A Story by Melissa Farlow

Wild Lands of the West | The BLM, National Geographic Magazine

The West was once considered vast and empty land, much of which no one wanted. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is the steward of a quarter of a billion acres of public land — leftover land thought to be of no use. Today those wild western lands are highly valued and appreciated — now the land that everyone wants. The BLM encompasses the essential conflict of the old and the new west.

In a barren and harsh desert, partygoers pass through dry sagebrush where cowboys move cattle. They are on their way to Burning Man, an annual counter-culture arts festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert that attracts 25,000 people. Many dress in outlandish costumes and build sculptures that they burn …

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Smothered in dust, a cowboy on horseback works the last bit of daylight moving cattle toward water on a Bureau of Land Management grazing allotment in southern Utah.
For most of the arid and semiarid American West, water is a precious commodity and livestock must have it to survive. In the 1930s the Taylor Grazing Act restricted the number of livestock that could graze on public land and fees were collected from ranchers for the first time.
In the 1970s the Federal Land Policy and Management Act reflected changing social values with respect to environment protection and conservation of natural resources. The act states that livestock grazing is considered a legitimate use of federal land, but that it must coexist with: recreation; protection of wildlife, endangered species, archeological and cultural resources, and clean water; mining and hunting; and wild horses and burros.

Too rugged for roads, too lovely to ingnore, deeply folded slopes of the rain-swept King Range soar above the California’s Lost Coast. Established in 1970, King Range was the first designated National Conservation Area with 35 miles of remote coastline between the mouth of the Mattole River and Sinkyone Wilderness State Park in northern California.
King Range is at the edge of the North American tectonic plate, forced upward by the other two offshore plates. The mountains have risen about 66 feet in just the last 6,000 years.
It is an unusual piece of land for Bureau of Land Management (BLM) because most BLM land surrounds small pieces of privately owned land, but this remote 68,000-acre coastline is the opposite and is entirely surrounded by property that is in private holdings. Much of the region was homesteaded and the land that was left was considered undesirable because it is too steep and too rocky to live on.

Castle Valley’s regal monoliths shadow a red rock landscape near Moab, Utah. Long shunned for its tortured terrain, the Moab area first found celebrity in 1949, after director John Ford shot “Wagon Master” there. Since then, the picture-perfect scenery has provided the backdrop for more than two-dozen films.
Castle Valley is part of a large collapsed salt anticline (folded rock layers with an uplifted core) from when an ancient sea was buried over 300 million years ago. The entire area was lifted up in the late Tertiary creating the Colorado Plateau. As the land eroded, salt layers dissolved when mixed with ground water and the rock strata collapsed and eroded, forming the valley.
The total valley is approximately eight miles long and three miles wide. The average annual precipitation for Castle Valley is about 9 inches, and temperatures range from the high nineties in the summer to the mid-thirties in the winter.

Snow-capped peaks of the Alaska Range rise beyond the Maclaren River north of the Denali highway.
Several peaks in view have elevations greater than 12,000 feet. Layers of snow accumulate and are compacted into ice, forming a glacier. As the glacier becomes heavier it moves down the slope, gouging the rock below. This glacial erosion contributes to the rugged, jagged appearance of the Alaska Range, and creates the long U-shaped valleys seen from the road.

The Trans-Alaskan Pipeline crosses Alaska’s North Slope, carrying oil from Prudhoe Bay south to Valdez, Alaska. North of the Yukon River, 420 miles of the 800-mile pipeline were built above ground because of the unstable soil conditions from thaw-sensitive permafrost.
The pipeline was purposely built in a zigzag configuration to allow the pipe to move more easily from side to side and lengthwise in cases of earthquakes or temperature-related fluctuations. The effectiveness of this design was proven in 2002 when the pipeline survived a 7.9 magnitude earthquake.
The pipeline was built after the 1973 oil crisis caused a sharp rise in oil prices in the U.S.
Opposition to construction of the pipeline came from Alaska Native groups concerned because the pipeline would cross native lands with no economic benefits to inhabitants. Conservationists were angry at what they saw as an incursion into America’s last wilderness.

