Showdown in the Big Quiet: Land, Myth, and Government in the American West

Myth and government clash and collaborate in one of America’s largest and most remote canyonlands

Owyhee County, Idaho, also known as the “Big Quiet,” is the largest and least inhabited area in the lower forty-eight states. Who has decided how to use it? From violent mine wars in the mid-nineteenth century to environmental conservation disputes at the end of the twentieth, people in the West have battled over the role of government and notions of American identity to answer this question. ...