Dear Friends

The defrost cycle First, a little follow-up to Jeffrey Lockwood’s cover story in the last issue, (HCN, 2/3/03: The death of the Super Hopper). Locusts aren’t the only things being disgorged by glaciers as global warming takes its toll on the West’s alpine ice. The Los Angeles Times reported in January that scientists are scouring […]

Survey results are in Living in a small town, it’s easy to make generalizations about your community. It’s a little harder to make sense of a community that’s spread across the million-square-mile West — and all the way to Washington, D.C. — as are the readers of High Country News. Sure, we send out a […]

A blizzard of mail The staff of High Country News returned from our holiday excursions to find the mountains above town buried in snow, and our desks — and e-mail boxes — piled high with mail from many of you. The holiday cards and fruit baskets and jerky and chocolates were wonderful — but it […]

A town reborn In the last issue of High Country News we told you about a mining town – Eureka, Utah – in a death spiral. This issue features Leadville, Colo., also a moribund mining town, but one that is climbing out from the tomb of its mining past. The author, Leadville-area resident Steve Voynick, […]

Kiss a super idea goodbye The rest of the world knows the West for its wide-open spaces and its national parks. And sure, the region is home to some of the nation’s most spectacular wildlands – but it’s also home to some of its most spectacular messes. Our mountain towns are pocked with the remnants […]

Paul Larmer takes the helm of High Country News For the past five months, the High Country Foundation board has been searching for the right person to lead this institution into the future. The board received about 40 applications, from the supremely qualified to the supremely unqualified. They were screened and winnowed and weighed, and […]

Former HCN staff reporter Florence Williams’ cover story in this issue looks at an unusual topic – gated communities. What, you may be wondering, do these have to do with the West? Quite a lot, in our estimation. The sequestered communities and neighborhoods that are springing up around the West represent a broader trend: the […]

The cool, crystal-blue autumn days have brought a flurry of visitors to High Country News headquarters. Most recently, a posse from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash., stopped by, midway through a new environmental studies field program. The “Whitman College Semester in the West” is the brainchild of professor Phil Brick, who won a Mellon […]

On July 11, 1932, “Blazin’ Ben” Eastman appeared on the cover of Time. A few weeks later, the holder of eight world track records (a medley of quarter- and half-mile distances) got more publicity when he won a silver Olympic medal in the 400-meter event at Los Angeles. He got a bit more publicity when […]

I first met Ed Marston when I was a wet-behind-the-ears, wannabe journalist starting an internship at the funky little newspaper called High Country News. It was January 1984, less than a year after the paper had moved to Paonia, Colo., from its birthplace in Lander, Wyo. I arrived fresh from the nation’s capital, where I […]

Balancing act, part 2 The cover story of this issue is the second in our series, “California’s Water Balancing Act.” In it, veteran journalist Susan Zakin writes about the state’s water hub: the California Delta. The delta, just inland from San Francisco Bay, collects a mammoth one-half of the state’s rainfall and snowmelt each year. […]

Balancing Act The cover story in this issue is the first of a two-part series about a topic that High Country News has been covering for a long time: California water. More specifically, it’s a look at the Golden State, post-Bruce Babbitt – the Clinton-era Interior secretary who negotiated massive water agreements in California and […]

A legend of the land He’s been described by writer John McPhee as the “grand old man of Rocky Mountain geology,” and by longtime friend and HCN founder Tom Bell as a man you meet “once in a lifetime.” Born in Riverton, Wyo., in 1913, and raised in the rich landscape that became his life’s […]

You’ve probably seen his work in National Geographic or Audubon – or in High Country News – as well as in his photography books. Famed for a transcendental approach to capturing the natural world, Galen Rowell was also an accomplished mountaineer, who inspired and awed his audience with breathtaking, seemingly impossible photographs. Rowell and his […]

A high country jinx We probably should have seen it coming. After a positively wilting June and July and reports from around the West of drought, heat and wildfire, we decided to run a special issue about the Great Drought of 2002. The moment we started work on the stories in this paper, however, we […]

Happy 100, Mardy Murie On August 18, conservation legend Mardy Murie will turn 100 years old. Mardy was the first woman to graduate from the University of Alaska in 1924. She would later write Two in the Far North, chronicling her romance with renowned biologist Olaus Murie, and in 1998 win a Presidential Medal of […]

A historic, if confusing, moment The residents of Western Colorado’s Delta County, home of High Country News, had been on the edge of their seats for weeks. All eyes were on our three county commissioners, who, on Monday, July 22, would vote whether or not to allow Gunnison Energy Co. to explore for coalbed methane […]