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Cowtown Chronicles

Diamond Valley

Pop.: 300 to 400

Industry: farming, ranching

Nearest city: Elko (pop. about 16,000), 110 miles north

Distance to Las Vegas: 360 miles

Talk of the town:

I can hear the clank of dinner dishes, fork on plate or spoon on bowl, as I talk to Mary Jean Etchegaray on the telephone. Her sons, Fred and John, are "out in the boondocks" bringing the cattle in from the summer ground, after which they'll wean the calves and get everyone ready to ship off to market. The Etchegarays' ranch is 22 miles north of the small town of Eureka (pop. about 1,500), and they raise alfalfa, timothy hay and cattle. Mary Jean and her husband, Leroy, have ranched in the valley since 1971--although, Leroy's family came to the area as far back as the late 1880s (Italian grandfather), and his Basque shepherd dad came here in 1911.

Mary Jean says the Environmental Protection Agency is on her mind. "The EPA's trying to restrict certain chemicals that are good to kill insects and weeds and things," she says. "And I think that's a good thing, to protect the groundwater. But it also has an impact on production."

Leroy gets on the phone and says, "We're concerned about the economy of America as a whole. We hope we don't have to drop our operation. All we ask is that we can continue to stay in production and raise livestock and feed our animals and continue to make a living." But hay prices have dropped this year. And livestock prices have only, in the past five or six months, been good. Leroy says it's the conservationists and the Forest Service who "have fought us for years," and federal regulations "that make it difficult for us."

Leroy was a Eureka County commissioner for 12 years, until 1996. "I think we have a lot of unnecessary regulations that should be eliminated," he says. "A lot of unnecessary laws. And taxes. If we could get back to the old days, where the federal government was less involved in everybody's lifestyle. ... On the Internet, did you know that they have everybody's history listed?" A friend, he says, paid $7.50 to get on a site and check out anyone's background.

Now, that ain't right.--Heidi Walters