, Matt Coolidge, of course.

TERMINAL LANDSCAPE, CLUI WENDOVER

 
These are images of my installation of Terminal Landscape, exhibited at CLUI Exhibit Hall 2 in Wendover. It is the culmination of research into 20 terminal sites around the region, from which I collected soil samples and took photographs. The samples are displayed next to a legend/key of the sites and a description of each. As well, Google Earth images of the sites cycle in a digital frame. Some of the photographs can be viewed in my blog below.

MONTEGO BAY, WENDOVER

One of the restaurants at the Montego Bay Casino: wasting energy 24/7.

SALT FLATS

Road to the Bonneville Salt Flats, one of the only roads in the U.S. without any speed restrictions.



You can drive as fast as you like out on the flats, without even holding onto the steering wheel.


The weirder-than-weird, drive-by sculpture "Tree of Utah."

CLUI RESIDENCY, WENDOVER

Entrance gate to the residency.

Matt Coolidge, view overlooking salt flats.

Smart bike, one of several custom vehicles.

Layout of the air base: site of CLUI residency unit, research facilities, and exhibition halls.

TARGET HALL, SOUTH BASE

Interior of target hall.

Exterior of target hall.

Target Range.

SOUTH BASE WENDOVER

View from South Base, Wendover.


Simparch Research Facility.


Capped bullet holes in the exterior to the facility.


Interior Simparch research facility.


Plants in the geodesic dome, Simparch facility.


Munitions bunker now rented by the casino to store financial records for IRS purposes.


Target Hall (and "Con Air" film prop tower) in background.


Army maneuvers.


Sunset at South Base.

CON AIR

This plane was used as a prop in the 1997 film "Con Air" (John Cusack / Nicolas Cage / John Malkovich). It collapsed during filming, killing a crew member. The plane now resides on the airfield at Wendover. There have been a number of films that have used Wendover air base, including "Birds of Prey," (1973) in which the chase scene involved helicopters that flew in and out of the hangers.

CLUI WENDOVER

The view from the CLUI tower overlooks the Engola Gay hanger from where pilot Paul Tibbets departed to drop the first atomic bomb named the "Engola Gay" (code-named "Little Boy") on Hiroshima. Tibbets named the bomb after his mother Engola Gay Tibbets.

INTREPID POTASH

Intrepid Potash is a domestic producer of muriate of potash ("potassium chloride" or "potash") and langbeinite ("sulfate of potash magnesia"), another mineral that contains potassium. Intrepid owns five active potash production facilities—three in New Mexico and two in Utah — and has a current estimated productive capacity to produce 910,000 tons of potash and 210,000 tons of langbeinite annually.

GRASSY MOUNTAIN WASTE DUMP

 
This 640 acre site for hazardous and toxic materials opened in 1982 and employs about 100 people. Laidlaw operated this facility until recently, and it served as a dump site for the toxic ash from Laidlaw's incinerator, 15 miles away at Clive. It is one of three waste sites Laidlaw acquired when it bought U.S. Pollution Control Inc. (USPCI), a Union Pacific corporation, in 1994. Grassy Mountain is now operated by Clean Harbors.

MAGCORP MAGNESIUM CHLORIDE PLANT

According to the EPA, on several recent occasions, this magnesium chloride plant 70 miles east of Wendover has been the nation's worst air polluter. MagCorp has released close to a hundred tons of chlorine per day from its stacks, in a cloud that can be seen from as far away as Nevada, the majority of total chlorine gas emitted into the air nationwide. Magnesium chloride is one of those versatile "in-between" industrial chemicals, like borax. It is used, for example, as a fire retardant in wood, as a dust-inhibitor for dirt roads, as a lubricant for wool, and as a supplement in cattle feed. Owned by the Magnesium Corporation of America (whose CEO, a few years ago, was building what was called "the largest private home in America, on Long Island, NY).

