Perhaps the world’s most widely known earthwork, it cost the artist less than $10,000 and took only six weeks to construct, thanks to rented heavy equipment and a hired crew. Smithson created other earthworks, but none received near the attention of the Spiral Jetty. It is 1,500-foot-long, 15-foot-wide, and the locally excavated basalt rock and mud extends about 600 feet into the lake, curling inward twice, counterclockwise.

It juts out from a remote northern beach of the Great Salt Lake that once was the site of failed oil explorations. The black-gold rushers of the 1930s left most of their equipment behind to rust, and what little oil they found filled black puddles afterward. The other-worldly decadence of this place is said to be what attracted Smithson, and a word closely associated with his land art is “entropy,” a slide toward disorder and randomness. What Smithson might never have anticipated is that his artwork was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2024.

But Smithson knew his jetty would start changing the minute he finished it, and he made no effort to tidy up its shape or surroundings.

From ground level is looks like a jumbled pile of rocks. It’s only from the hillside above or the air that its distinct lines take shape. A visible change is that years of submersion added a cupcake-icing of salt to the black basalt rocks.

My partner of 30 years and I went on one of our first road-trip dates to see the jetty, which is, only 15 miles from Golden Spike National Historic Park. But once there, we found ourselves looking around in frustration and shouting, “Where is it?” because in the early 1980s, the jetty was completely covered by Salt Lake’s foamy waters.

The northern end of the lake is now sometimes Barbie-pink, just as it was when Smithson decided to stack rocks there into art. The pink is from the microorganisms that thrive in the increasingly salty water of the lake. When we visit the park these days, we watch people walk on the rocks and marvel at how much the lake has dried up and how far it’s receded since our first visit.

In academic circles, Spiral Jetty has probably been written about more than any other land art. Smithson’s work is said to express the intersection of landscape, art and environmental history, and while most art in a museum is a snapshot in time, earthworks are site specific and always changing. Whatever you choose to call it, Smithson’s approach is spreading. During the covid Pandemic when indoor art didn’t seem accessible, the jetty gained popularity with visitors, and Utah’s Box Elder County made significant road and sign improvements to accommodate the crowds.

However, not all land art is celebrated. “Stop stacking rocks” is a sign I never thought I would see in parks, but the do-it-yourself rock art that tourists try to create damages ecosystems, with desert parks harmed the most. Ecologists say that moving rocks harms stream beds and the wildlife that lives among the rocks. Some visitors have also taken to emulating the British artist Andrew Goldsworthy, who creates ephemeral works with rocks, trees, and plants that sometimes float off on water.

Spiral Jetty may be well known but it’s still remote. When I go there now, it’s with a better camera and a drone. Though the road has been improved, it’s still a quiet place with no cell service, and always, when I round the corner to the now-expansive beach where the jetty morphs into its next chapter, I feel a dose of awe.

Dennis Hinkamp is a Utah writer and contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. The academic paper, Reframing the Landscape: Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, by Amy Reid, examines the lasting significance of Robert Smithson’s 1970 earthwork.

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He also started a UN Foundation to help bring peace to the world, thanks to his starter $1 billion contribution, and he tapped former U.S. Sen. Tim Wirth of Colorado to lead it. Wirth recalls how Turner, once dubbed “Captain Outrageous,” liked to shoot from the hip and could never be bothered by whatever passed as political correctness. A plaque on his desk in Atlanta said it all: “Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way.”.

Most of all, Turner left a significant swath of private lands in better condition than he found them. In Montana and other parts of the Rockies, Turner bought huge ranches and made sure the land was healthy enough to grow a bison herd to over 55,000 animals at its peak.

Turner never subscribed to the notion that property rights trumped the common good. He also challenged the conviction that landowners ought to be able to do whatever they want on their land—even if it resulted in environmental harm.

As an entrepreneur with green intentions, Turner believed he could operate better and cheaper in recovering wildlife and rivers on his ranches that had been degraded by overgrazing. He was able to show that smart management also offered safe harbor to wildlife without sacrificing profit.

Some locals around Bozeman, Montana, in the 1980s thought Turner was out of his mind when he placed a conservation easement on his 113,000-acre Flying D Ranch, one of the largest easements in America at the time. The easement limited development in perpetuity, and had Turner exploited the Flying D as a real estate play, he could easily have made hundreds of millions in profit. 