A thin ribbon of humanity flows across the tundra along Alaska’s Dalton Highway. Nearby, the trans-Alaska pipeline carries Prudhoe Bay oil south 800 miles to the port of Valdez. The Dalton highway and the Alaska pipeline ae visible in the open tundra of the North Slope.
The road was built for the pipeline and is known as the “haul road” for the trucks carrying supplies as the pipeline was built. It was named after James William Dalton, an Arctic engineer involved in early oil exploration efforts. The Trans-Alaska pipeline, which runs through Bureau of Land Management land above the Yukon River and Brooks Range, originally cost $8 billion and was completed in the 1970s.
The Dalton highway ends 414 miles north of Fairbanks in Deadhorse, the farthest north you can drive in Alaska. Support pipes along the Alaska Pipeline are cooled by refrigerant coils that keep them from transmitting heat into the thaw-sensitive permafrost. The pipeline pumps 47,000 gallons of oil a month. The Bureau of Land Management oversees 2.1 billion acres of land along the Dalton Highway north of the Yukon River.

Frigid lake water awaits a swimmer cooling off after a sauna at Toolik Research Station in the North Slope of Alaska. The research station is above the Arctic Circle and is home to scientists in the summer who study ice core samples measuring everything from the effect of light on plant nutrients (as indicated by root hair counts), to mercury levels in the air recorded since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

Wild horses run through the Honeycomb Buttes area of Wyoming’s Red Desert.
The desert’s stunning rainbow-colored hoodoos, towering buttes and prehistoric rock art define this rich landscape and provide a truly wild “home on the range.”
The seemingly barren landscape belies the area’s importance as a habitat for some 350 wildlife species, including pronghorn antelope. Over 50,000 pronghorns in one of the world’s largest herds roam the region along with a rare desert elk herd.
The Red Desert was included in The Wilderness Society’s list of “15 Most Endangered Wildlands” because of a massive oil and gas development in the heart of this 600,000-acre national treasure.

Deepening shadows signal the close of a long day for a cowboy working for the Bureau of Land Managment at a Nevada corral. Peering over a maze of fencing, he and his young daughter view mustangs that are being loaded from pens into trucks. After being gathered and processed, the wild horses may be be adopted or taken to refuges in several states.
An estimated nearly 100,000 wild horses roam western lands and many are descendants of Spanish horses brought to the New World in the 1500s. In the 1800s, the Spanish stock began to mix with European horses favored by settlers, trappers, and miners, that had escaped or were turned out by their owners.

Morning light reflects on canyon walls above the Dugout Ranch where a cowboy leads his horse from a stall to be saddled in San Juan County near Monticello, Utah.
A stunning piece of property, the ranch is surrounded by park and public land, where Puebloan rock art and dwellings are found through out the 5,200-acre ranch.
The ranch was attained for ecological research and managed as an economically viable and ecologically sustainable cattle ranch.

Dust rises from a valley as cattle are driven through sagebrush on a path to higher and wetter ground for more forage in Beef Basin in southwestern Utah.
Many Western ranchers depend heavily on Bureau of Land Management allotments since a devastating winter in the mid-1800s when cattle grazing on open range died from a lack of food.

Cowboys from central Utah wait for a signal to begin branding young calves at the Dugout Ranch near Monticello. One ranch hand was happily reunited with his dog. They were separated when the cowboys were moving cattle, and the dog jumped up into the saddle upon seeing his owner.

A man with a hat of flame rides a bicycle at the Burning Man Festival. Elaborate, colorful, and clever costumes are part of the annual, weeklong festival held in Black Rock Desert in northwestern Nevada’s Conservation Area. The counter-culture celebration focuses on art and self-expression.

A fish bike is abandoned in the Great Basin lakebed that is a dry remnant of the Pleistocene-era Lake Lahontan.
People take cover from the harsh sandstorm winds at the annual, weeklong Burning Man Festival. The counter-culture event celebrates art on public land in the Black Rock Playa, which is a dry lakebed in northwestern Nevada’s Conservation Area.
The arid desert extends 100 miles and encompasses 1,000 square miles of wilderness.

