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The Backbone of the World: A Portrait of the Vanishing West Along the Continental Divide
In recent years, Los Angeles Times writer and editor Frank Clifford has journeyed along the Continental Divide, the hemispheric watershed that spans North America from the alkali badlands of southernmost New Mexico to the roof of the Rockies in Montana and into Canada. The result is The Backbone of the World, an arresting exploration of America’s longest wilderness corridor, a harsh and unforgiving region inhabited by men and women whose way of life is as imperiled as the neighboring wildlife.
With the brutal beauty and stark cadences of a Cormac McCarthy novel, The Backbone of the World tells the story of the last remnants of the Old West, America’s mythic landscape, where past and present are barely discernible from one another and where people’s lives are still intrinsically linked to their natural surroundings. Clifford vividly captures the challenges of life along the Divide today through portraits of memorable a ranching family whose isolated New Mexico homestead has become a mecca for illegal immigrants and drug smugglers; a sheep herder struggling to make a living tending his flock in the mountains above Vail, an old mule packer who has spent years scouring the mountains of northwest Wyoming for the downed plane of his son; a Yellowstone Park ranger on a lone crusade to protect elk and grizzly bears from illegal hunters; and a group of Blackfeet Indians in northern Montana who are fearful that a wilderness sanctuary will be lost to oil and gas development. In each of their stories, the tide of change is looming as environmental, economic, social, and political forces threaten this uniquely unfettered population.
Clifford’s participatory approach offers a haunting and immediate evocation of character and geography and an unsentimental eulogy to the people whose disappearance will sever a link with the defining American pioneer spirit. Set in a world of isolated ranches, trail camps, mountain bivouacs, and forgotten hamlets, The Backbone of the World highlights the frontier values that have both ennobled and degraded us, values that symbolize the last breath of our founding character.
With the brutal beauty and stark cadences of a Cormac McCarthy novel, The Backbone of the World tells the story of the last remnants of the Old West, America’s mythic landscape, where past and present are barely discernible from one another and where people’s lives are still intrinsically linked to their natural surroundings. Clifford vividly captures the challenges of life along the Divide today through portraits of memorable a ranching family whose isolated New Mexico homestead has become a mecca for illegal immigrants and drug smugglers; a sheep herder struggling to make a living tending his flock in the mountains above Vail, an old mule packer who has spent years scouring the mountains of northwest Wyoming for the downed plane of his son; a Yellowstone Park ranger on a lone crusade to protect elk and grizzly bears from illegal hunters; and a group of Blackfeet Indians in northern Montana who are fearful that a wilderness sanctuary will be lost to oil and gas development. In each of their stories, the tide of change is looming as environmental, economic, social, and political forces threaten this uniquely unfettered population.
Clifford’s participatory approach offers a haunting and immediate evocation of character and geography and an unsentimental eulogy to the people whose disappearance will sever a link with the defining American pioneer spirit. Set in a world of isolated ranches, trail camps, mountain bivouacs, and forgotten hamlets, The Backbone of the World highlights the frontier values that have both ennobled and degraded us, values that symbolize the last breath of our founding character.
288 pages, Paperback
First published May 13, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
April 21, 2012
I like a book that takes my assumptions about something and turns most of them upside down, and this book did that. To begin with, even though I had heard most of a radio interview with the author, I was expecting a book mostly about hiking the Rocky Mountains. Instead "Backbone of the World" is about a series of encounters with people who live and work along the Continental Divide. And Clifford uses these encounters to discuss the competing points of view of those with an interest in what's left of America's wilderness areas -- environmentalists, housing developers, ranchers, cowboys, sheep herders, national park service rangers, wildlife preservationists, back country outfitters, hunters, Native Americans, game wardens, hangers on in dying company towns, and the owners and employees of the mining, logging, and energy industries.
As a journalist for the Los Angeles Times, Clifford has his preferences about the fate of the wilderness, but he allows his subjects to speak for themselves without passing judgment on them. To that extent, the book is not a polemic but an array of human opinions nearly as sweeping as the mountain and desert vistas that are the subject of this book. He goes on horseback into the mountains of northern Montana with Blackfeet Indians. He spends time with a sheep herder in Colorado, who is barely scraping by. He is the guest of two ranch owners, riding along on a cattle drive in Wyoming and helping with a round-up in New Mexico, in the arid high country along the Mexican border. He goes coyote hunting with an ailing and broken former uranium mining worker in Wyoming. He visits a park ranger in Yellowstone, who spends his days busting illegal hunters. And he accompanies an environmental activist as they pony trek into the mountains of Alberta.