Turner could make a big impact on people. One was the billionaire businessman Thomas Kaplan, who likens Turner to a combination of John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt. Kaplan says Turner inspired him to co-found Panthera, now the leading global wildcat conservation organization, as well as The Orianne Society, named after his daughter  and dedicated to perpetuating the survival of snakes.

Kaplan likes to recount how, when he visited Turner’s Flying D, he saw a wolf pack and howled back and forth with them. The ranch was home to the one of the largest, free-ranging wolf packs in North America, co-existing with Turner’s buffalo, and a population of elk, deer, moose and other wild animals that moved on and off the property.

Turner issued an edict that wolves visiting his land were never to be hunted or lethally controlled. Emulating the Turner model, Kaplan acquired thousands of acres in a vast wetland area of southwest Brazil called the Pantanal, and there he advanced a model of co-existence between cattle ranchers and jaguars. The Pantanal is considered the best place in the world for watching jaguars, and even cattle ranchers, who used to shoot the cats, now have eco-lodges on their estancias.

Turner was aware of his foibles, for which he hoped he would be forgiven. Biologist Mike Phillips, who oversaw a number of rewilding projects for Turner, told me, “In these recent years, as he was in decline, Ted once asked me, “Mike, we did okay, didn’t we?’ And I replied, “Ted, we accomplished exactly what we set out to do so long ago. I reminded him that he had done more as a private citizen to benefit native species than any other individual in the history of the world.”

Phillips said that Turner choked up with emotion.

Jane Fonda, Turner’s “third and favorite wife,” according to those who knew the couple, told me that after a brutal childhood with a hard-driving father who took his own life, along with a sister who died young from lupus, Turner found solace in nature.

“What did he want most of all? asked Fonda. “To be recognized as a good guy. There was a part of Ted who believed that by trying to save nature and bring more peace to the world, he could save himself. But he saved much more than that.”

Todd Wilkinson is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring conversation about the West. He is a longtime journalist and founder of Yellowstonian.org, who wrote an award-winning biography about Turner.

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In this period between buckskin and billionaires, novelist Tim Sandlin, who died March 29, spun decades of living into 11 novels. Born in Oklahoma in 1950, Sandlin moved to Jackson Hole to build a life, and once there, he established a writers’ coalition and conference, raised a family and wrote regularly at the back table of Pearl Street Bagels on Pearl Avenue.

He plucked his characters’ eccentricities from the skiers, carpenters, cowboys, waitresses, motel maids and climbing and river guides he lived among. He worked more than 40 entry-level and service jobs, including elk skinner, dishwasher, cook at the Lame Duck restaurant, and copy editor and columnist at the Jackson Hole News.

The New York Times called his last novel, Lit, “slightly unhinged.” It’s about book burning, a coffee shop and a dead preacher. Readers shouldn’t be too bent on solving a murder, author Sarah Weinman wrote. “Spending time with the quirky, unforgettable characters is a lot more important.”

Sandlin fashioned many of his dramatis personae from real souls of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s West. He lived in the Glenwood Arms, an ageing warren of nine apartments originally built for nurses at St. John’s Hospital. Over time, the Arms morphed into a compound contained by the back wall of the Jackson Hole Guide and encompassing Teton Cyclery, plus the headquarters of Jackson Hole Mountain Guides.

Sandlin adopted the slopeside patoisof linguistic shortcuts and nicknames that became kind of a local code. “Every idea Sandlin had, he saw from his window at the Glenwood Arms,” said K.B., former co-owner of the Cyclery. The Arms’ residents included a master glassblower, a virtuoso luthier, artists, musicians, resort workers, and the astrologer and gemologist Janet Planet, whose window flower box fed the neighborhood moose.

From his perch at the Arms, Sandlin could witness the annual departure of the editor of the Jackson Hole Guide, which had a sack-happy publisher. He might also have seen two police actions at the compound, one with guns trained on a knife-wielding resident, who was perhaps the third part of a love triangle. The other raid responded to reports of illicit smoke.

Cyclery mechanic Marty lived nearby in a single-wide with walls covered by sarcastic artwork. Three bike riders—known locally as Hajji, the Emir and Peter—left through one door of the Cyclery in 1980, then came back through the other door six and a half years later. They’d ridden around the world.