A sandstorm blasts across the desert of the Black Rock Playa in northwest Nevada.
Costumed and costumed revelers are vulnerable to the harsh conditions and changing environment of the salt flats during the annual Burning Man Festival.
A semi-nude Uncle Sam struggles to keep her hat and bicycle from blowing away in a dust storm. As many as 50,000 people form a small city for one week reveling in the outdoors making art in the wilderness landscape.

Wearing a smile and a sousaphone, “Red” makes music in a balancing act during the annual Burning Man art festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Playa (dry lake). The silver-painted Thompson was like a fleeting mirage, spinning by on her unicycle before disappearing into the crowd.
Costumes and performance art, sculptures and unique vehicles abound during a week full of whimsy and humor.
“There are no spectators,” says Red, “only participants.” The counter-culture celebration held annually in the Nevada desert attracts 50,000 people.

Harsh desert winds swirl around a 70-foot plywood and neon figure shortly before it is ignited in celebration at the end of the Burning Man Festival. For one week each summer, the Black Rock Desert in northwestern Nevada’s Conservation Area becomes home to one of Nevada’s largest cities, populated by tens of thousands of revelers celebrating art and counter-culture experience.

A trumpeter swan leads little ones carefully through the brush to feed in early morning along Alaska’s Denali Highway. After the juveniles are a year old, they turn from gray to white.
The trumpeter swan is the largest and most rare swan in the world. Hunted to the brink of extinction by the early 1900s, trumpeter swan numbers are rebounding in Canada and Alaska.

Checker mallow (Sidalcea calycosa) blossoms flutter on the slopes of the Carrizo Plain National Monument, where wildflowers flourish amid remnants of California’s original grasslands. The 50-mile valley covers almost 250,000 acres lying between the Temblor Mountains to the northeast and the Caliente Mountains to the southwest. The San Andreas Fault runs through it for a number of miles.

A young bull moose forages amid the woodlands of Campbell Tract, in Anchorage, Alaska. Moose, along with bear, wolf, and other mammals, make their home in the tract’s 730 acres, a natural area popular with outdoor enthusiasts.
Moose are the largest existing species in the deer family. Fully-grown males weigh up to 1,500 pounds and stand 7 feet high at the shoulder. Healthy animals can live up to 25 years. Feeding off plants and tree bark, the herbivores consume willows, birches and grasses by the pound.
Only males have antlers, which they shed during winter. They are used for dominance in the herd and to attract females during mating season.
Moose are plentiful in Alaska and although they have a passive demeanor and are generally tolerant of people from a distance, they can charge and attack.

Evening sun kisses the tops of aspens as fresh snow arrives on the peaks of the San Juan Mountains near Ouray, Colorado.
The landscape of the Rocky Mountains is renowned for an amazing display of fall colors that last only a week. Catching a view of the aspens’ golden colors at the peak of the season can be a stroke of luck. The brightest autumn colors are produced when dry, sunny days are followed by cool, dry nights.
Aspen propagate primarily by sprouting from an expanding root system, which creates groups of trees, or clones, ranging in size from several trees to many acres. These clones are genetically identical.

Aspens gild the slopes of the San Juan Mountains in Colorado on an early autumn morning in Bureau of Land Management terrain that includes 14,000-foot peaks.
Aspens are native to cold regions with cool summers and grow in large clonal colonies, derived from a single seeding and spreading by root suckers. Individual trees can live for 40–150 years, but a root system can survive thousands of years, sending up new sprouts as older trees die off.
Public lands are in the perfect environment for aspens to spread, however, in the urban landscape they are short-lived trees that are affected by numerous insects and diseases.

Stormy winds blow flowering leafy spurge near the water’s edge. The invasive plant has become the bane of western ranchers as it spreads quickly into rangeland, taking over native grasses and sickening cattle that eat the foliage.
Unlike most of the federal estate, Bureau of Land Management lands are often intertwined with private lands. On Medicine Lodge Creek in eastern Idaho, the river bottom is private, the hills publicly owned.

