"In the Pre-Dawn Hours of October 19, 1998, a commando-style arson destroyed or damaged $12 million worth of chair lifts and mountaintop buildings at Vail, Colorado, the largest ski resort in the United States. The timing of the fires indicated a calculated attack, since the fires were set on the same day the ski area's owners were about to begin construction for a controversial expansion into an old-growth forest on federally owned land. Within days, an e-mail arrived from a little-known radical environmental group known as the Earth Liberation Front, claiming credit for the arson "in the name of the lynx," a rare species whose habitat was disappearing in this rapidly developing part of Colorado.
But the ELF's claim of credit was never substantiated, and the number of potential suspects grew in direct proportion to the number of enemies that the ski area's owners had made." "Powder Burn is the story of a particular kind of trouble in paradise. At the time of the fires, Vail and its environs had become a powder keg of social and economic unrest, and much of the tension revolved around the locals' frustration with Vail Resorts, Inc., the company that owns Vail ski area and neighboring Beaver Creek."
"Daniel Glick takes readers on a ride through this bizarre town full of bombastic characters to lay bare the growing pains of a breathtakingly beautiful region. In the forty years since Vail's founding fathers literally carved the resort out of a high-altitude lettuce patch, the resort's fortunes have mirrored the fortunes of what has become known as the "New West," as well as the "new economy" run by modern cowboys and lifestyle refugees.
Vail has been in the vanguard of the tremendous social, cultural, and economic changes that have transformed the Rocky Mountain West, displacing the ranchers, miners, and loggers in favor of the multinational corporations and Fortune 500 executives who visit their 12,000-square-foot trophy homes only a couple weeks out of the year."--Jacket.
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