Jim Stiles, then editor and publisher of Moab’s Canyon Country Zephyr, spent several desert summer interregnums at The Arms. Moseying to the Town Square one day, he caught sight of “the ugliest man I’d ever seen.” It was the villain of the nightly shootout melodrama, one-eyed Clover the Killer, who never wore an eye patch.

Other compound characters left their mark. Dr. Liu built the first machine to mass-produce Croakies, the neoprene strap that saves your spiffy sunglasses when rolling a kayak. Cyclery co-owner Wendell’s special quesadilla is still on the Merry Piglets menu. Flat Ed got his name after his ’69 VW bus slipped off its jack while he worked underneath.

Today, “The Glenwood” stands at the site of the razed Glenwood Arms. It offers three-bedroom townhomes for $6.5 million. Just across the street there’s the Browse ’n Buy thrift store. Second-hand Ralph Lauren button-downs are now up to $8.

Sandlin’s career tells of a just-gone era, reminding me that imagination and literature enrich us as we learn about the humanity just outside our windows. There’s more about him in the Jackson Hole News&Guide, where they drop the paywall for obituaries to allow the living to keep up with the dead. You can find a collection of his newspaper columns that reflect the valley’s weekly dramas in his book The Pyms.

Angus M. Thuermer Jr. is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is a reporter at the nonprofit WyoFile and former editor of the Jackson Hole News. A decades-long Jackson Hole resident, he is also a graduate of Sandlin’s Write Your Novel class.Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about Western issues.

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On March 4, in senseless acts of violence, Linda, my neighbor, and her niece Natalie Graves were murdered at the base of that mountain.

The murderer, on a road trip from Iowa, had been stranded in Wayne County after hitting an elk and totaling his truck. Broke and in need of a car, he first killed 86-year-old Margaret Oldroyd in nearby Lyman. The much-loved elder had the fatal luck to live at the edge of town, in the first house the murderer came to.

After killing Mrs. Oldroyd, he decided her Buick Regal was unsatisfactory. When he encountered Linda and Natalie setting out on a hike, he murdered them both, took their Subaru, and went on his way, leaving behind nothing but grief.

Using an app connected to the Subaru’s key fob, authorities tracked him for 400 miles to Pagosa Springs, Colorado, and arrested him the next day. His killings were brutal and senseless—and utterly random. Any of us could have been pulling into that trailhead.

Linda and her husband Alan retired here five years ago, to revel in this wild country surrounding Capitol Reef National Park. Natalie, 34, was visiting from Massachusetts.

The Deweys were the exceptional retirees who quickly became embedded in the community. Alan volunteered for Capitol Reef’s biologists, scouting for bighorn sheep and cougar. Linda, a spirited connector, ran yoga classes and helped found a public service group, Rural Voices of Utah.

Margaret Oldroyd was a connector, too. Hundreds attended her LDS funeral, both newcomers and the extended Mormon families who had known her throughout their lives, all honoring this kind “guardian at the edge of the town’s heart,” as her memorial card put it.

Neither Torrey nor Lyman numbers more than 300 people. I-70 is 35 miles away—with no services for 110 miles. The county has no stoplights. In 1940, 2,500 people lived in Wayne County’s 2,500 square miles. We’ve since added just 100 people.

Relationships among these scattered communities are tight but complicated. Legacy Mormon families dominate. Torrey is the anomaly, full of newcomers. The murderer struck all three county demographics: proud settlers, thrilled move-ins, and one joyful and awestruck visitor.

These violent acts by a stranger who knew nothing about these people or this place disrupted our sense of safety. As I grapple with raw sorrow, I try to imagine the flood of grief following a mass shooting or a community devastated by war. Unimaginable, we say. Now, I understand viscerally.

Even as we all were texting updates and talking in the aisles of the county’s sole grocery store, our community felt quiet, pulled inward.

Utah’s canyon country has always been a source of rejuvenation and connection for me—the kaleidoscope of rocks, raucous pinyon jays, the legacy of millennia of inhabitants. I picture these connections as a web of humming cables, vibrating through time in unique chords, leading outward to every being, every person, every influence. This vast bundle of life and existence whirrs continually, creating the comforting harmonic tone that defines this place.

There’s tension, sure, between the conservative politicians who rule the county and the conservation-oriented move-ins. But the violence that came unbidden eclipses our differences. We are leaning on each other in our loss. Maybe some of that solidarity will last.

Pink ribbons now encircle every post and sign as a gesture to our loss. As Tonya Moosman, who works at the grocery store, told a reporter: “When somebody asks where you’re from, you don’t say Bicknell or Loa. You say Wayne County. We are one community.”

In Navajo culture, such fracturing violence requires a ceremony to restore balance, to heal. For those of us who are not Native, we’ll need the powers of both land and community to get back to the reassurance and resonance of this place. 

The women we lost knew something of that power. The solidarity of the community after their deaths amplifies that power. We’ll be looking for ways to reconnect with everything that makes this place special, as this place—our place—helps us to heal what a heedless man has broken.

Utah writer and photographer Stephen Trimble is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent non-profit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. His book, The Capitol Reef Reader, is a tribute to his home landscape.

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The slaughter of the buffalo was a tragedy for all Western Indian tribes—including every tribe in Montana—because the animals were everything to Native people. Bison provided food, shelter clothing and tools. They were central to spiritual practices. Their destruction was also a central part of the federal campaign to subdue and dispossess tribal nations.

But before the last smoke from the buffalo guns had cleared, Native visionaries had acted. A Salish man known as Attice trailed a few surviving bison across the Continental Divide to Montana’s Flathead Valley. That small herd would become critical seedstock for rebuilding bison herds in both the United States and Canada.

Through Attice’s efforts, state and federal agencies across the West were later able to establish small herds on refuges and wildlife management areas. Over the last 50 years, Western tribes have also led determined efforts to restore buffalo on reservation lands.

Tribes have also benefited from partnerships with conservation organizations that share a vision of big, healthy bison herds grazing across large landscapes. Chief among these partners is American Prairie, which for the past 25 years has worked to restore intact grasslands on public and private lands adjacent to Montana’s Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge. As part of its work, American Prairie has also provided both technical expertise and buffalo to many tribal nations rebuilding their herds.

Yet even with these initiatives, there are only a few thousand truly wild buffalo today, and they occupy just a tiny fraction of their former range across the American and Canadian prairies. Why?

The persecution of bison continues—nowhere more so than in Montana. Governor Greg Gianforte’s administration has opposed any expansion of wild buffalo populations and has relentlessly pressured the federal Bureau of Land Management to reverse earlier, positive bison decisions.

Bowing to this pressure, the BLM has denied a request by American Prairie to convert existing federal grazing permits from cattle to bison in eastern Montana. What’s worse, the BLM has terminated other bison grazing permits the organization had lawfully held for years.

Given the stakes, the Coalition of Large Tribes—advocating for more than 50 tribal nations, including the Blackfeet Nation and the Fort Belknap Indian Community in Montana—has filed a formal protest of the BLM’s unprecedented and unlawful decision. Federal law is clear: statutes affecting tribes must be interpreted in their favor, and ambiguities must be resolved to protect tribal rights.

The consequences of the BLM’s illegal action are immediate and profound. Terminating these permits disrupts herd genetics, intertribal gifting traditions, treaty territories, and longstanding cooperative relationships. It also establishes a dangerous precedent for other federal agencies engaged in tribal co-stewardship and wildlife restoration, not only for Montana tribes but for tribes everywhere.  If bison being managed for conservation can be categorically excluded from federal lands, decades of collaborative progress are jeopardized.

Perhaps most alarming, this decision amounts to rulemaking by fiat. In order to reach the result demanded by the Gianforte administration, the BLM acted without meaningful consultation with either tribes or the public.

Federal law is clear. Actions and decisions affecting tribes require consultation, yet no meaningful effort has been made by either the BLM or the Gianforte administration to fulfill this binding obligation.  If this failure to consult is allowed to stand, tribes across the West will be harmed by the precedent. 

Montana and the federal government face a defining choice: They can cling to outdated policies that ignore history, science, and treaty obligations, or they can honor tribal leadership, uphold the law and help restore a species that once defined this land.

The future of Montana’s prairies depends on that choice.

The writers are Montana state legislators and contributors to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. Tyson Running Wolf is a member of the Blackfeet Nation who chairs the Montana Native American Caucus in the state legislature. Tom France represents Missoula in the Montana Legislature and works with the Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders Council on buffalo conservation issues.

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A member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, Campbell grew up poor and spent part of his childhood in a California orphanage, yet he led a life of excelling. He became a judo champion in 1963, winning a gold medal at the Pan-American Games; served in the Air Force for four years where he earned his GED; went on to get degrees in physical education and fine arts at San Jose State University; and honed skills as a silversmith and jeweler. His Western belt buckles were prized.

He entered politics in 1982, first serving as a state legislator. He was next elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, serving rural Western Colorado from 1987 to 1993, then was elected to two terms in the U.S. Senate.

When Senator Campbell switched from being a registered Democrat to a Republican on March 3, 1995, “the switch was shocking and traumatic to his staff,” said Ken Lane, his longtime chief of staff. He quit soon after Campbell’s announcement.

Lane said there was lots of speculation about why Campbell became a Republican. A major irritant for Campbell, Lane recalled, was what the senator called the “elitist” attitude of Democratic leaders in Denver and Boulder, who found him too moderate. Campbell’s main support always came from the union stronghold of Pueblo, in southern Colorado.

It was known that Republican Senator and majority leader Bob Dole courted Campbell to make the switch, and once he did, Campbell was appointed chair of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. Campbell relished the job, advocating for Tribal rights and spurring the creation of the Sand Creek Massacre National Historical Site in Colorado, where two of his ancestors had been killed by U.S. soldiers.

Dea Jacobson, who worked in his Grand Junction, Colorado office when he was a Democrat, called him a force of nature. “He could do anything he put his mind to,” she said. He was a licensed pilot, and he also earned a commercial driver’s license, which he used in 2000 and 2012 to drive huge Colorado Christmas trees to the Capitol in Washington, D.C.

Though his party changed, Jacobson said, Campbell’s politics remained the same: “He was pro-choice, pro-union and, despite criticism from some environmentalists, he backed key legislation protecting Colorado’s public lands.” Over the years, Campbell became known as someone who’d horse trade to get the bills he cared about passed.

One of his major victories was passage of the Colorado Wilderness Act of 1993, which designated or expanded 19 wilderness areas. The landmark legislation had been 13 years in the making. Campbell also worked on the creation of Great Sand Dunes National Park and helped make the Black Canyon National Monument a national park.

Campbell had a major impact on Colorado’s Four Corners region. Working with the Tribes he changed the Animas–La Plata water project to protect the free-flowing Animas River, despite criticism from environmentalists over the pumping of water uphill into a dry basin. The deal fulfilled long-overdue water rights held by the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute Tribes.

I’d called Campbell last October when I was writing a column about changes coming for the reservoir named after him—Lake Nighthorse—authorized by Congress in 1968 as part of the Animas-La Plata Project. I’d been told Campbell was in poor health, but he answered the phone, later telling me, “I’m suffering from old persons’ problems so I’m not following water wars these days. But don’t forget what Mark Twain said about water: ‘Whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting.’”

Jacobson wasn’t surprised that Nighthorse was affable in our conversation. “He loved newspaper people,” she recalled, and when they were on the road in rural Colorado, “he liked to stop in at a town’s weekly paper.” Though he didn’t drink, he might also visit a local bar or café to start a conversation with locals. Before long, she said, “he was holding court.”

Lane’s recollection was equally warm. “Ben was funny, irreverent and endearing, and he connected with people of all backgrounds.”

A private memorial service will be held by his family at their ranch in Ignacio, Colorado. He is survived by his wife Linda, his children Colin and Shanan, and four grandchildren.

Dave Marston is the publisher of Writers on the Range, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He lives in Durango, Colorado.

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Because my mind lives in a spiral of political doom, it sped to: “Canadians hate America and they’re giving up on Burning Man.” Even worse, I thought, “The next thing you know, there won’t be a Swedish Meatball Camp.”

Still, this past August, 80,000 people converged in the Nevada desert to set up what aspires to be a peaceful global village. The hardest part of my years of being part of this temporary city is answering the question on my return: “How was it?”

All I can say is that it’s reunion for some, tribal for others. It would be a long voyage just to get intoxicated, dance and see some art. Perhaps there’s something hopeful to it that brings together thousands of people from all over the world.

In general, it is hot, dusty and increasingly rainy. The cheapest admission price is $550.  Getting in and out of the instant town involves long waits and scary driving on Nevada State Route 447. Once there, you could feel right at home—or not.

Its origin story is that of founders Larry Harvey and Jerry James burning an effigy on San Francisco’s Baker Beach in 1986. That spontaneous whimsy outgrew the beach and ended up being planted in the dust of Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. Then, like a rhizomatous plant, its tentacles have spread, producing clones around the world. Smaller regional burns now mimic the original.

For crowd context, at least 15 college football stadiums seat more people than Burning Man’s giant campground. Of course, the football fans are only there for an afternoon while most Burning Man participants stay the seven days leading up to Labor Day. Other volunteers stay weeks after to clean it up to Bureau of Land Management permit standards, since the event takes place on public land. 

There are all kinds of reasons to avoid Burning Man, and I get an earful every year.  Even though “burning” is in the name, some hate the event for burning valuable resources. To partially address this, over the years event organizers have added composting toilets and solar to the mix. Burning Man poop will help gardens grow elsewhere. Most of the art pieces, other than the centerpiece “man,” are not burned. They live second lives at parks and town squares around the world. 

The other question I hear every year is: “Is there crime at Burning Man?” The answer, unfortunately, is yes— traffic accidents and every kind of bad behavior you would see anywhere else. In 2005, I was the victim of an assault by a bicyclist who never stopped to see who he’d run over. It was bad. It was solved. The perp was convicted. It has not stopped me from returning. 

This year there was also a rare birth, said to be completely unexpected, and a death of unconfirmed cause occurred at the time I left.

International attendance was up overall. I worked with photographers from Iran, Ireland, France and Belgium. The largest art piece on the playa was designed and constructed—inflated actually—by Ukraine. Its “Black Cloud” artwork was magnificent while it lasted, combining music and erratic bursts of light. Sadly, it succumbed to a 50-mph blast of wind.

In the midst of war, the Ukrainian artists thought Burning Man was one of the best ways to bring attention to their gallant and determined people, who have been fighting for survival since Russian troops invaded Ukraine in 2002.

There was also a 20-foot F*** You Elon metal sculpture that seemed like a profane waste of energy. People mostly climbed around on it to take their selfies. And about that missing Canadian delicacy—were the Canadians especially anti-America? Some swear the poutine crew had just planned to take a year off. I’m looking forward to Midnight Poutine next year.

Dennis Hinkamp is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He lives in Utah.

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At the county seat in Jackson, town council member and economic consultant Jonathan Schechter made the “wealthiest” calculation in his “cothrive” newsletter. He’d crunched the latest U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates from 3,244 counties, parishes and boroughs nationwide.

Schechter’s analysis made a small group of us—social critics with more than 100 collective years of Jackson Hole living—consider our new status in what Schechter called “the wealthiest county in the wealthiest country in the history of the world.” Our group of aging ski-bum, bicycle-riding gadflies wondered how the other 99.7% of America lived.

We needed to find out. We would start down the social ladder at a community that struggles to flop into second place. It’s Pitkin County, Colorado, site of the town of Aspen, a village about which we had only vague notions.

We would visit by bicycle over six days, observing Aspenites who would, we thought, represent more of the nation’s hoi polloi. Off we pedaled to cross the Income Gulf of America.

As we cycled up Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley toward Aspen, we ran into the first of the locals. He was a 70-year-old impresario with all the bona fides of a longtime resident—greying braided ponytail, tank top, beater rig and a long resume as a roadie with the Grateful Dead.

He elaborated on his curriculum vitae, which included pre-concert street deals. “Detroit was easy,” he said. “They used to give me $500. That was a lot of money in those days.”

We parried. “We’re from the wealthiest community in the country.”

“Aspen is the most expensive,” he replied.

Pitkin’s annual per-capita income is $255,839, we riposted, as we headed up-valley. How spendy could this place be, we wondered, if it names a top hotel after a Nabisco cracker?

We were somewhere around Basalt on the edge of Aspen when the prices started to kick up. Numbers on the tap-insert-swipe thingies increased alarmingly. Finally arriving in Aspen, we rattled to a stop at a downtown bar, where beer came in $9 pints.

“Martini?” the menu suggested. Coming from the wealthiest county, we were practiced.

“I’ll take two.” Federal data said we could afford it. “And a burger.”

Twenty-five bucks for a Saphire gin cocktail. Thirty bucks for a dead-cow patty so tall a mule would have to stretch its lips to take a bite of the towering brioche bun.

Perhaps we missed some of Schechter’s small print. A few billionaires must have skewed our lofty per-capita income figure. In fact, the median annual Teton County income is just $141,500, but still more than anyone in our peloton was making. And second-hand Ralph Lauren button-downs at Jackson’s Browse ’n’ Buy are up to $7.

We read local papers to dig deeper into the customs and culture of our Colorado subject. The papers said the sheriff was taking a trespasser to court who’d lived in a tree for 10 years. A humanitarian nonprofit was running out of money. The Chamber of Commerce was bragging about the coming tourist season.

The ads in glossy local magazines showed a population of the young, tan, fit and wealthy. Aspenites are polyglots, we realized, naming their stores in Italian —Gucci and Prada. In Jackson Hole we are glad to have Shirt off my Back and Lee’s Tees.

In Aspen, Louis Vuitton, which we deduced was French for “handbag,” offered the Aspen Platform Clog for $1,690. “We’ll take two!” we dreamed.

We went to a liquor store. A sharpie had marked $1,000 on one bottle of wine. We passed that up for a six pack—about what four dirtbags who fell out of the back pages of a 1980s Patagonia catalog could afford.

A ragged sign taped to the counter at the tap-insert-swipe thingie suggested that our communities were much more similar than we thought. We learned the sign had been there a year and a half but was still relevant.

“Jason needs a place to live,” it read.

Angus M. Thuermer Jr. is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is a reporter who has lived and worked as a journalist in Jackson, Wyoming for more than four decades.

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Writers on the Range has a simple two-part mission. One is to engage Westerners in talking to each other about issues important to the region. The other aim is to entice readers to look forward to these fact-based opinions, with the hope they’ll then want to keep their local journalism outlet alive and flourishing.

Our opinions this year covered a wide range: avalanche deaths that might have been prevented, by Molly Absolon; Ben Long’s profile of Diane K. Boyd, whose innovative career studying wolves in the wild covered four decades; Zak Podmore’s description of how dead pool is a strong possibility for Lake Powell. We’re happy to report that Megan Schrader of the Denver Post said that Long’s and Podmore’s opinions were among the paper’s most-viewed columns.

But it was what happened to wildlife in the state of Wyoming that garnered the most response from readers, who wrote letters of outrage or made our opinion go viral on social media. Wendy Keefover of the Humane Society of the USA was involved in both.

Her first opinion column, published in April, revealed that in Wyoming coyotes can be legally killed—though in this case the animal run over by a snowmobiler was a wolf.

We know a wolf suffered this assault because the snowmobiler showed off the dazed and muzzled animal at a bar, where it was photographed splayed out on the floor. Many readers were appalled, especially as the penalty for what amounted to torture was a minor fine.

The second column by Keefover was written with Kristin Combs of Wyoming Wildlife Advocates, and it covered the sudden death of grizzly bear 399, Wyoming’s most famous bruin.

Starting in 2004, this prolific mother bear raised 18 cubs amidst the millions of visitors and residents of Jackson Hole and Grand Teton National Park. Her death, after colliding with a car, resulted in an outpouring of grief. The writers’ opinion calling for greater protection for grizzlies was shared on social media by more than 20,000 readers who visited our website on the first day it appeared.

We’re also pleased to report that a Writers on the Range column helped quash the state of Utah’s plan to allow a 460-foot telecommunications tower in the heart of Bears Ears National Monument. In his opinion, Mark Maryboy, former delegate to the Navajo Nation Council, blasted the state’s proposed tower as “a spear in the heart of the monument.” The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance told us that Maryboy’s column, which ran widely in the state, was a “major component” in the tower’s defeat.

A more recent column, by Jennifer Rokala, head of the Center for Western Priorities, was shared by many readers. Rokala insisted that no matter what exploitation the Trump administration planned for public lands, conservationists would fight back. As a reader put it in a letter to the editor of the Aspen Daily News: “You’re providing factual and great journalism that inspires and gives hope.”

We were inspired by several columns about Westerners trying to change the world, including Katie Klingsporn’s profile of a Wyoming principal, Katie Law, who never gives up on students at Arapaho Charter High School. Law was rewarded by seeing 14 students graduate this year, the largest class in the school’s history. Why did she work so hard? “I want to see these students succeed, and I’m going to do what it takes.”

