The TRUTH behind I-84 closure

[AF Guy]

OK, been hearing some weird conspiracy theories about why I-84 closed the past few weeks mainly about an evil store and new field owners. Everyone that reads this, please spread the news when you hear otherwise. This is the real truth about what happened.

1. The Federal Government does not allow nor has it ever allowed access off Interstates. Utah about a decade back allowed fishing, shooting, and yes paintballing off of I-84. For nearly a decade, there was never any problems. During a Federal Government visit to Utah while looking into widening and other transportation issues of I-84, they saw the access.

2. The Federal Government ordered the Utah Department of Transportation to shut down all parking off of the Interstate.

3. All access including fishing, shooting under the rail road bridge and paintball is now restricted. You are still allowed to fish the river, shoot under the rail bridge, and play paintball. The only problem is you can't walk on the Interstate to get there, park off the Interstate, or get dropped off the Interstate. In other words, you can't play there unless you get access from another route. Since most of the land is surrounded by private property, it is in effect an island you can't get too.

4. The reason paintball got the blame was from the "Ogden Examiner". The story read that all fishing, hunting, shooting, and paintball access was being shut off, however paintball took the blame. In their front page story, paintball was maligned as the reason and an environmental hazard. Within days, many good citizens started writing letters to the editor about the safety, fun, and general goodness our sport provides to the community. The editors were shocked to see such a positive backlash! They were probably hoping to see the opposite. As a final slash at our sport after so many positive letters arrived, the editorial board from the Ogden Examiner wrote one last story saying they understood that many people played and it was a safe sport, however it was still an environmental hazard and would eventually cause death and destruction upon the Interstate. No matter the facts or the positive feedback, they couldn't resist one last chance at hitting paintball from their editorial board rather than a factual news story.

5. They simply didn't have the facts to back up another page 1 slander story against paintball. They also skewed the facts from a meeting where the Utah Department of Transportation, Highway Patrol, and Weber Pathways discussed access along the Interstate. What we saw was a local media bias against the sport.

6. In the end, the Federal Government highway commission is the reason paintball and other access is no longer allowed. The Ogden Examiner and rumors are responsible for the other stories.

[Velocity1]

Good post AF..

I think one thing that was really irritating to me this past year was trying to do something great for the paintball community by setting up a good, local, and fun paintball field (that will continue to grow), and then get blamed by certain people in the paintball community for something we had absolutely no involvement with.

I quite honestly dont know where some people get their information from, or if they just like to make it up completely, but it is dissapointing.

So, AF, I really do appreciate you posting the "real" reason why I-84 is closed. Its nice to know that there are people out there that will do their "own" thinking and research the truth about matters.

As a side note.... Velocity paintball was actually one of the entities that wrote the standard examiner and complained about the constant negative press about paintball (INCLUDING 84) We stressed to them that paintballers in general ARE NOT like they portray in their recent negative articles.
Now theres some food for thought!

[JesseB.Fuller]

We need positive publicity. An artical on a paintball fund raiser whould be good.