Exploring the American frontier

Washington Post

22-03-2025

Out where the world is in the making, Where fewer hearts in despair are aching, That's where the West begins … – Arthur Chapman
The West has long captivated Americans' imaginations with its iconic vistas and mythical lore. Mountains jutting toward the heavens. Windswept valleys and ochre-colored deserts. A land of rugged freedom.
Yet endless transformation may be the region's most significant feature, one that explains both its past and its future. 'Change is a constant,' Donna L. Lybecker, a professor at Idaho State University, has written. 'From manifest destiny to the Sagebrush Rebellion, from ranching to fracking, from boom to bust to boom again,' the West's reality as well as image have been 'redefined and remade.'
Today that is happening ever faster, fueled post-pandemic by technology, economics and wealth. 'You're starting to see a shift not just in urban centers but in these small communities,' Lybecker says. The impact is uneven and not always welcome. There are, of course, those who benefit and those who come up short.
Washington Post photographer Matt McClain traversed this evolving frontier to look for some of the most pronounced signs of change. Guided by population, employment and other data, his search ultimately landed him in five communities from Montana to New Mexico. In each, he took in the old and new.
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Montana Losses and gains in Missoula County Andrew Willard goes hunting south of Missoula before his workday at onX, a company that's part of Montana's tech boom.
Pyramid Mountain Lumber had been in Todd Johnson's family for three-quarters of a century, started by his grandfather and a partner in tiny Seeley Lake at a time when sawmills made economic sense amid the wilderness of Western Montana. But that time is well past, and last fall Johnson made the painful decision to shut down.
1/3 In his office at Pyramid Mountain Lumber, Todd Johnson wraps up ahead of the company's shutdown.
2/3 The demise of Pyramid Mountain Lumber reflects Montana's changing economy.
3/3 Piles of equipment await sale at Pyramid Mountain Lumber in Seeley Lake.
'You just cannot get the labor,' he explains several months after the last load of lumber shipped. People moving to the area these days are mainly retirees and second-home owners, not potential mill workers. The latter, Johnson says, no longer can afford to live in town.
He'd come up with no alternative to closure. Pyramid needed to produce more lumber per hour to offset rising costs, yet doing so was impossible without more employees. His voice betrays both sadness and resignation for Seeley Lake's future.
'Our identity,' he says, 'won't be a blue-collar logging town.'
Seeley Lake residents like Wendy Dalrymple lost their jobs when Pyramid Mountain Lumber ceased operation.
Missoula, Montana's second-biggest city, continues to see development.
Barely an hour southwest of Seeley Lake is a far different story of woods and wilderness — plus cutting-edge mapping technology and navigation apps. The 21st-century savvy is how a company called onX helps hunters, hikers and other outdoors adventurers know exactly where they are even when they're in the absolute middle of nowhere.
1/3 Andrew Willard, left, and Zach Sandau are both outdoor enthusiasts and onX staffers.
2/3 Travis Olson works in the Missoula office of onX.
3/3 The onX headquarters in Missoula reflects the tech company's focus on the outdoors.
Chief Operating Officer Josh Spitzer emphasizes onX's 'ethos' as much as its growth. 'There is an emphasis on place,' he says, 'and the lived reality that we are in a wild landscape and we respect and take care of it.'
Founded in Missoula by a Montana native, the company is part of a high-tech boom that began revving up across the state even before the pandemic. Since 2009, it has grown to more than 400 employees. Half are in Montana.
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Wyoming The changing frontier landscape of Cheyenne County Lene' Whitt gives antibiotics to a calf on the family's ranch in Cheyenne, Wyoming, as daughter Sophia watches.
He has neighbors and friends who have sold their land, Dave Berry says. Longtime ranchers who made a deal when wealthy people and corporations came calling. Just last July, Meta announced it would build an $800 million data center outside Cheyenne. Microsoft already has several centers in the area.
So how is he feeling about the future? 'Totally mixed,' admits Berry, a third-generation rancher who owns the 50,000-acre Horse Creek Cattle Co. 'Development is a real threat.'
Despite the changes taking place, Dave Berry says what's consistent is 'ranchers' love of the land.'
His is a 'traditional cow-calf operation.' It entails hard, sometimes dangerous and mostly solitary work. Yet a conversation with Berry is a conversation about a Wyoming native's love of the land and the generations to follow. He is certain his own family's commitment to ranching will endure. 'I have great faith in that continuing,' he says.
1/4 Lene' Whitt shares a moment with daughters Dakota, 11, and Madison, 6.
