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Montana’s politicians have lost their ties to land

By John Clayton

Tim Sheehy, the Republican seeking to unseat Montana Democratic Senator Jon Tester, is a business executive born and raised out…

Montana, plains Lee Peters image, via Unsplash

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Coal continues its precipitous decline

By Peter Gartrell

The coal mining industry reacted with outrage when the Bureau of Land Management recently announced plans to stop issuing new…

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One person who cares can change a student’s life

By Katie Klingsporn

By the time she took the dais at the Arapaho Charter High School graduation this spring, Principal Katie Law was…

Katie Law hands out a diploma, Katie Klingsporn image

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Mountain bikers push to ride through wilderness

By Kevin Proescholdt

“Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed…” —…

Denali Wilderness, Alaska, courtesy Wilderness Watch

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Before you sleep on the ground, read this

By Marjorie “Slim” Woodruff

What fun: You’re going on a guided outdoor trip. As you get ready, here are some tips from actual guides…

Backpackers in the White Goat Wilderness, Alberta, Canada

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Ditch “inefficiencies” give us wetlands

By Richard Knight

Imagine Westerners waking up one morning only to discover that many of their most cherished wetlands have dried up, gone….

Since 1917, five generations have lived along the Animas Consolidated Ditch outside of Durango, CO, Patty Zink pictured, courtesy Dave Marston

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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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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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