Lending his weight, a young boy helps his father mend fences on Roaring Springs Ranch in Harney County, not far from Steens Mountain in Frenchglen, Oregon.
Ranchers and environmentalists mended fences of their own to reach a mixed-use plan for the area. Preservation of the mountain was a priority for both sides, but each held different opinions on the best way that could be achieved. Meetings were held at the Roaring Springs Ranch in 2000 and a compromise was reached, balancing ecological factors and ranching traditions.

Children turn a cattle chute into a homegrown playground on the Roaring Springs Ranch, near Steens Mountain in Oregon. The young cowpokes learn to ride horses when they are young and help move cattle on the ranch.
Ranch families in the twenty-first century face many challenges, from competition with government-subsidized agribusiness corporations to tax laws that encourage development over agriculture and prevent the smooth transfer of land from one generation to the next.
Ranch families play a critical role in the U.S. as a stabilizing force in the American West.

Rising above a cloud of dust, Dugout Ranch owner Heidi Redd runs cattle on public land near Moab, Utah. Many western ranchers depend heavily on Bureau of Land Management allotments, where grazing fees remain far lower than on state or private lands. Redd’s Indian Creek Ranch, surrounded by public land, is owned by the Nature Conservancy.
The Conquistadors brought cattle to the Americas, and settlers moving west adopted many Spanish cattle-raising techniques. Cattle roamed freely on the open range until the increasing numbers degraded the quality of rangeland. The severe winter of 1886–1887 was devastating to livestock and stressed cattle died by the thousands. Huge losses bankrupted ranchers and prompted many to begin fencing off their land and to negotiate with the U.S. government for individual grazing leases in order to better control pastures for their own animals.

Marine Corps troops trained in fire fighting relieve tired, overburdened fire fighters and put out the last, smoking embers in part of an under-control wildfire in the wilderness near Clear Creek, Idaho. Over 200,000 acres of forest burned in the Clear Creek fire near Echo Canyon.
More than a billion dollars are spent annually suppressing fires that burn millions of acres of western land. The West is a tinderbox. Wild fires spread through thick forests every year because drought and long-term fire suppression make the underbrush a thick forest canopy.

Smoke and flames rise in eastern Oregon from a Bureau of Land Management prescribed burn designed to clear land for grazing and keep down potentially flammable undergrowth. Years of fire suppression create an environment that is prone to wild fires during dry summers. Managing cattle land and wilderness ecosystems is a difficult task.
More than a billion dollars are spent annually suppressing wildfires that burn millions of acres of western land. Fire plays an integral role in many forest and rangeland ecosystems, and decades of efforts directed at extinguishing every public land fire have disrupted naturally occurring fire cycles that once existed.
As more communities develop and grow in areas adjacent to fire-prone lands—in what is known as the wildland/urban interface—fires pose increasing risk to people and their property.

A worker stands inside an idle bucket that can hold 170 cubic yards of material while unearthing rock in a coal seam. Arch Coal employs over 500 workers at the Black Thunder Mine, which for many years was the nation’s single largest coalmine in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin.
Five draglines work the 70-foot Wyodak seam, producing more than 65 million tons of coal annually on federal land. Once the low-sulfur, sub-bituminous coal is crushed it is suitable for power station fuel without any other preparation.
The Black Thunder Mine produces more than two tons of coal per second, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. According to the company web site, the mine surpassed a 750 million ton shipment milestone 25 years after opening in 1977.

The Black Thunder Coal Mine in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin is the largest surface coal mine in the country. The dragline uncovers the earth down to a coal seam with a bucket that holds 170 cubic yards of rock.
Trucks are filled with coal which is then transferred to trains that haul it to power plants in tMissouri, Illinois and Tennessee. Approximately 91 tons of low sulpher coal is extracted from the mine annually.
The coal company employed over 500 workers at Black Thunder, which is regulated by the Bureau of Land Management and for many years was the nation’s single largest coal mine.
Five draglines work the 70-foot Wyodak seam, producing more than 65 million tons of coal annually on federal land. Once the low-sulfur, sub-bituminous coal is crushed it is suitable for power station fuel without any other preparation.
The Black Thunder Mine produces more than two tons of coal per second, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. According to Arch Coal Company, the mine surpassed a 750 million ton shipment milestone 25 years after opening in 1977.