And as the people he interviews speak, you learn of the impact of humans on the wilderness -- overgrazing, destruction of habitat, the invasion of roads and all-terrain vehicles, the decimation of wildlife populations, the spread of urban sprawl, the expansion of the recreation industry, the hunting camps where big city executives can shoot game that have been lured off public lands with conveniently located salt licks. And over and again, there is the theme of a ravaged landscape, diminished by clear-cutting, exhausted mines, and aggressive drilling for oil and gas. At this level, the book is a quiet litany for the destruction of everything wild, pristine, and beautiful.
All this may sound like a depressing read, but I enjoyed Clifford's accounts of encounters with the people who inhabit this region. He puts a human face on the economic, environmentalist, and conservationist forces in contention over the fate of what once was a vast wilderness. The 8-page bibliography at the end of the book is evidence of his long and thoughtful study of his subject. And his writing is that of an observant journalist. The people and places he describes come alive, and like viewing an excellent documentary film, you come away with an appreciation for the complexity of the issues, a sense of having witnessed them firsthand, and your own assumptions turned upside down.
As a journalist for the Los Angeles Times, Clifford has his preferences about the fate of the wilderness, but he allows his subjects to speak for themselves without passing judgment on them. To that extent, the book is not a polemic but an array of human opinions nearly as sweeping as the mountain and desert vistas that are the subject of this book. He goes on horseback into the mountains of northern Montana with Blackfeet Indians. He spends time with a sheep herder in Colorado, who is barely scraping by. He is the guest of two ranch owners, riding along on a cattle drive in Wyoming and helping with a round-up in New Mexico, in the arid high country along the Mexican border. He goes coyote hunting with an ailing and broken former uranium mining worker in Wyoming. He visits a park ranger in Yellowstone, who spends his days busting illegal hunters. And he accompanies an environmental activist as they pony trek into the mountains of Alberta.
And as the people he interviews speak, you learn of the impact of humans on the wilderness -- overgrazing, destruction of habitat, the invasion of roads and all-terrain vehicles, the decimation of wildlife populations, the spread of urban sprawl, the expansion of the recreation industry, the hunting camps where big city executives can shoot game that have been lured off public lands with conveniently located salt licks. And over and again, there is the theme of a ravaged landscape, diminished by clear-cutting, exhausted mines, and aggressive drilling for oil and gas. At this level, the book is a quiet litany for the destruction of everything wild, pristine, and beautiful.
All this may sound like a depressing read, but I enjoyed Clifford's accounts of encounters with the people who inhabit this region. He puts a human face on the economic, environmentalist, and conservationist forces in contention over the fate of what once was a vast wilderness. The 8-page bibliography at the end of the book is evidence of his long and thoughtful study of his subject. And his writing is that of an observant journalist. The people and places he describes come alive, and like viewing an excellent documentary film, you come away with an appreciation for the complexity of the issues, a sense of having witnessed them firsthand, and your own assumptions turned upside down.
January 19, 2022
I know so little about the geology, geography and history of my own country. The author of this book is a writer with the Los Angeles Times and he is trying to educate those of us who care to listen.
He can ride a horse and herd cattle, and he has a love for wilderness. He makes some connections with ranchers, old timers, residents and environmentalists living, working and/or concerned with the land, animals, environment, history, mining etc. around the Continental Divide. The only thing this disparate group of people seems to agree on is a dislike for hikers that use the Continental Divide Trail. Myself, I fall more on the environmentalist side of things, probably because I am not trying to make my living on that wilderness. I related more to Canadian Crazy Mike Judd than probably anybody else. I enjoyed reading this book, the author is a good writer and his sense of humor and perspective are enjoyable aspects to his writing.
He can ride a horse and herd cattle, and he has a love for wilderness. He makes some connections with ranchers, old timers, residents and environmentalists living, working and/or concerned with the land, animals, environment, history, mining etc. around the Continental Divide. The only thing this disparate group of people seems to agree on is a dislike for hikers that use the Continental Divide Trail. Myself, I fall more on the environmentalist side of things, probably because I am not trying to make my living on that wilderness. I related more to Canadian Crazy Mike Judd than probably anybody else. I enjoyed reading this book, the author is a good writer and his sense of humor and perspective are enjoyable aspects to his writing.
