State and federal funds are paying for desperately needed infrastructure in the Central Valley.
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Posted inMarch 21, 2016: Making Sense of Malheur
Seeds in a sandstorm
A writer contemplates love and disaster in a city of transients.
Posted inArticles
Recent criminal justice reforms by state
California has led the way for other states to reduce prison populations.
Posted inMarch 7, 2016: The Parks You Don't Know
At Valles Caldera, a new national park unit takes shape
A preserve was added to the park system, after an experiment in managing federal lands outside the traditional agencies.
Posted inMarch 7, 2016: The Parks You Don't Know
Finding the big quiet in Great Basin National Park
A writer revisits the acoustical landscape of the National Park system.
Posted inMarch 7, 2016: The Parks You Don't Know
How not to forget the West’s past atrocities
The national park system does more than celebrate beauty. It also commemorates the ugliest parts of our past.
Posted inMarch 7, 2016: The Parks You Don't Know
Secrets of the National Park Service
Readers and staff speak out on surprising favorites.
Posted inMarch 7, 2016: The Parks You Don't Know
The tricky allure of unpeopled places
Longing for solitude on the land, and feeling uneasy.
Posted inArticles
Rants from the Hill: A romance in Reno, land of the second chance
The Ranter remembers being struck down by love for Tonya Harding, the fallen ice skater.
Posted inArticles
Online editor Tay Wiles talks Oregon militia standoffs with KDNK Radio
The latest episode of Sounds of the High Country.
Posted inArticles
West Obsessed: What the heck is a Sagebrush Sheriff?
Behind a lot of anti-fed sentiment, you’ll find ‘constitutional’ peace officers. Here’s why that’s worrying.
Posted inArticles
Ranch Diaries: Dispatch from a confab of women in agriculture
When holistic management is too land-focused, the needs of the people on the land gets lost.
Posted inFebruary 22, 2016: Fractured
A strong Western snowpack, sexual harassment in the Grand Canyon and leaky oil and gas production
HCN.org news in brief.
Posted inFebruary 22, 2016: Fractured
Far from home, the West’s foreign sheepherders get a pay raise
Since the ’50s, Western states have brought in international workers but offer them few of the benefits given other workers.
Posted inFebruary 22, 2016: Fractured
The fractured terrain of oil and gas opposition
In one of the West’s biggest arguments, the battle lines are complicated and opaque.
Posted inArticles
Dispatch from Nevada’s cowboy poets confab
An older generation of artists looks for a younger set to take over the tradition.
Posted inArticles
Livestream from the Oregon occupation
The remaining occupiers and their supporters speak live as FBI closes in on the Malheur wildlife refuge.
Posted inArticles
A new and more dangerous Sagebrush Rebellion
At first, as the armed occupation in Oregon’s High Desert unfolded in January, it looked like a widescreen version of the flare-ups we’ve seen in the West ever since the Sagebrush Rebellion erupted in the 1970s. Recall the so-called “oppressed ranchers,” their anti-federal rhetoric and the sight of cowboy-hatted heroes riding to their rescue. But […]
Posted inArticles
Should coyote hunting contests be banned?
The debate over organized kills and whether they actually impact population, via a new podcast.
Posted inFebruary 2, 2016: Sagebrush Insurgency
Fresh faces and fresh powder
Over the past month, we’ve finally received our fair share of snowfall in Paonia, Colorado, and along with it welcomed our new interns, Lyndsey Gilpin and Bryce Gray. They’ll begin nearly six months of reporting, and (assuming we let them out of the office) they might even squeeze in a few outdoor adventures here on […]