Land yachts race across the Alvord Desert, a playa or dry lake flattened landscape beneath the mile-high fault-block of Steen’s Mountain. Fans of the sport flock to the ancient lakebed in search of speeds beyond most posted interstate highway limits; the world record stands above 116 miles per hour.
Determination counts for those who travel hours to this isolated corner of southeastern Oregon and contend with extreme heat in summer, the only season when the playa is reliably dry enough for sailing.

Morning fog fills a canyon below sheer sandstone cliffs of Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument in Utah. The rugged and unique terrain of arches, plateaus, multi-colored cliffs, plateaus, mesas, buttes, pinnacles, and colorful canyon walls covers 1.7 million acres. The highest point is the Kaiparowits Plateau, an 800,000-acre region that forms the wildest, most arid, and most remote part of the Monument.
Grand Staircase is the largest of the 13 National Monuments that were designated by President Bill Clinton and Department of the Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt.

Lowry Pueblo is a restored pueblo in Colorado’s Canyons of the Ancients National Monument. The 164,000-acre tract of public land borders Hovenweep National Monument about 45 miles west of Durango, and 9 miles west of Mesa Verde National Park. It is a treasure trove of Ansazi Indian ruins
The pueblo was built about 1060 AD on top of abandoned pit houses from an earlier period. About 100 people lived there for over 165 years until the 13th century. The inhabitants were farmers who also hunted small game, made elaborately decorated pottery, and wove cotton. The structure contains about 40 rooms and multiple kivas.
Monument designation affords protection of archeological treasures by recognizing an entire landscape of various ruins some which are rubbles. In the past, only isolated and spectacular features found in other parks were safeguarded. Archeologists are excited and challenged by the designation and work to protect it for and from the public.

Castleton Tower is a well-known, rare desert spire east of Moab, Utah, which stands 400 feet tall on top of a 1,000-foot-tall talus cone, the mass of rock debris at the base of the cliff.
It was first ascended in 1962 by geologist Huntley Ingals and climber Layton Kor. Since then, a car commerical was filmed there, and it is known as one of the Fifty Classic Climbs of North America. The soft sandstone can be tricky to negotiate, weather changes quickly, and heat is intense during the day.

Four-wheelers and motorcycles crest the top of a dune and head down a steep enbankment in Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park. Navajo sandstone eroded to form these unique colors and the only major sand dune field on the Colorado Plateau in Southwest Utah. It is believed that winds passing through a notch between Moquith and Moccasin Mountains eroded the stone and blew the sand to form the 15,000-year-old dunes.
The wilderness landscape is both playground and battleground as off-road enthusiasts fight for wide-open access and environmentalists fight to protect rare plant and animal species. Wilderness study areas in the dunes are comprimised as drivers cut through delicate vegetation, cutting paths further and further into previously undisturbed land.
Off-roading vehicles are replacing cattle drives as the most to blame for western dust storms, according to geologists with the U.S. Geological Survey. Other scientists with the Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies see relationships between the dust and snow melt on the high peaks of the Rocky Mountains. The dust potenially accelerates the rate and timing of snow melt in crucial watersheds.
The 1,200-acre state park located near Kanab was created when the land was bought in 1963 from the Bureau of Land Management, which still maintains acres surrounding the park. Off-road vehicle enthusiasts gather to drive their All Terrain Vehicles and sand rails, camping on the dry lake.

Bandit-style bandannas shield law abiders from dust on a well-worn trail in the Fisher Towers region of the Castle Valley near Moab, Utah.
Off-road vehicle riders who stick to the Bureau of Land Management’s loosely enforced straight-and-narrow rules are plentiful, but thousands more disregard the rules, answering the call of their combustion engines to chart new paths through roadless areas. The resulting degradation has growing environmental consequences—the vehicles crisscross delicate ecosystems, cutting through the dry soil and disturbing fragile plants—in areas that take years to recover from disturbances.

