An excerpt:

At the crest of Teton Pass there used to be a big wooden sign with a black silhouette of a big-hatted cowboy pointing east into the valley. The sign read: Yonder is Jackson Hole, the Last of the Old West.The sign is no longer there and the valley is no longer the last of the old west. Even back then a more apt “last of the old west” could have been posted outside Elko, Nevada (sheep and cattle ranching), or Kemmerer, Wyoming (coal mining), or Butte, Montana (copper), or many another western settlement.

To read more of Martin’s article, click the image below:

http://www.canyoncountryzephyr.com/2013/12/02/from-the-zephyr-archives-losing-solitude-mountain-rangers-at-jackson-hole-by-martin-murie/

from the ElkoDaily & Thomas Mitchell…
“Filling Lake Mead first before storing water in Lake Powell both saves substantial amounts of Colorado River water and helps restore the river’s damaged ecosystems,” the Glen Canyon Institute asserts. “The FMF plan designates Lake Mead as the primary water storage facility for the Colorado River Basin. Glen Canyon Dam would be operated to allow water to flow through the hydropower plant and outlet works, filling Lake Mead reservoir downstream before impounding water in Lake Powell.

Squeezing every drop out of the Colorado River should be a major priority to those who live in the seven states that depend on the river for water.

To read more of the story, click the image below:

http://elkodaily.com/news/opinion/commentary-fill-lake-mead-first/article_3e8ad65c-7d97-11e3-9055-0019bb2963f4.html

To see more of Tom Till’s photography, click the image below:

http://www.canyoncountryzephyr.com/2013/12/02/from-tom-till-then-now-castle-gate-split-mountain/

To see more from “Herb Ringer’s American West,” click the image below:

http://www.canyoncountryzephyr.com/2013/12/02/herb-ringers-american-west-reno-fallon-nevada-1944-2013/

Earth, seen through Saturn’s rings.

Click the image to read the full story on NPR:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/07/22/204639834/look-cassinis-version-of-the-pale-blue-dot

To see “Clinging to the Maps,” click the image below:

http://www.canyoncountryzephyr.com/2013/12/02/clinging-hopelessly-to-the-maps-1941-conoco-touraide-travel-guide/

Click the image below to see “The Wilder West:”

http://www.canyoncountryzephyr.com/2013/12/02/the-wilder-west-good-the-bad-and-the-frozen-art-by-dave-wilder/

An excerpt:

When I was a little squirt, my family would take holiday trips from Los Alamos to St. George.  It was a long day’s drive.  Punctuated only by a few gas stops with rushed potty breaks.  Dad would burn up the miles, road map at hand. My brothers would mark the distance traveled by identifying the various landmarks along the way. They would rattle off names of  roadside attractions and distant faded mountains.  I learned to find my way to Grandma’s house using landmarks, rather than the numbers and colored lines on a map.

To read more of Dave’s article, click the image below:

http://www.canyoncountryzephyr.com/2013/12/02/pointblank-the-landmark-we-built-by-dave-jarvis/