Feature

Window Shopping: Part-Time Paradise

Aspen, Colo., and other mountain resort towns burst with wealthy baby boomers' second, third and even fourth homes. But for much of the year those houses sit empty, and the towns are turning hollow

Editor's Note

Don’t expect Washington to lead the West

The West needs to take charge of its own destiny, and become more than just a political game piece in the presidential election

Dear Friends

Dear friends

Terry Tempest Williams on the First Amendment; HCN Portland board meeting; remembering Judy Jacobsen

News

Election-year environmentalism

The Bush administration halts three gas wells on Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front, and tosses a few more election-year bones to environmentalists and hunters

Follow-up

Fish and shellfish must be labeled – with a few exceptions; 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to be divided into three; Xcel Energy commits its customers to coal

Racetrack

California’s Proposition 64 could limit environmentalists’ power to sue; Washington’s Initiative Measure 892 would expand gambling; new voters registering, including Nevada felons

Dems stumble in Arizona race

Arizona’s District 1 is considered a congressional "fair fight" district, but Republican incumbent Rick Renzi is leading Democrat Paul Babbitt, despite the region’s demographics

'Green elephants' abandon Bush

The grassroots group Republicans for Environmental Protection withholds its endorsement from President Bush, citing his "deliberately anti-environmental, anti-conservation" record

Californians take a stand on GE crops

Activists in Butte County, Calif., have put a genetic-engineering ban on the ballot, but some farmers fear it could also ban a tried-and-true "mutagenic" variety of rice

BLM's crown jewels go begging

The Bureau of Land Management’s National Landscape Conservation System is underfunded, even though more visitors are flocking to BLM- managed lands

Calendar

Book Reviews

How to deal with oil and gas development

The Oil and Gas Accountability Project has created Oil and Gas at Your Door, a guidebook and Web site for Western landowners confronted by energy development

Despair not one more day

Paul Rogat Loeb’s inspirational anthology The Impossible Will Take a Little While, lives up to its subtitle; it’s truly "a citizen’s guide to hope in a time of fear"

Essays

In presidential politics, the West is a forgotten time zone

Even in an election year, the Rocky Mountain West remains flyover country, mostly ignored by politicians and TV networks alike

Environmental issues disappear into election-season smog

Environmental issues were almost invisible in the presidential debates, but an awful lot has happened in the last four years – and most of it has not been good for the West.

Heard Around the West

Heard around the West

Mach schnell, little doggies; California’s troubles; bears vs. hunters; elk vs. tourist; Chevy vs. field mice; how not to die in the desert

Letters

Energy industry is rigged

Here's a mosquito solution

I'm celebrating!

Kerry cares about Indians

Related Stories

Second homes, by the numbers

An informal index gives some of the numbers behind the baby-boomer-driven second-home explosion in Colorado’s mountain counties

Former Enron CEO took his money and ran

Former CEO Ken Lay had to sell some of his Aspen properties when Enron fell apart, but he made a fair amount of money in the process

Can Vail find room for its workers?

Vail, Colo., is facing a crisis about where to house the workers who keep the town running

As the town hollows out, one Aspen neighborhood thrives

The Smuggler Mobile Home Park in Aspen, Colo., is a vibrant neighborhood that has survived Superfund status and soaring real estate