Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire:A Story of Wealth, Ambition and SurvivalPeter Stark366 pages, hardcover: $27.99.HarperCollins, 2014. Everyone knows about the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804-’06, but another entrepreneurial foray a few years later — larger, bolder, and, ultimately, a debacle – has fallen into historical oblivion. The Astor Expedition […]
Sovereign contempt
Posted inSeptember 1, 2014: Lost in the Woods
A dam difficult job
California’s drought through the eyes of a water manager.
Posted inSeptember 1, 2014: Lost in the Woods
Wildfire and bare-bottom bike riders
Mishaps and mayhem from around the region.
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Rants from the Hill: The Bucket List
When making a to-do list is the most important thing on your to-do list.
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Fracking Georgia O’Keeffe Country
Drill rigs pop up near Navajo communities, Chaco Canyon and the iconic Black Place.
Posted inSeptember 1, 2014: Lost in the Woods
From paradise to Paonia
Here in HCN’s tiny hometown, Paonia, Colorado, we remain amazed by — and grateful for — all the folks who drop by just to say hello, since Paonia is on the way to pretty much nowhere else. Ulli Lange, 80, and family and friends, visited right before July Fourth and Paonia’s Cherry Days celebration. Ulli, […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 2014: Lost in the Woods
Watching the world slip away
How our children respond to a world threatened by climate change.
Posted inSeptember 1, 2014: Lost in the Woods
Forestry fandango
In 2013, the U.S. Forest Service thinned and intentionally burned more than 2 million acres of the nation’s public land, which is largely in the West, in order to improve forest health and reduce the risk of destructive wildfires near houses and towns. That’s an impressive figure, until you consider that the agency itself acknowledges […]
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Shaken and stirred in California’s recent earthquake
How seismic events can make drought impacts worse.
Posted inSeptember 1, 2014: Lost in the Woods
Lost in the woods
How the Forest Service is botching its biggest restoration project.
Posted inSeptember 1, 2014: Lost in the Woods
Smoke and mirrors
Congress can’t seem to solve a big problem: how to pay for battling wildfires.
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Two political elites prevail in Navajo primary melee
Shirley and Deschene pull ahead of 15 other candidates.
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New Mexico delays controversial Gila vote
Many unanswered questions remain about proposals to divert the state’s last undammed major river.
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Did Obama’s Interior hobble the Endangered Species Act?
A new policy sets the law back a half-century, conservationists say.
Posted inSeptember 1, 2014: Lost in the Woods
The Latest: Southern Utes make another energy investment
Backstory The Southern Ute Indian Tribe has suffered plenty of historical setbacks; today, however, its 1,400 members are collectively worth billions. In the 1970s, the tribe began taking control of energy profits from its southwestern Colorado reservation, home to one of the country’s richest gas fields. In the 1990s, it formed its own energy company, […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 2014: Lost in the Woods
The Latest: Ruptured tailings pond spills waste in Canada
Backstory In the remote northwestern corner of British Columbia, next to Alaska, plans for large mining and hydropower projects have sounded alarm bells on both sides of the border. Critics, mostly environmentalists and tribes, warned that Canada’s resource rush threatens rivers that support a vital wild salmon fishery in both countries, and that the race […]
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Wilderness at 50: A place to be free, a place to hide
No Place To Hide is the name of a new book by Glenn Greenwald, the Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter who worked with whistleblower Edward Snowden to break the story on National Security Agency spying. The book’s title is drawn from commentary by Sen. Frank Church of Idaho, who held hearings in the 1970s that uncovered widespread domestic […]
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Considering historical correctness in New Mexico
Kit Carson’s name is everywhere on maps of the West. Nevada’s capital city is named after him, and in California, a Carson Pass crosses the Sierra Nevada. Colorado has Carson County, a town named Kit Carson and 14,000-foot Kit Carson Peak. But was the man himself really worth honoring? A few years before Carson died […]
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Rural cops get militarized
Pentagon gives guns, armored vehicles and battlefield gear to rural Western counties.