the wild west of photos
all images courtesy of Alejandra Wilcox.
"In the West, when you touch water, you touch everything." —Wayne Aspinall Pictured: The Yampa River flows through downtown Steamboat Springs on an early November morning in 2019.
Stagecoach Reservoir, one of only four reservoirs on the Yampa River, gleams in the September sunshine.
"We live in a desert on either side of the divide, and we don't have a choice. If we want to continue to live here, we can't live on conservation alone. We're going to have to construct some buckets and we're going to have to be better stewards of the water that we already have." — Scott Hummer, water commissioner, District 58
"That independence of the West...we don't like being told what to do." — Marsha Daughenbaugh
"The people that I’m talking about aren’t just telling everybody to go to heck. They’re trying to figure out how they’re going to make this work." — Marsha Daughenbaugh Pictured: The Rocking Bar C Ranch, where Marsha Daughenbaugh was born, raised her children and still lives today, in November of 2019.
Cow crossing along a dirt road on the outskirts of Steamboat Springs, Colorado.