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In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the timber industry was drawn to the Colorado Plateau’s extensive pine forests. And African Americans played a big part in that industry. -
Arizona Game and Fish DepartmentBison are among the most emblematic animals of the American West. Many Indigenous peoples relied on them for survival. Some, such as the Zuni, have oral histories of hunting them and performing a Buffalo Dance ceremony. Bison are known primarily as Plains animals, but historically they did extend into the Southwest.
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In far northwest New Mexico, old farming traditions are meeting young appetites—and it’s a meeting where everyone wins. -
The winter solstice is the longest night of the year for those in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s a time traditionally associated with rebirth and renewal, as the sun pauses in its yearly trek.
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Ancient foot trails radiate out from the Hopi mesas like the spokes of a wheel. One of these is known as the Palat’kwapi Trail, and it traverses through landscapes rich in Hopi history.
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Sometimes a sheet of plastic not much thicker than a sheet of paper can make all the difference for a growing plant. On the sunbaked lands of the Navajo Nation, a hoop house garden can be an important way to provide good nutrition.
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What could be rarer than diamonds? Turquoise, actually! Natural gemstone-grade turquoise happens to be one of the rarest natural materials on our planet, and one that has been celebrated, collected, and coveted worldwide. Here in the Southwest, turquoise holds special significance to many Native cultures.
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The Utah agave is also known as the century plant. But it doesn’t really take a century for this blue-green succulent to send up a long stalk and bloom—more like forty years. Just before it blooms, it’s full of sugars. That’s the perfect time to harvest its heart, a culinary tradition among the Hualapai people going back thousands of years.
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Lake Mead is lower than it’s ever been, the result of decades of drought and warmer temperatures caused by climate change. The sinking water levels have revealed a different sort of catastrophe; layers of volcanic ash preserved in stone.
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Only a fraction of the nearly 15,000 apple varieties once known in North America are still cultivated. Now, a few hard-core searchers are combing fields and ravines, reports and records, even neighbors’ front yards, to relocate some of those long-lost old apples.
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Footprints made tens of thousands of years ago may look like they’ve been erased by time and weather, but like invisible ink, they can sometimes reappear under the right conditions.
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The Grand Canyon is riddled with caves, and many of them hold secrets…. But none so strange as the Mystery of the Mummified Bats.
