High Country News

Doctor's Orders: Undam the Klamath

Both Indians and whites battle diabetes on the Klamath watershed, where dam building ended the salmon runs that once kept the First People alive.

by Diana Hartel, May 24, 2011
His photographs trace the passage of time

Photographer Mark Klett has made an art of rephotographing Western landscapes first documented about 100 years ago

by Renee Guillory, Sep 30, 2010
'The music of men's lives'

In his new novel, Work Song, Ivan Doig describes the struggle between mine owners and union activists in post-WWI Butte, Mont.

by Kathleen Yale, Oct 10, 2010
The end of Western welfare?

Paul VanDevelder considers the consequences of “capitalism without a conscience” and predicts the end of free lunches for the West.

by Paul VanDevelder , Oct 15, 2008
We’re in a land of Lincoln

For better and for worse, the West of today was created by Abraham Lincoln and the early Republican Party.

by Ed Quillen, Mar 03, 2008
Breaking the silence of suicide

It may seem like a considerable departure for High Country News to write about mental illness and suicide, but as Ray Ring’s deeply personal lead story shows, both tragedies are rooted in the West.

by Jonathan Thompson, Mar 31, 2008
My Crazy Brother

Ray Ring takes a personal, painful look at the West’s suicidal tendencies, as shown in the life and death of his brother, John.

by Ray Ring, Mar 31, 2008
Why the West needs Mythic Cowboys

Jeffrey Lockwood believes that the modern West could use an infusion of old-fashioned Cowboy Mythology.

by Jeffrey Lockwood, Jun 09, 2008
The easy way to purify our geography

We can't change the names of places that were named for scoundrels, but we can change their namesakes.

by Ed Quillen, Jan 28, 2010
A visit to a ghost town in San Francisco Bay

The federal government has decided to let the tides take what's left of the San Francisco Bay ghost town known as Drawbridge.

by Nick Neely, Dec 05, 2010