High Country News

The painful beauty of love

Melanie Rae Thon's short stories, gathered in her collection In This Light, paint a desolate and tender picture of the West.

by Kathleen Yale, May 15, 2011
A new measure of poverty shifts rankings in the West

When determining who is poor, the Census Bureau takes geography into account in its Supplemental Poverty Measure.

by Jonathan Thompson, Dec 10, 2012
Tarp Nation

Throughout the West, tent cities and shantytowns with names like Taco Flat have sprung up to house the poor and dispossessed.

by Scott Bransford , Mar 16, 2009
The persistence of a golden time in the West

Seventy years after the publication of Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, migrant workers still roam the West, eking out a tough living in its orchards and farm fields.

by David Frey , Apr 24, 2009
Dust off your survival skills

In tough economic times like these, we could learn a lot from our pioneer ancestors, who managed to survive – and thrive – in a harsh Western landscape.

by Marcia Hensley, Mar 19, 2009
The great New Mexican juniper massacre

On public land in New Mexico, firewood-hunters have illegally cut down hundreds of old-growth juniper trees, much to the dismay of the Bureau of Land Management and environmental activists.

by Jonathan Thompson, Sep 16, 2012
Conservative legislator takes on Wal-Mart

Idaho’s Republican Speaker of the House, Rep. Bruce Newcomb, wants to force Wal-Mart to either provide health insurance for its Idaho employees or reimburse the state for providing Medicaid coverage

by Dan Popkey, Sep 19, 2005
Problems in Paradise

The brutal murder of a Japanese tourist shines an unwelcome spotlight on the social problems plaguing Arizona’s beautiful but troubled Havasupai Reservation

by John Dougherty, May 28, 2007
Tent cities and what they tell us

Most Americans associate slums with places like Mumbai, India, but all over the West, tent cities and shantytowns are springing up to house the dispossessed.

by Jonathan Thompson , Mar 31, 2009
The teenagers we're not helping

The West's gay teenagers are too often ignored -- abandoned by their families to live on the streets or in overcrowded homeless shelters.

by Tim Lydon, May 10, 2012