High Country News

Inside Taft High

Teacher Ted Pendergrass and his students take us inside the first high school in the country devoted to oil production.

by Molly Samuel, Feb 13, 2011
Healing the border with words

Award-winning author Denise Chavez created the Border Book Festival, and founded a Cultural Center in Mesilla, N.M., to help heal the cultural wounds of the U.S.-Mexico border

by Susan J. Tweit, Dec 12, 2005
How can "woofers" stay on the farm?

Young people are eager to serve as unpaid interns on organic farms, but translating their dreams into a real, self-supporting lifestyle is proving harder.

by Dev Carey, Oct 13, 2011
Schooling, fish

Judge Jim Redden is right to push the Bush administration on salmon restoration, but fish may end up faring as poorly in courtrooms as San Francisco’s schoolchildren did after well-intentioned decisions on busing.

by John Mecklin, Jan 22, 2007
Fast Times at California's Petroleum High

A day in the life of the U.S.'s first high school academy devoted to oil production.

by Jeremy Miller, Feb 13, 2011
Epiphanies on the range

As teacher Phil Brick travels the West with 21 of his students, he encourages them to ask difficult questions about environmental issues

by Phil Brick, Jun 11, 2007
Rural California schoolkids learn from fire-damaged forest

A rural California school builds an innovative curriculum around a nearby forest and the fire that burned it down in 2007.

by Jane Braxton Little, Feb 15, 2011
Ingredients: History, preservatives

In Preserving Western History, editor Andrew Gulliford has put together "the first college reader to address public history in the American West."

by Dave Phillips, May 01, 2006
Finding hope in a new land

Farmworker’s Daughter: Growing Up Mexican in America is the story of Rose Castillo Guilbault’s childhood journey from Mexico’s Sonoran Desert to a new life in California’s Salinas Valley

by Stephen J. Lyons, May 15, 2006
The decline of logging is now killing

Now that logging no longer provides enough money to support Oregon’s libraries, Pepper Trail says it’s up to citizens to decide to keep their state’s bookshelves filled and accessible.

by Pepper Trail, Apr 09, 2007