The hidden history of Santa Monica’s Black coastal enclaves. In 1958, Silas White, a Black entrepreneur, set out to transform his dream — opening a Black beach club on the Santa Monica shores — into reality. He would call it the Ebony Beach Club, and he pictured it becoming one of the finest establishments in America for “the accommodation…

‘This whole thing, it’s decent. It’s a decent thing to do.’ A 70-year-old ski resort near Lake Tahoe removed a sexist and anti-Indigenous slur from its name; a place once infamously dubbed Sq — — Valley is now called Palisades Tahoe. (High Country News is not publishing the slur out of respect for those harmed by its past and continued use.)…

How a rural town transformed a juvenile facility into a safe space for teens. St. Johns, Arizona, calls itself “the town of friendly neighbors.” With a population of around 3,500 people and a surrounding landscape of ponderosa pine forests and rolling hills peppered with cattle, the quaint town is as bucolic and all-American as it gets. It’s why Michael Latham moved here with his…

Climate change and rising demand are sucking the life out of the Southwest’s water supply. One of the most visible signs of the state of the West’s water supply is the big bathtub ring around the sandstone rim of Lake Powell, the nation’s second-largest reservoir. Whenever the massive hydrological system that delivers water to the lake dwindles, the whitewash halo grows, shrinking only when —…

Scientists in Idaho are finding that wildfire smoke dampens milk production and coincides with increased risk of disease and even death in dairy cows. — Six of Zach Rose’s cows at Rogue Creamery in southern Oregon came down with pneumonia shortly after a bad fire season in 2018, and he thinks the smoke was to blame. “You can see a lot of respiratory issues if they inhale a lot of smoke,” said Rose, the organic…

Indigenous spiritual leaders say the Vatican’s observatory is searching for something it doesn’t understand. Dził Nchaa Si’an in present-day Arizona is a mountain where the deities live. That means it must be approached through the proper corridors, geographically and mentally. Elders teach younger generations to approach prayerfully, through suffering, remembering the ancestors. Wendsler Nosie Sr., who is Chiricahua Apache and enrolled in the San…

Tribal scientists and community members are testing wells, solving plumbing problems and delivering clean water to their neighbors. — Emery Three Irons, a Crow tribal member, stood in tall, lush grass one day in late May, contemplating a cream-colored house. After 20 minutes of reflection, he approached two 5-year-olds standing on the front steps, eating popsicles and playing with a puppy. “Is your grandpa awake?” he asked them, his…

How the genetic code of flora helped catch timber thieves. — BACKSTORY Poachers began to target bigleaf maple trees in the Pacific Northwest in the early 2000s for the beautiful three-dimensional patterns found in some specimens’ grain. In Washington’s Gifford Pinchot National Forest, thieves often felled trees in the middle of the night and covered their stumps with moss to hide the…

Minnesota’s Riverview Dairy has deep pockets and long straws. — In the winter of 2018, Laura Lynn moved out of her mobile home in Sunizona, an unincorporated community in southeast Arizona. After more than six years, she was tired of hauling water for drinking and bathing, and she couldn’t afford to drill a well — certainly not one deep enough…