THE ROAD TO SKULL VALLEY

The road to Skull Valley leads to the Tekoi Test Range, a rocket test facility built by Hercules Inc. in 1976, on the Gosuite Indian Reservation, in remote Skull Valley in northern Utah. Later operated by Alliant Tech Systems (ATK), which bought Hercules, along with its primary rocket facility near Magna, Utah, in the early 1990's. Activity at Tekoi has decreased since the 1980's, with some of the testing moved to the Thiokol plant near Promontory. However, Chief Leon Bear is now actively attempting to establish the Gosuite Res. as a repository for high-level nuclear waste, in a controversial move to revitalize his community. As he sees it, he is surrounded on all sides by high-level toxicity, and though they didn't ask for it, this is now what his people are living with.

Russian signage on the perimeter of the Tekoi Range (and at the U.T.T.R.) is due to the fact that this site was designated as "inspectable" for Russian inspectors as part of the START Treaty (as were other sites in Utah that were used for the development and storage of submarine launched ballistic missiles, at Oasis, Hill AFB, and ATK at Magna). This Russian prefab was one of the units shipped from Russia for the inspectors. All units were imported complete with Russian furnishings, kitchenware, literature, and even electricity scrubbers, reflecting the political climate of mistrust during the cold war. The units now reside in Wendover, Utah.

CLEAN HARBORS/ENERGY SOLUTIONS

To the left of this sign is Energy Solutions' nuclear waste site, formerly known as the Envirocare nuclear waste facility. It is one of only a handful of commercial nuclear waste disposal sites, and the only commercial facility in the nation that can accept mixed radioactive and hazardous wastes. Since 1986, when it was opened by the Department of Energy for the disposal of uranium mill tailings, this facility has greatly expanded and now accepts radioactive material from most of the DOE's major industrial sites, from commercial generators, and numerous military sites. To the right of the sign is the Clean Harbors Incineration facility, formerly known as the Clive Incineration Facility. A relatively new $125 million hazardous waste incinerator, fully operational until recently, is one of the largest in the USA. Designed to burn up to 130,000 tons of toxic chemical wastes per year, mostly from petroleum and chemical industries.

Energy Solutions Nuclear Waste Site

Green Harbors Incineration Facility

APTUS HAZARDOUS WASTE INCINERATOR

This major hazardous waste incinerator burns a minimum of 30,000 tons of solvents, paints, old chemicals, contaminated soils, and PCBs every year. It is owned by Safety Kleen, which owns another major chemical waste incinerator a few miles west at Clive. Safety Kleen is one of the largest hazardous waste companies in the world. Former operators of Aptus include Rollins Environmental Services, which recently bought it from Westinghouse.

ATK THIOKOL PROMOTORY

 
Thiokol builds the NASA space shuttle rocket motors at this sprawling isolated facility near the Promontory Mountains. Other defense and propulsions systems are developed, built, and tested here including ICBM rocket engines. The plant, once designated as "Air Force Plant 78" employs over three thousand people, who work in 450 buildings, clustered in the various industrial and test areas that are scattered throughout the bare hills of the 30 square mile complex. In 2001 Thiokol's propulsion division was acquired by Alliant Techsystems, a weapons and explosives manufacturer that operates a large plant outside Salt Lake City, the Bacchus Works.

TOOLE ARMY DEPOT, SOUTH

 
The South Area of the Tooele Depot, also called the Deseret Chemical Depot, is an ammunition storage facility that is home to 42.3% of the nation's chemical weapons. The nearly 30 million pounds of aging mustard and nerve agents are stored in 208 igloos at the facility, awaiting disposal, according to international treaties. Near the igloo field is the Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility incinerator, completed in 1994 at a cost of several hundred million dollars. The controversial disposal plant started burning the chemical weapons at the depot in August, 1996. The incinerator is operated by the EG&G corporation, and it is the first of several incinerators the Army proposes to construct at military facilities across the country, wherever chemical weapons are stored.

TOOLE ARMY DEPOT, NORTH

 
The Tooele Depot is a 44,000 acre Army facility that was the primary ammunition storage facility for the Army's western district. The Depot consists of two areas, with different functions, separated by 15 miles of state highway. The 24,000 acre North Area has the headquarters, administrative offices, and acres of storage facilities. Until 1992, the North Depot was a major wheeled vehicle maintenance facility, where every kind of wheeled vehicle up to approximately 5 tons, as well as generators, refrigeration units and other field equipment, were repaired or remanufactured for reuse and resale. This function of Tooele has been now moved and much of the North Area is a ghost town, though it remains an active depot for the storage and disposal of conventional weapons. Over 900 munitions storage igloos, spread out across the valley floor, make up two million square feet of this secured munitions storage space. Also in the North Area is an open burn area for the disposal of surplus and unstable munitions, where open detonations occur as much as two major blasts per day. The North Area employs around 650 people today, nearly all civilian contractors.

