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Zach JacobNestled within the shade of mixed-pine forests, freckled orchid flowers unfurl as small clusters on crimson stems. This is the lesser-known, native cousin to your orchid houseplant, called the spotted coralroot. -
Courtesy/Lowell ObservatoryNot only can smoke cause health risks for residents... it’s a cause of concern for astronomers, too.
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Chaco Canyon, in northwestern New Mexico, is the setting for one of the largest ancestral Pueblo communities in the southwest. -
Forest managers are researching fungi as a surprising new tool to aid restoration projects that ease the risk of wildfire. -
Throughout the southwest are thousands of villages that were once the homes and gathering places for ancestral Pueblo peoples. These structures represent the last thousand years of Indigenous skill and ingenuity. -
Montezuma Castle is a cliff dwelling overlooking Wet Beaver Creek in the Verde Valley. Undoubtedly, the water, plants, animals and other natural resources drew the Sinagua people here a thousand years ago — and attracted attention ever since. -
The San Francisco Peaks ragwort stands sentry over northern Arizona from its home on the San Francisco peaks. It grows close to the earth in unassuming, flat-topped clusters of blue-green leaves. -
Nowhere in the world can you visit an urban ice age exhibit taking place in real time, except the La Brea Tar pits of Los Angeles. It's known for the massive ice age megafauna animals trapped within the unsuspecting tar. -
The headwaters of the San Juan River originate in the snow-capped peaks of the southern Rocky Mountains. Along its journey, the river is joined by numerous tributaries as it flows through the states of Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. -
Ancestors of present-day horses originated in North America and spread around the world from there. But, according to the archaeological record, they were absent from the continent since the end of the Pleistocene some 10,000 years ago until Europeans re-introduced them. -
The shrinking shoreline of Lake Powell has revealed a wonder: an extraordinary collection of fossil bones from the Early Jurassic period that offers a glimpse into the life of a now-extinct creature called a tritylodontid. -
When you think of our Nation’s oldest settlements, stories of Plymouth Rock, Jamestown or Albany may come to mind. Yet America’s oldest towns are actually right here on the Colorado Plateau — Oraibi in Arizona and Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico.
