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George raised cattle for most of his life. In retirement, he chases wildfires. For safety, George carries two bottles of water, a Coke, a candy bar, a shovel, and a handgun.

Many modern ranchers use all-terrain vehicles, airplanes, or helicopters to round up their livestock. Horses have become outdated. The 71 Ranch in Deeth, Nevada, consists of 38,000 acres of semiarid farmland, where cowboys still herd cattle on horseback. Here, Casey Higgins trains his horse not to rear when a cow pulls back on the rope.

The Big Springs Ranch was named for a spring that supplies water to the city of Wendover, 30 miles away. The 350,000-acre ranch is now owned by Newmont Mining Corporation, which just announced the discovery of a multimillion-ounce high-grade gold deposit there. Surrounded by desert, Wendover will have to find new water.

Dakota and Jesse prepare to compete in the saddle bronc rodeo event. Each rider will attempt to stay on a bucking horse for eight seconds, holding on with one hand. Rodeo is the official state sport of South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming. Events test and exhibit necessary cattle-ranching skills.

Adam, Afton’s middle school science teacher, helps the Mortensen family kill and butcher a Hereford cow. The Mortensens own the last remaining ranch within Afton town limits. Their neighbors sold and developed the surrounding property during the housing boom of the past decade. To pay the mortgage on his ranch, Gary Mortensen works as a truck driver for Halliburton in the oil fields of North Dakota.

"The things I see in nature are beautiful, like the sun setting, a horse running through sagebrush, a tree, a doe with her fawn, or just an everyday rock. Remember that guy who came here? He said 'Why would anybody live in such a godforsaken place?'" –Stacy

"I settled here in the 1960s. Everybody down in Eureka said, 'You can’t farm there. That’s an alkali flat and it’s way too cold.' Well, they were right about a lot of it. But I was too broke to leave for the first 20 years, and after that, it was too late." –Don

"It's very expensive to put a crop in. Probably 90% of the farmers around here have some kind of loan with us. With the drought, some farmers haven't harvested a crop for three years. Running out of farmers is our biggest fear." –Kyle, Branch President of Happy State Bank

Many working cowboys and sheepherders are guest laborers from Chile, Mexico, Bolivia, or Peru. If there is a shortage of domestic labor, the H-2A visa allows agricultural employers to bring foreign workers. Ranch hands spend long stretches of the season herding livestock in remote regions without electricity or running water, rarely seeing a town or paved road.

In the 1960s, Jeffrey City was a mining boomtown with over 5,000 residents. The uranium market collapsed a decade later and Western Nuclear Corporation shut down the last mine in 1982. Most residents moved away, many trucking their houses with them.

Wind River Reservation spans 2.2 million acres and is home to both Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes.

Bob is a bobcat that Ron found on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. Ron runs a bison ranch on the grounds of the Saint Stephens Indian Mission within the reservation.

There are currently 5 million head of sheep in the country, compared to 51 million sheep in the 1880's. Ranchers still trail sheep through remote rangelands. Their sheepdogs have distinguished roles as either guardians or herders. Here, the white dog, a Maremma, has been bred to guard the sheep from predators. The black dog, an Australian Cattle Dog, has been bred to manage the herd. Mating between the breeds is strictly forbidden.

With an annual snowfall of approximately 80 inches and temperatures that drop as low as -49 degrees Fahrenheit, county roads are often the only plowed area on which cattle can travel between pastures.

Ron, the official historian of Auburn, Wyoming, is a regular visitor to the town’s hot springs. His friend Kyle Erickson purchased the springs in 2003. “I have seen these waters heal mind, body, and spirit,” Kyle says.

The Siems Ranch is among the last off-grid family ranches in rural Wyoming. After killing and butchering a cow for a friend, the family left the entrails on the snow for the dogs and coyotes.

Grand Teton National Park and the nearby Yellowstone National Park contain Wilderness Areas. The federal government defines wilderness as "an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain." The parks are surrounded by government lands that are leased for commercial timber harvesting, livestock grazing, mining, and other activities.

The Wyoming Game and Fish Department currently manages 22 feedgrounds throughout the state, providing hay to an average of 20,500 wild elk each year. Ranchers want to keep elk out of their hay and pastures during the winter, fearing the wild animals will spread disease and destroy habitat for cattle grazing. Feeding the elk also keeps them from migrating through towns and causing property damage.

A century ago, 41% of physicians in the United States lived in small towns. Now, nearly one in ten rural counties have no primary physicians. Afton, Wyoming had Dr. Orson Dee Perkes, who, before his death, administered the births of over 2,000 people. The current population of Afton is 1,906.

In many of today's oil fields, companies extract 100 barrels of water for one barrel of oil. The water from Hamilton Dome Oil Field in Wyoming contains salts, oil droplets, treatment chemicals, gases, bacteria, and other living organisms. Produced water is typically trucked to a treatment facility for reuse or pumped into disposal wells deep underground. But, at Hamilton Dome Oil Field, the water is discharged into local river systems.

The TS Power Plant in Nevada is privately owned by the Newmont Mining Corporation, one of the largest gold mining companies in the world. The plant powers the nearby gold mines and sells excess electricity to the grid.

"After 5 years of working for Newmont, I now make a little over $28 an hour. I never dreamed I would be driving a Haulpak truck. Now here I am, a woman miner! I really needed it, being a single mom. I was a beautician for 23 years with no benefits. Now I have them." –Alice

Haul trucks bring the rock to a series of grinding mills. Cyanide is used to extract the gold, which is then melted in a furnace, poured into doré bars, and shipped to Switzerland for refining. It is now profitable to mine if there is an ounce of gold dust in 20,000 pounds of rock. The large nuggets of gold that made the American West famous have been gone from Nevada for generations.

The Naughton Plant is located four miles from the town of Kemmerer, Wyoming. Here, combustion exhaust gas exits through a series of flues. Burning coal is the single greatest human contribution to the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

In lieu of a general store, Eden, Wyoming has a saloon. The town’s main meeting place, the Eden Saloon sits across from a one room, historic log cabin church. At the last census, the town had a population of 281. Most of the residents work on ranches or for the natural gas industry at the nearby Jonah Field. Local teenagers volunteer to take empty bottles to the recycling center in Rock Springs, 40 miles away.

Nevada is the only state in the United States to legally allow prostitution. Charlie manages a brothel that he recently purchased from his mother. Just outside the town of Carlin, the brothel is situated off Interstate 80 near a number of gold mines operated by Newmont Mining Corporation and Barrick Gold Corporation. The brothel is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

In Taos, New Mexico, couples can be married aboard a hot air balloon. With only a minister and a pilot, they float into the 600 foot deep Rio Grande Gorge, and often land at the nearby Great World Earthship Community, known for its futuristic, autonomous solar houses.

The presence of natural gas in Wyoming was known for years. In the 1970s, El Paso Natural Gas Company proposed a project called Wagon Wheel Nuclear Stimulation Project, which was an attempt to detonate nuclear devices to fracture the rock formations and enable natural-gas extraction. The project was abandoned. Today, fracking has made the area one of the most productive in the continental United States.

Roger is a welder on the Pinedale Anticline and Jonah Field. A former bodybuilder and U.S. Army Special Forces soldier, he regularly lifts weights in the toolshed at work.

“This little town has nothing. It’s dying on the vine. But with the mine here, it’ll bring in jobs and make everything bigger and better. There are people who want that boost to the community. I’m not one of them. The mine will ruin this mountain, and you’ll never find land this beautiful anywhere else.” –Randy