July 28, 2010
Clifford writes with too much evenhandedness and too little anger about what's happening to The West to suit me. Even so, there's no doubt that he cares deeply about what's being lost. This book ought to be required reading for anyone who crosses the state lines of NM, CO, WY, ID or MT.
July 4, 2024
I enjoyed this book. Evenly presents the argument of cowboys vs. environmentalists in the west. Great descriptions of the continental divide.
March 10, 2010
A series of interviews and travels with people living and working near the continental divide. Like Timothy Egan's "Lasso the Wind," it takes you beyond the stereotype of "cowboy on a cattle ranch."
One common theme across the stories is power struggles. The government, environmentalists, ranchers, real estate developers, celebrities, politicians all have their stakes in the same pieces of land. This book is set where the rubber meets the road in those interactions, where hippy hikers interfere with the profitability of some guys' sheep herd, and the sheep herder interferes with the ecosystem, and the ecosystem interferes with the profitability of a mine, and a mine interferes with the health of a community.
I will share a couple of cool quotes:
"I am a city-dweller, a 'dude' in the old-fashioned sense of the word. But as Oscar Wilde and Rudyard Kipling, among other famous dudes, discovered a long time ago when they toured the American West, city dwellers often have more in common with country folk than they realize. They are not risk averse. They thrive on the unexpected."
"But capitalism in Western states has traditionally benefited from government intervention. Many of the incentives put in place a century ago to encourage settlement of the West survived in the form of subsidies and price supports to timber, mining, energy and agriculture interests. This strange legacy of socialism is one of the abiding ironies of the West. No region of the country is more devoted to the myth of rugged self-sufficiency, none more dependent on federal largesse, and none more contemptous of the hand that feeds it."
I think the writer does a good job at keeping a neutral tone and not making this book either optimistic or pessimistic. It's realistic, a book of some very raw, real stories.
One common theme across the stories is power struggles. The government, environmentalists, ranchers, real estate developers, celebrities, politicians all have their stakes in the same pieces of land. This book is set where the rubber meets the road in those interactions, where hippy hikers interfere with the profitability of some guys' sheep herd, and the sheep herder interferes with the ecosystem, and the ecosystem interferes with the profitability of a mine, and a mine interferes with the health of a community.
I will share a couple of cool quotes:
"I am a city-dweller, a 'dude' in the old-fashioned sense of the word. But as Oscar Wilde and Rudyard Kipling, among other famous dudes, discovered a long time ago when they toured the American West, city dwellers often have more in common with country folk than they realize. They are not risk averse. They thrive on the unexpected."
"But capitalism in Western states has traditionally benefited from government intervention. Many of the incentives put in place a century ago to encourage settlement of the West survived in the form of subsidies and price supports to timber, mining, energy and agriculture interests. This strange legacy of socialism is one of the abiding ironies of the West. No region of the country is more devoted to the myth of rugged self-sufficiency, none more dependent on federal largesse, and none more contemptous of the hand that feeds it."
I think the writer does a good job at keeping a neutral tone and not making this book either optimistic or pessimistic. It's realistic, a book of some very raw, real stories.
January 12, 2013
I enjoy the West and the Rockies, so I enjoyed it during bits and pieces, but the author was more about sharing his political agenda rather than the stories and people of the West.
June 4, 2025
4.3/5: A good journalist's anthology of long read articles
I'll start by giving Clifford as many flowers as humanly possible for actually going out into the Mountain West and getting his hands dirty. You'd be very surprised how many travelogues and/or articles written by people who maybe walked 7 steps inside a trail and came out with 300 pages worth of confidence about roughing it. In this one, Clifford sees many animals eat it, births a calf, almost gets a hoof to the face by said calf's mother, and goes off being an actual honest-to-god cowboy. Respect for that.
This is a book that doesn't entirely have a chronology or a well-set lineup of places. It runs back and forth between New Mexico and Wyoming and New Mexico again and Blackfeet and back down to Wyoming, etc, etc, which makes it a bit tough to register where you are and what culture you are in. If anything, it feels like a series of well-written, sometimes inconsistent articles from a competent journalist. But they all have recurring themes which are wilderness and, in my opinion, failure. Everybody in this book is in some part of the process of failing, with all the conflict that comes with it. Clifford makes the Continental Divide a wilderness where people are stubbornly saying "you don't belong here" to to others, and wilderness responding "none of you belong here" in return. It's tragically great in that respect.
