The challenging task of changing place names on public lands

Last month, the Department of the Interior asked for nominations for a new Advisory Committee on Reconciliation in Place Names. The goal is to replace derogatory names on millions of acres a...

A dark day for democracy

Teaching the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol

The Bears Ears shuffle

Preservation vs. exploitation in southeast Utah, a five-year review

Harry Goulding, Monument Valley, Hollywood and yellowcake

A Durango man’s complicated legacy on the Navajo Nation

Scourge of the West: ‘Wild’ vs. feral horses on public lands

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has it wrong. Like other well-meaning, environmental-leaning Americans, he thinks that wild horses on federal public lands deserve special considerations. It’s time...

Making Bears Ears whole: The big swap with Utah state lands

Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland and President Joe Biden are considering the restoration of Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument. Native American tribes and environmental organizations ...

Al and Betty: Citizen scientists

Botanists discover Four Corners plants

Tale of a transferred transfer station: Talking trash in San Juan County, Utah

Talking trash in San Juan County, Utah

A mosaic, not a melting pot: La Plata County and immigrants

Some bumper stickers read: “Colorado native.” Others offer: “Not native, but I got here as fast as I could.” We are a state of immigrants. Immigrants built the roads and bridges, ...

Keeping the ancients warm: Ancestral Puebloans created turkey feather blankets

I love seeing turkeys in ponderosa woods, moving slowly uphill like priests absorbed in morning prayers. At twilight, they are dark shapes seeking acorns and insects, always leav...

Smokestacks come down: The end of an era in Page, Arizona

On the morning of Dec. 18, massive simultaneous explosions leveled three huge 775-foot-tall smokestacks at Page, Arizona. It was the end of an era for the Navajo Generating Stati...

Lost and hungry scouts: A Mormon Christmas story

In 1879, four men navigated the treacherous canyons of Utah to establish Bluff