history

To the surprise of many, the great naturalist John Muir spent a year exploring the Petrified Forest in eastern Arizona. Author Scott Thybony set out to learn more about Muir and his desert wanderings. He tells the story in this month’s Canyon Commentary.

Commentator Scott Thybony headed into the Painted Desert to find the route taken by an eccentric anthropologist in 1881. He discovered a wind-carved world and learned from a friend a more civilized way of traveling in the backcountry.

On investigative travels and assignments, author Scott Thybony is no longer surprised by the unexpected questions — and answers — he gets. Thybony remembers some surprising interactions he’s had along the way in this month’s Canyon Commentary.

Road trips on lonely and desolate roads are woven into the western experience. But even the most windswept, far-off places have stories to tell. In this month’s Canyon Commentary, author Scott Thybony takes a drive through New Mexico while contemplating cattle drives and fresh-baked pies.

Wells Spicer was a frontier lawyer who led a grueling expedition in the Grand Canyon and also happened to play pivotal roles in two most famous court cases in the American West. Scott Thybony tells his story in this month's Canyon Commentary.

The first white explorer to descend the Colorado River through Grand Canyon published an account of his journey 150 years ago. In this month’s Canyon Commentary Scott Thybony travels to the Vermillion Cliffs to see if he can match the view.

In his latest Canyon Commentary, author Scott Thybony travels to Navajo country with a former working cowboy and friend to get his take on a spectacular rock art panel depicting a horseback raid.

Author Scott Thybony had no idea a book about a journey to the Grand Canyon by a band of scalphunters in the 19th century would lead him to an important fossil tracksite millions of years old.

Trains are so much a part of a railroad town they tend to blend in with the background. But author Scott Thybony became curious about those who drive them so he sat down with one of the first female railroad engineers in the U.S. to listen to her stories of the home road.

In this month’s Canyon Commentary, author Scott Thybony reflects on past assignments and his appreciation for all the people he’s met along the way. They’ve ranged from a firefighter overtaken by a wall of flame to a Mescalero woman gathering water from a sacred spring.