I'll start by giving Clifford as many flowers as humanly possible for actually going out into the Mountain West and getting his hands dirty. You'd be very surprised how many travelogues and/or articles written by people who maybe walked 7 steps inside a trail and came out with 300 pages worth of confidence about roughing it. In this one, Clifford sees many animals eat it, births a calf, almost gets a hoof to the face by said calf's mother, and goes off being an actual honest-to-god cowboy. Respect for that.
This is a book that doesn't entirely have a chronology or a well-set lineup of places. It runs back and forth between New Mexico and Wyoming and New Mexico again and Blackfeet and back down to Wyoming, etc, etc, which makes it a bit tough to register where you are and what culture you are in. If anything, it feels like a series of well-written, sometimes inconsistent articles from a competent journalist. But they all have recurring themes which are wilderness and, in my opinion, failure. Everybody in this book is in some part of the process of failing, with all the conflict that comes with it. Clifford makes the Continental Divide a wilderness where people are stubbornly saying "you don't belong here" to to others, and wilderness responding "none of you belong here" in return. It's tragically great in that respect.
January 12, 2020
I first read this book when it was first published back in 2002. Now 2020 I felt it a good time to read and perhaps shed some light and understanding on the the current conflicts and attitudes of the rural right and the suburban left and the origins of the divide we see today. Pretty much nothing has changed. This book could have been written yesterday. The only thing that has changed is an even greater decline and disappearance of the wilderness, and the rise of the threat of climate change. Cooperative measures are needed between us all to better our world but I still see little hope of that.
March 31, 2023
Excellent. Though 20 yrs old, it explains much of the current political & economic wackiness of the southwest/west, in an evenhanded manner. One big takeaway: though they would have you believe otherwise, it's all about real estate & tax evasion, not about letting people make a living. As always, it's poor people who are getting fooled by the greedy ones.
September 11, 2019
A balanced study of the West and the people who still live like it's the West: one part romanticism of their rugged, down-to-basics lifestyle and one part skepticism about the impact they are having on the region. Quite illuminating and enjoyable.
October 27, 2023
a little too political for me. I liked reading about the area but the stories weren't that engaging
July 7, 2022
This book was so amazing. I picked it up on a whim and was treated to phenomenal writing about a part of the country that I will never be able to experience the way Clifford did, but I am grateful I got to read the letters he sends from the scant wilderness via Backbone.
November 7, 2014
Clifford is a journalist and it shines through in this book. His observations are clear and unbiased. In fact, there are few stories where he's not riding a horse, sitting in a pick-up truck or walking with an outfitter or cowboy. The stories jump all over the map along the Continental Divide of the United States. One moment you're taken for a morning coyote hunt outside of Jeffrey City, WY and the next plunged into a gathering on the Blackfeet Reservation.
The geography he travels is seen through the eyes of the long time residents who are rooted in the land. Their fortune at the mercy of the natural forces that get bigger, stronger, and more unpredictable the deeper you go into the terrain. The natural forces of weather and wildlife are but one part of the picture that Clifford paints. What makes this book unique is the author's ability to put each story in a larger context.
For the Western United States that larger context is... change. Sensing this change, Clifford takes us to meet people that are fighting to hold-on to a uniquely Western life-style. A life-style as honest and straightforward as the writing in this book.
The geography he travels is seen through the eyes of the long time residents who are rooted in the land. Their fortune at the mercy of the natural forces that get bigger, stronger, and more unpredictable the deeper you go into the terrain. The natural forces of weather and wildlife are but one part of the picture that Clifford paints. What makes this book unique is the author's ability to put each story in a larger context.
For the Western United States that larger context is... change. Sensing this change, Clifford takes us to meet people that are fighting to hold-on to a uniquely Western life-style. A life-style as honest and straightforward as the writing in this book.
October 16, 2008
An interesting take on the never-ending debate between conservationists and those who work the land of the Continental Divide for a living. Clifford shows us both sides by introducing us to ranchers, sheepherders, loggers, and miners eking out a living from the "last frontier" of North America, as well as the conservationists who fight against their practices of livestock overgrazing and stripping natural resources from the earth. The first three quarters of the book were interesting because of the fascinating lives of the people the author meets, but the constant lectures on conservation vs. freedom to choose a livelihood got a little old in the final chapters.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews