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A teenager who was killed should still be with us

By Matt Witt

If you think that race is only an issue in the country’s biggest cities, consider a murder trial that recently…

Andrea Woffard, Ellison’s mother, speaks MATT WITT

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Farmington, a city in need of a jolt

By Dave Marston

The good news these days about Farmington, New Mexico, is that the air looks clear. That’s a huge change. For…

Blue skies over the closed San Juan Generating Station, Mike Eisenfeld photo

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Guns have changed everything, especially childhood

By Laura Pritchett

I learned to shoot on the family ranch, as ranch kids are wont to do. My gun education was furthered…

AR-15 Free Float VLCN M-Lok Handguard + STNGR Axiom Red Dot Sight Photo by STNGR Industries on Unsplash

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Old bones can be a small town’s movie stars

By Adam Larson

The prehistoric past can perk up the present. When woolly mammoth bones were found in my hometown in Wisconsin years…

Allosaurus jimmadseni, courtesy NPS

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Killing fish to save frogs

By Ted Williams

By Ted Williams Shortly after World War II, California fish managers had a brainstorm: They loaded juvenile trout into airplanes…

Yellow-legged frog (Rana muscosa), courtesy USGS

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Land exchanges serve the wealthy

By Erica Rosenberg

In 2017, the public lost 1,470 acres of wilderness-quality land at the base of Mount Sopris near Aspen, Colorado. For…

Old growth Ponderosa pine on public land that would be transferred to private ownership in proposed Valle Seco land trade, photo courtesy of Colorado Wild Public Lands

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Some people just like to get things done

By John Clayton

Although I’ve lived in a small Western town for 30 years now, I have never known much about one of…

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A Colorado reservoir gets ready for an epic snowmelt

By Dave Marston

Reservoir manager Ken Beck says wryly that he has lots of water coming his way, “and I need a hole…

Ken Beck at the Pine River Irrigation headquarters

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A dancing bird finally gets some protection

By John Horning

What I remember most about that dark early morning of crouching on the prairie is the rhythmic sound of pounding….

Lesser Prairie Chicken (Tympanuchus pallidicinctus) performing dancing or “drumming” on a lek (mating display), in northern Oklahoma, USA.

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No one wants to collide with a deer

By Pepper Trail

A deer stands paralyzed in the middle of a mountain highway, stunned by the lights and deafening roar of an…

Moose crossing on highway animal wildlife overpass. On the Trans-Canada Highway in Banff National Park.

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When giants fall, we need to listen

By Joe Stone

“God has cared for these trees …but he cannot save them from fools.”— John Muir In just two years, wildfire…

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Let’s tell the truth about those big, bad wolves

By Story Warren

The return of wolves to the West has always been contentious, and the deaths last fall of more than 40…

Hans Veth via Unsplash

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Larmer was the first editor of Writers on the Range after it landed at HCN in 1998, he went on to become publisher/editor of High Country News (HCN) 2003-2020, and is currently senior development director HCN. Larmer is also on the advisory board of Writers on the Range.

Writers on the Range grew out of the West’s public lands, growth, and culture wars of the 1990s. At the time, environmentalists were at loggerheads with the timber, mining, oil and gas and ranching industries that had dominated and shaped land-use and rural communities for decades. 

Meanwhile, a flood of newcomers poured into the region’s urban areas and smaller towns, stressing their social and economic fabrics beyond recognition. How could the West sort through these contentious issues in a civil manner?

The answer was to give voice to a wide range of people from the region itself.  Writers with different backgrounds, espousing new ideas, were put front and center on the region’s opinion pages.

After a brief run as a think tank, Writers on the Range landed on the front porch of High Country News in 1997.  High Country News is the well-known, highly awarded publication that covers the west’s diverse natural and human communities.  It was a perfect match.

Soon dozens of news outlets subscribed.  Over the next 20 years, Writers on the Range published fresh columns from writers and thinkers across the ideological spectrum, provoking thought, generating debate, and defining the possibilities of a better west.

 It was truly a grassroots opinion service and, now as an independent non-profit organization, is still so today.

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