Heidi Redd runs the ranching operation on the Dugout Ranch in southwestern Utah. She is tough, no-nonsense, respected, and an original cowgirl.
Surrounded by park and public land, the Dugout Ranch is 5,200 acres of prime ranch land owned by the Nature Conservancy. Ancestral Puebloan rock art and dwellings are found throughout ranch lands. Ecological research, biological management, and natural and cultural history interpretation make this land special. It is being maintained as an economically viable and ecologically sustainable cattle ranching operation.

A silver-painted, masked man takes in the evening light in front of the neon, soon-to-be-burning effigy of man at the annual Burning Man Festival in northwestern Nevada’s National Conservation Area. For the week of the counter-culture happening in the Black Rock Playa, the dry lake becomes one of Nevada’s largest cities, attracting over 50,000 revelers who come to make art in the desert.

Joshua trees dot the high desert landscape in the Virgin River Gorge in southwestern Utah. Pastel pink clouds signal the last minutes of daylight in the rugged wilderness. The gorge connects the southwestern rim of the Colorado Plateau with the northeastern edge of the Mojave Desert.
The fast-growing Joshua tree is a native plant related to the Yucca and has an extensive root system that can extend 36 feet from the main plant. It is difficult to determine the age of a tree due to the small fibers that lack annual growth rings.
The location is near the border of Utah in Arizona’s Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument.

A wildflower blooms in the dry lakebed of the Black Rock Playa Desert as California costume designer Jeanne Lauren braves a sandstorm at Burning Man festival in northwestern Nevada’s National Conservation Area.
Visibility is diminished as harsh winds blow up a sands over the performance artists. Over 50,000 people create an instant city that celebrates art in a unique counter-culture experience. Beyond Uncle Sam’s wheels is the vast salt flat or dry lakebed, and one of Earth’s flattest spots.

Poised for acrobatic moves, a kayaker works the “Mine Wave” on Oregon’s Rogue River, one of 36 Wild and Scenic Rivers managed by Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
The Rogue River is known for water recreation that include kayaks, rafts, dory boats, and jet boats. The BLM and the U.S. Forest Service coordinate to administer the Wild and Scenic River section as well as Hellgate Canyon.
Tourists put in at Graves Creek and the first major rapid is Rainey Falls, which has three ways of going through, one being a Class V rapid. Nearly 14,000 floaters visit the wild section each spring through fall and over 100,000 people use the services of recreational commercial vendors.

Shafts of silver, not sunlight, lured miners into Colorado’s San Juan Mountains, which are part of the Rocky Mountain range. Today the adventurous can follow the Alpine Loop, a sixty-five mile, four-wheel-drive only, rugged Bureau of Land Management (BLM) back country byway, which offers more than a glimmer of mountain splendor.
Tourism is a major part of the economy today as outdoor adventurers take old trails that link historic mining camps and ghost towns. The San Juan and Uncompahgre National Forests cover portions of the wilderness that are not designated BLM lands.

A climber hops from boulder to boulder on a petrified sand dune in Nevada’s Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area near Las Vegas, Nevada, one of the Bureau of Land Management’s most visited sites and a world-famous climbing destination. The large space absorbs a million visitors a year that choose the canyon’s solitude over slot machines.
The conservation area is part of the Mojave Desert where towering Aztec sandstone (a lower Jurassic geological formation) reaches 3,000 feet. The dunes are part of the Keystone Thrust, a fault line with a complex geological history that created the dramatic red rock landscape.
Over 250 million years ago, tectonic shifts forced the Earth’s crust to rise. As it receded, water that was left made formations of salt and gypsum. Rocks that had been part of the seabed oxidized, forming rust, creating the characteristic red rock color throughout the region.

Shrouded in dust, cowgirl Heidi Redd drives cattle through Beef Basin to reach water during the dry summer months. The Nature Conservancy’s Dugout Ranch on Indian Creek near Monticello, Utah, is surrounded by public land. Earth whipped into dust by a dry winter offers little forage for cattle on this Bureau of Land Management allotment. In the spring, Redd drives cattle to higher, wetter ground.
Ranchers pay for grazing allotments that allow them to run cattle on public land.

Wild Lands of the West | The BLM, National Geographic Magazine

Wild Lands of the West | The BLM, National Geographic Magazine

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