2/4 Madison Whitt carries milk to the family's farm stand.
3/4 Lola Ringrose stands outside Cheyenne's Atlas Theatre to promote the annual Old Fashioned Melodrama.
4/4 A Lowe's regional distribution center interrupts prairie in Cheyenne.
Tom Hirsig's history here also runs deep. He grew up on a cattle ranch north of town, his closest neighbor 13 miles away, and went to college on a rodeo scholarship. And while his résumé highlights a career in real estate management and a stint as state insurance commissioner, it's Cheyenne Frontier Days that matters most now. He's the president and CEO.
Actually, the celebration was always at the center of Hirsig's life. His great-great-uncle co-founded it back in 1897; his father was arena director for 37 years. Every summer, the 10-day extravaganza draws nearly half a million people from around the world, and to many, what they see is the genuine West — no matter the reality of those huge data centers.
1/5 An afternoon rodeo attracts an enthusiastic crowd to Cheyenne Frontier Days.
2/5 Rodeo competitors start prepping for their events.
3/5 Saddle bronc rider Chase Brooks hangs on.
4/5 The Little Sun Drum and Dance Group gets ready for its spot in a Cheyenne Frontier Days parade.
5/5 The parade, which marches through downtown Cheyenne, draws a variety of spectators.
'I don't think you can stop it,' Hirsig says of the change that is happening, that will create a different landscape and perhaps a different culture. Even so, he remains hopeful: 'I would like to say we're going to hold on to our Western way of life.'
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Colorado On the Western Slope, renewable energy and reinvention The High Mesa Solar Plus Storage facility in Garfield County, Colorado, is part of Holy Cross Energy's power grid.
It started with a small group of farmers and ranchers who came together during the Great Depression, desperate to bring 'the miracle of electricity' to two rural valleys in western Colorado. Their solution was to build their own power grid.
Race ahead to the 21st century.
Today the cooperative known as Holy Cross Energy annually generates 77 percent of its power through solar, wind and other renewable sources. By the end of this decade, the co-op aims to hit 100 percent — 'to completely decarbonize' for tens of thousands of customers across five counties, president and CEO Bryan Hannegan says.
1/4 Dean and Tayler VanWinkle, with daughter Paisley, have a cattle operation in western Colorado.
2/4 VanWinkle repairs fencing in Mesa County, where he runs part of his cattle operation.
3/4 Securing fencing on the range is arduous but essential.
4/4 VanWinkle loads up his family's dogs after a long day of work.
The goal is striking given that Colorado is the fourth-largest oil-producing state in the country. Dalida Sassoon Bollig puts it in a broader context, though — part of the 'reinventing' that's taking place on the Western Slope.
Tourists gravitate to the pools of Glenwood Hot Springs Resort in Garfield County.
'The pioneering spirit is very much alive,' according to Bollig, chief executive officer of the nonprofit Business Incubator Center that serves Mesa County and the surrounding region. 'But it's a modern version of it.'
1/5 Matthew Varela, at work at High Mesa Solar Plus Storage, enjoys a stunning landscape.
2/5 Despite the growth in renewable energy on the Western Slope, oil and gas drilling remain strong.
3/5 A drilling rig towers over Duayne Ruona on Laramie Energy property in Garfield County.
4/5 Shoppers check out Bullocks Western Wear in Glenwood Springs.
5/5 Morgan Haners and Brian Goodrich relax at Iron Mountain Hot Springs in Garfield County.
Bollig talks up the innovation and diversity she sees in the 79 ventures located on the center's campus in Grand Junction. Valkyrie Recovery Systems, to name one, specializes in cutting-edge parachute technology to help aerospace companies retrieve their rockets. It was started by an Army veteran who spent several of his military years jumping out of planes.
'You have this ecosystem that's being built out here,' Bollig says. 'The soul of entrepreneurship constantly seeps through.'
Sunrise begins to color the sky over the Loma Boat Launch in Mesa County.
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Arizona In Maricopa County, huge growth and challenges Laurynn Irsik carries some last belongings as she and her family move into a new home in Maricopa County, Arizona.
Eleven cotton gins were once scattered across Maricopa County. That was in the days before Phoenix boomed and sprawled and a once-rural community like Goodyear, due west of the city, became its own burgeoning suburb and a draw for vast data centers and warehouse distribution buildings.