There were other columns about extraordinary people or the novel ways writers understand the West, including Dave Marston’s piece about Amory Lovins, who insists that the energy gap can be closed, and others by Rebecca Clarren, Shaun Ketchum Jr., Rick Knight, Jacob Richards and Laura Pritchett.  Marston, the publisher of Writers on the Range, also revealed his struggle with bipolar mental illness.

Each of our writers—who are paid—is eager to start a conversation because they care about the West, and in particular, the public land that makes this region unique. And we suggest never skipping a column by Grand Canyon educator Marjorie “Slim” Woodruff, who can’t help noting the many foibles of tourists.

For example, whenever a hiker asks her on the trail: “Was the hike worth it?” Woodruff confesses she’d love to answer: “No, turn around now!”

Betsy Marston is the editor of Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, the independent nonprofit opinion service that seeks to spur lively conversations about the West. She lives in Paonia, Colorado.

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I have nothing against out-of-staters moving to Montana or working at a business. I fit both categories myself years ago. But I think this change in politicians’ backgrounds reflects a change in how Montanans view their identity.

Previous Montana politicians who weren’t government lawyers often came from farming and ranching or related businesses. Today’s business backgrounds are less intimate with Montana’s land. Gianforte started a software company. Sheehy founded imaging technology and aerial firefighting businesses. Downing, a real estate developer, has owned everything from self-storage units to vineyards.

Seeking business-friendly policies, Republicans have long favored candidates with business backgrounds. But today’s desire for political outsiders includes Democrats like Busse, a former firearms executive without experience in elected office. And recent high-profile Democratic candidates have included educators, managers, and a musician—in other words, people who have not worked daily with nature and its resources.

Montanans used to mistrust government officials who lacked intimacy with the land. But today, both parties elevate politicians who lack that intimacy, probably because Montanans care more about ideological issues such as immigration, abortion, inflation or gender identity.

Political power used to flow from grazing stock and vast acreages. Now it flows from Wall Street stock and scenic mansions. For example, Sheehy and Downing own homes in the chichi resort of Big Sky; Gianforte comes from the expensive Bozeman area; Busse comes from the scenic and pricey Flathead region.

Sure, those places are Montana. But Montana’s politicians once came from less-glamorous places, including bare-knuckle Butte, the faded mining metropolis; remote Libby, with its logging and mining economy; and dusty Billings, an oil and cow town. In the 2000 and 2004 gubernatorial elections, Democrat Brian Schweitzer owned a Flathead mint farm but bragged that he was raised on an eastern Montana cattle ranch.

In other words, politicians once claimed Montanan identity through shared experience. That often included in-state birth and always included land-based pastimes like hunting. Today it’s less “Are you a hunter?” than “Are you endorsed by the National Rifle Association?”

The shift makes it hard to interpret politicians’ actions. For example, in 2021, Governor Gianforte a killed a mountain lion and trapped and killed a wolf. Because he’s not a rancher-politician, we can’t understand, much less endorse, such acts in the context of a lifelong working relationship with land and livestock.

Similarly, Gianforte, Busse, and Downing have all been cited for various gradations of hunting violations. Should we judge them differently than we would a native-born hunter? And Sheehy’s company is deeply in debt. For a ranch, that wouldn’t be surprising. But for an aerospace company?

To the rest of the country, choosing leaders based on ideologies may sound familiar. But Montana, aka “Big Sky Country,” used to pride itself on being different. More place-based, more rural, more centered on the individual.

Outsiders may have dismissed such philosophies as insular and backward—but that dismissal was what made them outsiders.

How should we react to this change? We might celebrate that Montana is leaving behind its tired frontier myths. Or we might mourn the shift, because Montana’s extraordinary landscapes—and people’s deep relationships to them—were what once made the state special. As Montana changes from bovines to business and from rural to resort, its politics can feel like yet another big-box store featuring all the latest national trends.

Then there’s Senator Jon Tester, the lone elected Democrat who’s running for re-election. The third-generation farmer from the wide-open plains of Big Sandy represents the land-based tradition that Montanans once cherished. But do Montana voters still want a senator like that?

Regardless of outcomes this November, the act of choosing by ideology rather than deep roots in the land marks a huge change.

John Clayton is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. The author of books including Stories from Montana’s Enduring Frontier, his newsletter is naturalstories.substack.com.

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