What if the Western Republican Leadership Conference sponsored a debate in the West for Republican presidential candidates, with audience members all from the West, and they never got around to talking about Western issues? That’s pretty much what happened on Oct. 18 in Las Vegas in a contenders’ debate co-sponsored by CNN, which also broadcast […]
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What we take and leave when wildfire comes
She had three dogs at her feet, and her girlfriend sat beside her on a motel lobby couch. The two cats were at a kennel. Their VW van was full of climbing gear, and their motel room had a couple changes of clothes. “I’ve been thinking a lot about impermanence,” Ashley Woods told me. That […]
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Lessons for the Colorado River from drought-stricken Australia
This spring, Brad Udall, director of the Western Water Assessment, spent four months in Australia working with its Department of Water. Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin has seen remarkable water reform in recent years in response to a long and devastating drought. Udall believes those reforms hold important lessons for the Colorado River Basin. HCN assistant editor […]
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In search of diversity in our national parks
In the crowd of tourists on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, the Griffin family immediately caught my eye. Allen, Hashmareen and their two small boys were surrounded by thousands of other visitors, but the Griffins stood out because they were among only a handful of African-Americans I encountered in my travels. People of […]
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Rocky Mountain wolf recovery leader was not your average bureaucrat
Ed Bangs has long been a lightning rod for the controversy around the return of wolves to the U.S. Northern Rockies. Based in Helena, Mont., he led the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s wolf-recovery effort from 1988, when the region had only a few naturally occurring wolves, through the reintroduction of Canadian wolves in 1995 […]
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Leadville, an old Colorado mining town, may resume mining
For more than a century, Leadville was to Western mining towns what the Rolling Stones were to rock ‘n’ rollers: the biggest, richest, wickedest and longest-lasting act around. It’s also among the highest, nearly two miles above sea level at the headwaters of the Arkansas River in central Colorado. Now, after an absence of a […]
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Montana’s top gun-rights advocate has a national impact
Guns are Gary Marbut’s life. A self-employed, self-sufficient jack-of-all-trades who lives outside of Missoula, Mont., Marbut says that if he didn’t cast his own bullets, he couldn’t afford to shoot as much as he does: 10,000 to 15,000 rounds per year. He shoots in both rifle and handgun competitions, teaches concealed weapons classes (he’s had […]
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A right to be protected: Gary Marbut’s case for gun rights
This video was produced in association with the University of Montana School of Journalism.
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The growth of newspapers across the U.S.: 1690-2011
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Rural papers doing better than their city counterparts
Walk in to a town council meeting in Pinedale, Wyoming, and you’re likely to find as many as three local reporters scribbling notes and asking questions. That news in a town of 2,030 residents is covered by two newspapers and a website is partly explained by the abundance of mineral wealth in surrounding Sublette County, […]
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It’s time for Maximum Trashing Utilization
The West could become a greener place with the help of a policy I call Maximum Trashing Utilization, or MTU. Its fundamental concept is simple: Get the maximum benefit from every disturbance of the environment. If that requires changes in regulations, or perhaps some economic adjustments, let’s just do it. The more benefit we get […]
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Can bandits: Recycling fraud hits California
In February 2010, criminal investigators tailed a pair of Penske rental trucks more than 300 miles, from a self-storage facility in Phoenix, Ariz., to a small house on the outskirts of Perris, Calif. They watched as the drivers transferred their loads to two handyman’s vans. Then they drove the vans across town to a set […]
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Uncommon Westerner: Bevan Frost crafts custom guitars
Wyoming native and luthier Bevan Frost discusses how he started making guitars, shows some works in progress, and tells how living in the rural West shapes his craft.
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How the Civil War shaped the West
Tomorrow is the sesquicentennial of the start of the Civil War. At 4:30 a.m. on April 12, 1861, Confederate cannons began firing on Union soldiers at Fort Sumter, near Charleston, S.C., in what most historians regard as the first battle of America’s bloodiest conflict — one that killed more soldiers than all the rest of […]
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Photographer Sharon Stewart on the acequia tradition
This April, as the communal irrigation ditches known as acequias run with spring melt and farmers carve new furrows into their fields, many northern New Mexico villages will celebrate their annual homecoming. This is the time of the limpia –– the cleaning of the acequia, when water-rights holders and their families gather to haul rocks, […]
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Peter McBride on photographing the contentious Colorado River
International photographer and Colorado native Peter McBride spent the past three years making images of the Colorado River. His work has been turned into several magazine articles, a book, a museum exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and a short film. Here, he talks about what has become of the Colorado River […]
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California crab-boat captain powers through tsunami to safety
Alan Mello got a call at 3 a.m. last Friday about the tsunami on its way from Japan. The 57-year-old started fishing from Crescent City, on California’s northern coast, in 1973. He’s had to motor out to sea three times to keep his commercial fishing boat from being damaged by tsunamis. Crescent City has the […]
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Defriending Joe Hill: Stegner’s lesson for the Oscars
Like most people who write about the West, I think about Wallace Stegner a lot. He’s like a brilliant, beloved, occasionally exasperating uncle. He said many things first and best, and, though he could get a bit stuffy at times, we youngsters have to admit that — even now, almost two decades after his death […]