These days only one gin remains. It belongs in part to Ronald Rayner's family farming operation, A Tumbling T Ranches, which still grows cotton, alfalfa and grains despite the considerable challenges of ever-encroaching development. 'We're shrinking our acreage,' he says. 'This year will be the smallest in many years.'
1/5 Southwest of Phoenix, sunset silhouettes a cotton harvester.
2/5 Oscar Quevedo harvests cotton on land farmed by A Tumbling T Ranches in Maricopa County.
3/5 Ramon Cuellar takes a break during his shift at the Farmers Gin in Phoenix.
4/5 Christian Grijalva carries a sample at the Farmers Gin, the sole remaining cotton gin in Maricopa County.
5/5 A worker puts identifying markings on cotton recently harvested by A Tumbling T Ranches.
The octogenarian is adapting. He and his family are researching a vertical farming project that would require a fraction of the land needed for ground farming while using a fraction of the water. The crops, racked and stacked in layers, would be vegetables like spinach and kale, herbs such as basil and oregano.
'That sounds like agriculture to me,' Rayner says.
Old Town Scottsdale dates to the late 1800s, but these days it's filled with restaurants and shops.
Deer graze on a golf course in the Verrado neighborhood of Buckeye, on the western edge of Phoenix.
If only all creatures had similar ways to adapt to Maricopa's sprawl.
Yet since the early 1980s, when the nonprofit Liberty Wildlife was founded, the dangers that such animals face have increased exponentially. So many tall buildings that can be deadly obstacles for migrating birds, so many people moving into desert habitat that rabbits, coyotes and other species call home.
1/5 David Brines of Not Your Husband Moving wheels the Irsik family's possessions into their new house.
2/5 Laurynn Irsik stocks the refrigerator in her new kitchen.
3/5 New housing and subdivisions continue to pop up in Maricopa County.
4/5 Frankie the wild turkey hangs out with Barb Del' Ve at Liberty Wildlife in Phoenix.
5/5 Gerardo Torres and Guille Garcia of Coatlicue Danza Mexica perform during a celebration at Liberty Wildlife.
'We do a huge amount of rehabilitation,' says Megan Mosby, the organization's executive director and CEO. Last year alone, the staff and volunteers treated some 10,000 injured or orphaned animals at their facility just south of the Phoenix airport. Seventy percent of those were birds.
'If we spread out much more into the desert,' Mosby worries, 'then we'll have nothing left.'
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New Mexico High on growing cannabis in Doña Ana County The Organ Mountains are a dramatic backdrop for Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Chile peppers, onions and corn. Pecans, peaches and apples. And now cannabis.
There's a new crop in town in the fertile Mesilla Valley, where the population of Las Cruces, New Mexico's second-largest city, has increased more than 50 percent since the turn of the century. A new, very lucrative crop that puts the traditional vegetables and fruits of Doña Ana County to shame.
1/5 Erika Garcia and Edgar Luna of Pre-Hispanic Dance Group celebrate Mexican Independence Day in the historic town of Mesilla.
2/5 A competitor reaches for the money during a greased pole contest at the Mesilla celebration.
3/5 Workers go row-by-row of chile peppers in Doña Ana County.
4/5 Sabino Olivas takes a break while picking peppers for Grajeda Farms.
5/5 Quinton and Alison Youngker, with 2-year-old Olive, head to a full-moon-night event at White Sands National Park.
Native son Tony Miller is among the enthusiasts here. After the state legalized recreational marijuana in 2021, the former highway engineer got to work turning an egg farm that once housed 3 million chickens into what he now touts as a 'state-of-the-art cannabis grow facility.'
Its name? The Baked Chicken Farm.
A woman walks down Calle De Guadalupe in Mesilla.
Not that his product is going to take over, geographically speaking. Chiles — for which Las Cruces is famous — and pecans are still farmed by the thousands of acres. But the price they bring per pound at market can't hold a green leaf to cannabis.
1/4 Workers in the Baked Chicken Farm's 'veg room' place young cannabis plants in large pots to keep growing.
2/4 Samantha Castro is part of the Baked Chicken Farm's operation in Berino, south of Las Cruces.
3/4 Cannabis is hung to dry at the indoor-grow facility.
4/4 Cannabis cigarettes are nearly ready to go at the Baked Chicken Farm.
Miller's first full-year harvest yielded 10,000 pounds, and he says he got an average $1,000 a pound.
'Cash crop wise,' he allows, 'it's super valuable.'
Mesilla's history includes the trial of outlaw Billy the Kid, who in 1881 was found guilty of murdering a local sheriff and sentenced to hang.