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 […]
Greg Hanscom
Greg Hanscom is the publisher and executive director for High Country News. Email him at greg.hanscom@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor.
Dear Friends
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 […]
Here lies the Rio Grande
A telling end to the tangled story of a once-great river
A river on the line
A trip through the U.S.-Mexico borderlands reveals a tough road ahead for the Rio Grande
Bringing back the bosque
Pueblo tribes take the lead in restoring the Rio Grande’s riverside forest
High Country News: Friend or foe?
Over the past months, High Country News has received a number of letters and e-mails from readers upset about the tone of an article or an opinion expressed in one of the Writers on the Range columns. You’ll find one such letter below from a Bozeman, Mont., reader blasting Writers on the Range for running […]
The Rio Grande’s unsung diplomat
River activist ‘Uncle Steve’ Harris makes waves rather than headlines
Dear Friends
Back from Berkeley They stayed for graduation and one last sushi dinner, but then Ed and Betsy Marston, publisher and editor of this paper, high-tailed it east from Berkeley, Calif., to Paonia, Colo., and the rural life. But while their four-month teaching stint at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, […]
Dear Friends
A community of readers We like to say that High Country News is driven as much by its readers as it is by the ever-changing news. Our letters to the editor are often more entertaining and informative than anything else in the paper. And many a time we have answered the office phone and listened […]
After the fires, Part I
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Reforming an agency such as the Forest Service is like pushing an old truck up a hill. It’s grunt work, and unless you have a lot of friends, you won’t get anywhere. But every once in a long while, there’s a shift. A moment […]
Dear friends
Relentless Over the years, High Country News has been blessed with many friends and supporters. Surely one of the most faithful is Connie Harvey. On more than one occasion, the longtime resident of Aspen, Colo., has made timely contributions that have kept the paper going or seeded a new endeavor, such as our Writers on […]
Dear Friends
Putting California back on the map Reader Frank Aloisio called recently from California to ask where his state had gone. Our official HCN map of The West, drawn by our intrepid cartographer Diane Sylvain, doesn’t include the Golden State. We’ve been too shy, in the past, to cover California, for fear of being swept into […]
Dear Friends
Remember the Alamo Tim Sullivan, who survived an HCN internship last fall, has known for a long time that his home state, Utah, is a little different than the rest. He called the office recently with the latest evidence. “I’m very worried about the Mexican Army coming across our borders,” Bob Scott, a World War […]
Dear Friends
Calling all party animals The year’s first meeting of the board of the nonprofit High Country Foundation, which governs High Country News, will be held in Phoenix, Ariz., Feb. 2-4. As is the custom with board meetings, we’ll be hosting a potluck dinner for readers from the Phoenix area. These events, held around the West […]
‘No one is at the steering wheel’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Lora Lucero is vice president of the New Mexico chapter of the American Planning Association: “Who’s guiding growth right now is no one. No one is at the steering wheel. It’s occurring very haphazardly, it’s occurring incrementally, project by project, application by application, and […]
Road Block
A pack of ‘Chicanos, Marines and hippies’ steps into the path of New Mexico’s sprawl machine
‘Start letting mom pack that trunk’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Bob Davey is the president of the Valley Improvement Association: “Horizon’s plan was not a shabby idea. On paper it looked very good. The problem was that they were working in an agricultural area, and the county was not equipped to handle it. This […]
‘It’s a clash of visions’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Ray Garcia is president of the Historic Tome Adelino Neighborhood Association: “This place is different. It’s special. This is the second oldest community in Valencia County. We’re pretty tough, like those old cottonwoods, no? “We formed a neighborhood association two years ago to fight […]
‘The bridge is only part of the puzzle’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Alicia Aguilar is a real estate agent and Valencia County commissioner: “When I first came into office, we were one of the fastest growing counties in the state and I didn’t see any planning going on. Bernalillo County had tightened its regulations on mobile […]
The Latest Bounce
The Immigration and Naturalization Service has a plan to curb illegal immigration between Naco and Douglas, Ariz. It includes stadium lights, steel fences, roads and video surveillance cameras, which an INS study says won’t affect endangered wildlife along the U.S.-Mexico border (HCN, 9/27/99: Battered Borderlands). The Center for Biological Diversity disputes the agency’s study and […]
