A biking boom in Sedona, Arizona, forces locals to ask: Is there room for all these people?
Communities
Posted inArticles
How the California drought exacerbates water contamination
This rural community couldn’t drink the water, even if they had it.
Posted inArticles
Arctic off-shore drilling hits home in Barrow, Alaska
Dispatch from the nation’s northernmost town, a community divided.
Posted inArticles
The pain thief of Spokane
Spokane, Washington, the little city that has a knack for weirdness, is back in the limelight again. Not so long ago it was all about the outing of our anti-gay mayor, who’d been discovered trolling for young men. This time it’s all about Rachel Dolezal. Everyone knew her as the dynamic black president of the […]
Posted inJune 22, 2015: Dust to Dust
Photographs of open-air cremation in Colorado
As eco-minded baby boomers age, they’re seeking alternatives to modern funerals.
Posted inJune 22, 2015: Dust to Dust
The scrappy effort to revive a former mining town
In Butte, Montana, optimism is booming.
Posted inArticles
Wrangell recovers from its timber hangover
Can a small Alaska town overcome the booms and busts of resource development?
Posted inArticles
Northwest tribes are a growing obstacle to energy development
B.C. tribal members turned down $260K each in order to stop a gas terminal.
Posted inArticles
A Yosemite gathering takes on culture, race, socioeconomics in national parks
Minorities, millennials and urbanites are less likely to visit national parks than upwardly mobile, white baby-boomers.
Posted inMay 25, 2015: Monument Man
Survival = Anger x Imagination
A review of ‘Crazy Horse’s Girlfriend’ by Erika T. Wurth.
Posted inArticles
Sightseeing at an open pit mine in Arizona copper country
The mines are still in business, yet towns that once flourished are now mostly gone.
Posted inMay 11, 2015: The Wetland Wars
Fisher-poets of the pale tide
A gathering of maritime minstrels on the Oregon coast.
Posted inMay 11, 2015: The Wetland Wars
The Los Angeles wetland wars
Environmentalists saved a wetland from developers a decade ago. Now they’re trying to save it from each other.
Posted inMay 11, 2015: The Wetland Wars
Wins for workers
Western cities lead the national movement for a higher minimum wage.
Posted inArticles
A coal terminal would bring profit to one tribe, damage to another
Photos of the communities for and against the proposed Washington port.
Posted inArticles
For rural Oregonians, protections from herbicides come up short
Aerial spray regs remain the West Coast’s weakest after the death of a key law.
Posted inArticles
Huge new ‘communities’ planned for Tucson, Albuquerque
Sprawl rises from its slumber, but urban renaissance is still thriving.
Posted inApril 27, 2015: Lost frontier
A plague on the Klamath River
The race to prevent a repeat of the West’s worst salmon-kill.
Posted inApril 27, 2015: Lost frontier
Tucson’s rain-catching revolution
In the Sonoran Desert, rainwater harvesting is finally going mainstream.
Posted inArticles
Ranch Diaries: Building community in the middle of nowhere
Cattle branding brings together far-flung neighbors in the midst of the “Big Quiet.”