MORTON SALT PLANT

 
The firm was originally incorporated as the Morton Salt Company in 1910. Plant acquisitions have continued to this day. Concurrent with this growth has been the development of more sophisticated products and grades of salt for various purposes. Special salt grades were developed for food processing and used in the manufacture of gasoline, pharmaceuticals, plastics, paints, dyes, tires, detergents, insecticides and many other items. The firm is also involved in the chemical processing industry as a major supplier of basic inorganic chemicals derived from salt. This has led to the formation of a separate chemical division that now produces organic chemicals, polymers and chemical formulations used in industry and agriculture.

ALLIANT TECHSYSTEMS BACCHUS WORKS

A munitions, propulsion, composites, and explosives development and manufacturing complex located on a hill surrounded by the suburbs of southwest Salt Lake City. Alliant Tech Systems, based in Minnesota, acquired the large and diversified facility, which makes up most of the town of Bacchus, when it purchased Hercules Aerospace in 1995. Among the products produced here are propulsion systems for many types of long-range missiles in the US arsenal. In 2000, the company also acquired the remote Thiokol rocket plant at Promontory, the other large explosives and propellant plant in northern Utah.

BINGHAM CANYON MINE

This is one of the largest copper mines in the world. After the profitable metals have been removed from the ore, the tailings are transported 14 miles as a slurry in a 60" concrete pipe from the Copperton Concentrator to the tailings impoundment located near Magna, Utah. Tailings are processed through two cyclone stations that separate the coarse grained material (underflow) from the finer grained material (overflow). The underflow is used to construct the outer embankment of the impoundment and the overflow is deposited into the interior of the impoundment where the solids drop out forming a beach and the water pools in a pond in the center of the impoundment. To accommodate the approximately 60 million tons of tailings deposited annually, the impoundment height is raised approximately 8-10 feet per year. The impoundment has been receiving tailings since 1906. Since then, more than 1.5 billion tons of tailings have been stored. Copper, like silver and gold, can be produced directly from naturally occurring minerals by heating and oxidation. Smelting began on the south shore of the Great Salt Lake in 1906 to process ore from Utah Copper's Bingham Canyon Mine. In 1992, Kennecott Utah Copper began construction of an $880-million modernization of the Smelter and the Refinery. This project was the largest privately financed construction project in the history of Utah.

GREAT SALT LAKE MINERALS COMPANY

 
This large salt producer has two major evaporation pond areas: 19,000 acres at Little Mountain (where this plant is located) and a 17,000 acre field of ponds 21 miles across the lake, near Lakeside. The brine from the Lakeside field flows in an open canal underneath the lake surface, taking as long as 10 days to arrive at this plant. The facility produces potassium sulfate (for fertilizers), sodium chloride (for industrial salt applications), sodium sulfate (used in laundry detergent and glass), and magnesium chloride.

SPIRAL JETTY

 
A proposal to drill for oil in the Great Salt Lake could threaten artist Robert Smithson’s monumental 1970 earthwork Spiral Jetty. The Canadian firm Pearl Montana Exploration and Production holds three leases, dating to 2003, to drill exploratory boreholes near the iconic sculpture. The Spiral Jetty is usually invisible (Smithson built the piece in 1970 at a time when the lake was at a particularly low level), lying a few feet under the fluctuating surface level of the lake, but at this time has been above surface level for 4 years. Spiral Jetty is located at Rozel Point, Great Salt Lake, 15 miles SW of Promontory, Utah. The site is pretty remote, 16 miles from Golden Spike park hrough private ranch land on a gravel road. Unless you have a 4-wheel drive, hike in the last 4 miles as the road gets more volcanic and less hospitable, and if you get stuck, you really will get stuck (no traffic / no cell reception). I suggest hiking up and over the mountain so the first view you have is from above, the most impressive way to see the Jetty.