Spotlight on Tim Clarke & the Boulder Community Alliance

I first heard about Tim Clarke and the Boulder Community Alliance (BCA) through Southern Utah’s excellent rumor mill. “The Boulder Town Council did WHAT?” I shrieked.

Some background: the tiny town of Boulder, Utah perches on the edge of Utah’s fabled Escalante desert, occupying the green space where the aspens and rushing creeks of Boulder Mountain meet an ocean of bare sandstone. The story I’ve always heard (so I’ll assume it’s true) is that Boulder was the last town in the lower 48 to have electricity, and got its mail by mule until the 1940s because there was no road. The Boulder Mail Trail, now a favorite for backpackers, dips into hidden canyons, traverses cliff walls, and climbs ledges via tottering stacks of rocks. That trail was my first introduction to the area; tramping across a high white plateau in the June heat, I came to a cliff and saw the neat green irrigated fields of Boulder Town. I decided they were a hallucination. But a good one. 

As I got to know Boulder in later years, its culture stood out as remarkably as its setting. With a population of about 250, Boulder seems made up mostly of Mormon ranching families, transplanted outfitters and shopkeepers, and eccentric homesteaders and artisans. Boulder’s people have made efforts to keep the town’s culture whole, despite residents’ differing backgrounds. Everyone I’ve met there expresses deep appreciation for the land and the community, often within the first five minutes of our conversation. 

In the spring of 2006, the local County Commission published a set of maps and brochures calling the county “ATV Trails Headquarters.” The maps showed numerous ATV routes that had not before been advertised that way, as well as a few routes that invited ATVs into protected lands. Boulder Town itself was at the nexus of several routes. 

The residents of Boulder objected to these plans, which were entirely new to them. The Boulder Town Council unanimously passed a motion addressed to the County Commission. Part of the motion stated:

“There are several types of tourism and they do not necessarily coexist… We do not feel that our area of interest and impact stops at the Town borders. Our community members -- including businesses who presently have a substantial base in non-motorized tourism, cattle ranchers whose existence depends upon range lands and watersheds, and residents who have stayed on or moved in to enjoy the peace and quiet of this rural lifestyle — feel that any ATV promotion in the east side of Garfield County is to our detriment… We also feel that this policy [allowing children on ATVs on a paved road] was instituted solely to facilitate the ATV promotional agenda of cross-county travel, allowing that agenda to override common sense.”

This event spurred Boulder Community Foundation (which sponsors BCA]) to incorporate and gain non-profit status. The organization’s mission included a variety of local community-based projects as well as issues of regional concern affecting the community, such as the projected increases in motorized tourism. Tim Clarke was the only paid staffer (working up to half-time).

Tim, still the Executive Director and only staff member of the Boulder Community Alliance, was also on the Town Council when the ATV trails issue came up. A landscape architect from the UK, Tim and his artist wife Scotty moved to Boulder more than ten years ago. While building their own house on a small piece of land among the pinyon pines and sandstone hills, Tim and Scotty settled into the life of the town. Tim joined the Town Planning Commission, becoming the chair, and was elected to the Town Council. Though now no longer a Councilor, Tim remains active in local projects, like designing and helping to construct a gathering place at the town center. All that is in addition to running BCA, of course.

Tim’s dry humor, low-key common sense, and ability to gracefully walk a fine line have earned him the respect and friendship of people throughout southern Utah. Under his supervision (and that of BCA’s board of directors) BCA has taken on a wide range of projects. They’ve started a farmer’s market, a local oral history project, and a newsletter and website called “The Sage Page” that won awards at the annual Utah Tourism conference. In partnership with other Utah groups, BCA has worked extensively on several public lands projects in the Escalante River Basin, such as watershed restoration and beaver reintroduction on Boulder Mountain. BCA has done extensive work on the Dixie National Forest travel planning process, including training locals to perform fieldwork, hiring a student intern for route surveys, and collecting local knowledge about the history and impacts of the road system on Boulder Mountain. BCA also printed a brochure promoting the benefits of quiet recreation in the Escalante River Basin. The group is currently in the process of dividing into two linked entities: BCA will focus primarily on in-town and cultural issues; and the Escalante River Basin Initiative (ERBI) will focus on regional and public lands issues. ERBI, or the “Basinheads,” have already partnered with allies in nearby towns to address regional issues from a rural Utah perspective. 

Tim and his work with BCA are a sign of what I hope is the future of rural Utah’s environmental movement, and he’s the kind of activist I aspire to be: a settler who commits wholeheartedly to the culture and place of his home, putting his heart and hard work into it. We are very grateful to Tim and the community of Boulder for showing the way forward, and giving us hope for good things to come.

You can read more about BCA at http://www.bouldercommunityalliance.org