Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, a lilting swath of prairie in western North Dakota, was once a quiet place. Though thrice the area of Los Angeles, it had only 5,000 residents. Even New Town, a more populous district east of a reservoir called Lake Sakakawea, looked sparse and ephemeral. There was a granary, a fire station, […]
Features
Posted inMarch 19, 2012: Water Warrior
A Colorado newspaperman fights for his valley’s water
Updated 3/20/12 Out east of Pueblo, Colo., where juniper, sage and bitterbrush melt into the wide-open shortgrass prairie, towns with names like Manzanola, Ordway, Rocky Ford, Swink and La Junta dot the Lower Arkansas River Valley. These were the kinds of agricultural settlements celebrated by William Ellison Smythe, an early-20th-century champion of filling the West […]
Posted inMarch 5, 2012: The Zombies of Teton County
Unfinished zombie housing developments haunt the rural West
Matt Hail grew up in sweltering metropolitan Phoenix and spent 11 years selling women’s clothing, mostly wholesaling to department stores on the West Coast and across the Southwest. The job was boring, but he enjoyed vacationing at ski resorts, including Colorado’s Vail and Breckenridge. Like many other people, he imagined changing his life by moving […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2012: How Arizona's culture helped shape the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords
How Arizona’s culture helped shape the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords
To understand why Jared Lee Loughner shot Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and 18 others 2011, look to Arizona’s vitriolic politics.
Posted inJanuary 23, 2012: Billboard corporations use money and influence to override your vote
Billboard corporations use money and influence to override your vote
Salt Lake City, UtahDriving around Salt Lake City on a pleasant day last June in a plain white city government car, Doug Dansie pauses at the corner of two streets, 1300 South and 300 East. This is a residential neighborhood where old trees tower over the houses. But there’s no house on this particular corner […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2010: California Dreamin'
California’s Tangled Water Politics
The Sacramento and San Joaquin Delta, formed where the two rivers meet in California’s Central Valley before flowing into San Francisco Bay, is the largest estuary on the entire West Coast of the Americas. But much of the Delta is a remote, labyrinthine wateriness that, for most people, exists only in the mind, wrapped in […]
Posted inApril 12, 2010: The Butterfly Sting
The Butterfly Sting
How a federal wildlife agent brought down one of the world’s most notorious insect thieves.
Posted inApril 13, 2009: The Desert That Breaks Annie Proulx’s Heart
Columbia Basin (Political) Science
An investigation into the Bonneville Power Administration’s influence on salmon research
Posted inOctober 1, 2007: Sheep v. Sheep
Sheep v. Sheep
A legal battle over Hells Canyon grazing could determine the future of wild sheep and sheep ranching across the West
Posted inFebruary 6, 2006: The Killing Fields
The Killing Fields
A buffalo hunt turns into a slaughter on the border of Yellowstone National Park. But could this be the key to setting the animals free?
Posted inNovember 9, 1998: Grizzly war
Grizzly war
Scientists, activists and politicians clash over taking away the great bruin’s federal protection
Posted inJune 10, 1996: Outdoor Education
Tough love proves too tough
Controversial “wilderness therapy programs” come under critical scrutiny – and lawsuits – after several teenagers die while in their care.