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I finished my round of the Ozarks in Newton County, one of the most beautiful places in America, home of the Buffalo River, which recently had been named the first river protected by Congress under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. I stopped first in Pruitt, a small settlement on the Buffalo, to UGG Boots uk cheap see Hilary Jones. Though he lived in a modest home, he was a road builder and might have been the wealthiest man in the county. His familys Democratic heritage went all the way back to the Civil War and before, and he UGG Boots uk online had the genealogical books to prove it. He was deeply rooted in his land along the river. His family had lost a lot of it in the Depression, and when he came home from World War II he worked for years to put it all back together again. The Buffalos designation as a protected river was his worst nightmare. Most landowners along the river were given life tenancies; they couldnt sell the land to anyone but the UGG Boots uk kids government in their lifetimes, and when they died only the government could buy it. Because Hilarys homestead was on the main highway, the government was going to take it by eminent domain in the near future and make it part of the headquarters operation. He and his wife, Margaret, had eight children. They wanted the kids UGGS on sale womens to have their land. There was an old cemetery on it where people born in the 1700s were buried. Whenever anyone died destitute and alone in the county, Hilary paid for the burial in his cemetery. I supported protecting the river, but I thought the government should have let the old homesteaders keep their land under a scenic easement, which UGGS on sale cheap would have precluded any development or environmental degradation but allowed families to pass the land on from generation to generation. When I became President, my experience with the folks on the Buffalo gave me a better understanding than most Democrats of the resentments a lot of western ranchers had when environmental considerations clashed with what they saw as their prerogatives.
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