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An ugly tower threatens Bears Ears National Monument

By Mark Maryboy

My Navajo homeland is the great expanse of land between four sacred mountains in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah….

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Road failure in Wyoming reveals a housing crisis

By Molly Absolon

I live in Victor, Idaho—one of Jackson, Wyoming’s, bedroom communities. Every day, roughly 3,400 Idaho residents drive over Teton Pass…

Photo courtesy Wyoming Dept. of Transportation

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It’s a perfect storm for fire insurance

By Dave Marston

Westerners have begun looking at their homes differently these days. Are those trees too close? Should I move all that…

House in Douglas County, CO, courtesy Lena Deravianko, Unsplash

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In small towns, bookstores are thriving

By John Clayton

“I love to spend my day in a bookstore,” said Amy Sweet. She lives in Red Lodge, Montana, and was…

beartooth books, Red Lodge, Montana, John Clayton

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What Aspen can teach us

By Jacob Richards

Back in the ‘90s, when writer Hunter S. Thompson held court at the Woody Creek Tavern just outside of Aspen,…

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We won’t forget what happened 101 years ago

By Shaun Ketchum Jr.

One hundred and one years ago, my Ute ancestors were forced to live within a barbed-wire camp in Blanding, a…

La Sal Range in Northern San Juan County, Utah, courtesy Wikimedia Commons

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Hunting is a valuable tool in managing lions

By Andrew Carpenter

Asking the public to decide if it’s a good idea to ban hunting mountain lions and bobcats is no way…

Mountain lion, courtesy Writers on the Range

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Bobcats need protection, not killing for their pelts

By Ted Williams

Unlike the rest of modern wildlife management, killing bobcats is unregulated, driven not by science but by fur prices. We’re…

Bobcat caught in a trap, photo courtesy of Animal Wellness Action

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How did so much stuff pile up?

By Rich Wandschneider

A few years ago, I turned a carport into a bedroom. But first I had to empty out the books,…

Adam Winger, Unsplash, Logan Utah

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Building a huge park is anything but easy

By Dave Marston

Marc Katz is a retired entrepreneur who lives part-time in Durango, Colorado, a town of 19,000 people who all seem…

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A candy bar fueled the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic

By Dave Marston

If you don’t know much about the Iron Horse bike race that begins in the town of Durango in southwestern…

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In Wyoming, tormenting a wolf is not a big deal

By Wendy Keefover

It’s legal in Wyoming to chase coyotes and run over them with snowmobiles, but recently, a man used his snowmobile…

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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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