High Country News

Light rail moves inland from the 'Left Coast'

Light rail has become unexpectedly popular in deeply conservative Salt Lake City, Utah

by Allen Best, Nov 14, 2005
Surprise!

Surprise, Ariz., exemplifies the Arizona real estate collapse along with what many see as the rise and fall of the car-dependent Western exurb.

by Rob Inglis and Jonathan Thompson , Apr 24, 2009
Planning for uncertainty

A Phoenix symposium on dealing with drought and global warming echoes the larger uncertainties facing public-land and national park managers throughout the West.

by Paul Larmer, Feb 04, 2008
Heard Around the West

Biodiesel pirates; dinosaur bones for sale; archaeological developments; hot weather and cool bankrobbers; what to do with a big dead moose.

by Betsy Marston, Jun 09, 2008
Gray water, green living

Brian Moore has retrofitted his house in Phoenix, Ariz., to enable him to re-use water and live more sustainably

by Hilary Watts, Jan 23, 2006
The Growth Machine is Broken

Phoenix land-use planners want to use a chunk of state trust land as a laboratory for future, more sustainable real estate development.

by John Dougherty , Apr 27, 2009
The street hierarchy

Aaron Gilbreath mulls the very large difference between being a pedestrian in ultra-cool Portland, Ore., and in sprawling Phoenix, Ariz.

by Aaron Gilbreath, Sep 15, 2008
How I ran for a U.S. Senate seat, and what I learned

A first-hand account by a longtime Arizona investigative reporter, John Dougherty, about his surprising Senate campaign.

by John Dougherty, Oct 24, 2010
Against the current

For a long time, the West used water as if the supply were endless, but nowadays environmentalists are finding that too much efficiency causes problems of its own, especially in fragile ecosystems like the Colorado River Delta.

by John Mecklin, Feb 05, 2007
Heard around the West

Pac-O-Art art vending machine; turning against Wal-Mart; Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest; Boy Scouts sued for blaze; ORVers need potty-training; bull elk get really hungry

by Betsy Marston, Aug 30, 2004