The New West. The passion for prairies and ranches that has made them more romantic (and more expensive)

“Where the handshake is a little firmer, where the smile lingers a little longer, that’s where the West begins; Where the sun is a little brighter, Where the falling snow is a little whiter, Where the ties to home are a little closer, That’s where the West begins.” These are the famous verses by the journalist Arthur Chapman which, in the early 20th century, capture the essence of the West: a state of mind and a moral code. It was the era of Cowboy Poetry – verses written at night around the campfire or whilst riding a horse – born to give poetic form to the solitude of the prairies, the dust of the fences and the endless silence of those places. This form of poetry, alongside TV series, books and films, seems to have been reborn more than a century later to recount the ‘breathtaking beauty of the American West’: shaped, as Gretel Ehrlich writes, by the ‘roughness of the people who inhabit it: ranchers, cattlemen and cowboys who call these vast horizons, where the eye is lost, home’. It is in the ‘comfort of vastness’ – as the American writer puts it – that the West lives on today.

The last bastion of the Frontier is the region comprising Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, between the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains, at the heart of Greater Yellowstone. It is there that the Frontier survives in the spiritual resilience of those who inhabit these territories, which – thanks to series such as Yellowstone (named after America’s largest ranch, owned in Montana by the Dutton family) – have entered the collective imagination. The success of the series, written and directed by Taylor Sheridan, has given rise to an entire narrative universe. Kevin Costner plays John, the fourth-generation patriarch of the Dutton family, who will stop at nothing to protect his ranch: ‘The only constant in life is that when you build something worth having, someone will try to take it away from you’. Sheridan’s Frontier, firmly rooted in the mythology of ‘Manifest Destiny’, is a world that ‘chews people up and rarely lets them go unscathed’. The characters in his stories constantly navigate grey areas, where survival allows for neither hypocrisy nor moral simplifications. John Dutton is the clearest embodiment of this: “This is America… and we don’t share the land here.” The neo-Western genre delves into the very soul of ranchers and cattlemen. The land is not merely a property or a source of income: it is an extension of the soul, a legacy of blood, a veritable religion. It is a remote world, where the distance between neighbours is measured in tens of miles and the open space is not a piece of property, but a sacred promise of freedom. As vast as California yet with barely a million inhabitants, Montana is described on its old number plates as ‘Big Sky Country’. For its inhabitants, it is even more than that: ‘the last best place’. A statement of identity and resistance to external pressures. When, recently, Washington considered privatising and selling off large swathes of public land to make way for new construction projects, the local reaction transcended all historical ideological divisions. Faced with the threat of seeing their ecosystem altered, Democrats and Republicans in Montana have joined forces. For those who live in these lands, protecting the territory is not merely an environmentalist battle, but the defence of a family heritage.

Bryan Mannix is a fifth-generation cattle farmer, running Wineglass Ranch in Montana for the historic family business, Mannix Family Beef, which has been based in the Blackfoot Valley since 1882. In a special report on CBS News’s ‘60 Minutes’, Bryan speaks of the great prairies as something ‘spiritual’: ‘Some people find their connection with the universe in church. For me, just being out there, with my feet on the ground, in communion with this space, is enough. When you spend so much time on a piece of land, that land becomes like family to you, part of your very being.”

The ethos of modern cowboys is based on a principle of self-sufficiency and care, summarised in the ‘three Rs’ rule: Remove, Replace, Repair. It is a constant balancing act in which the reward is not money, but the freedom to live under the ‘Big Sky’. Far from fostering extreme individualism, the harshness of this life cements an almost archaic sense of community solidarity. Rancher Jesse Stetson embodies this spirit with simple, direct words: “This life has taught me that the most complex answers lie just beyond my horse’s ears. Where the sky is vast and the miles are honest, a family learns what truly matters by making sacrifices together. This is where true friendships are forged: those people who will stand by your side in the trenches until the battle is over, not because they have anything to gain, but simply because they want to help you.”

In a documentary available on YouTube, focusing on rural life near Wilsall in central Montana, cattle farmers describe winter as a daily battle against the weather and the cold. Ron and his son-in-law James, from Artham Ranch, run a property of around 5,000 acres with 500 cows. “When a snowstorm – a blizzard – hits, the workload doubles,” explains Ron. “We have to drive military trucks bought at auction decades ago – the only vehicles capable of moving through two metres of snow – to distribute tonnes of hay every single day. If the pregnant cows don’t get enough food, the calves are born weak or freeze to death.” James recounts a time when, in the middle of a blizzard, he had to ride out on horseback to retrieve some cows that had strayed onto neighbours’ land: “In moments like that, there’s no such thing as office hours. You just have to do whatever it takes to protect the herd, even if it means risking frostbite.”

In a radio feature broadcast on BBC Radio 4, Brud Smith and his daughter Darby, fifth-generation ranchers in Montana, describe a reality far removed from the myth: “Ranching is infinitely more complicated than I ever imagined, even though I grew up on a ranch. It’s often romanticised, but it’s hard work that requires immense administrative and financial skills.”

Brud Smith draws a parallel with the past: “My great-grandfather, back in 1864, used only horses. Today, to find a cow lost in the most remote canyons, my colleagues and I send up drones.” Yet, when it comes to branding the cattle in spring – ‘branding’ – “we still use a lasso from horseback: it’s the least stressful method for the calves”.

The greatest threat today comes not from the harsh winter, but from speculation. The real antagonists are the property developers, Wall Street investment funds and the forces of gentrification that seek to transform unspoilt valleys into luxury resorts for city-dwelling tourists. The ‘Yellowstone effect’ – the popularity of the TV series – has turned the ranch into a global object of desire. The series has fuelled the image of the large landowner as the last guardian of an authentic America, but in reality it has helped to make the rural West more expensive, more exclusive and more vulnerable to speculation. In areas near Bozeman and Paradise Valley, property values have risen sharply since the series’ debut, whilst scenic properties near the park have reached sky-high prices per acre.

The ‘billionaire cowboy’ buys a ranch not necessarily for livestock farming, but for privacy, prestige, hunting, fishing or as an investment. The effects can be mixed. A large ranch managed as an extensive agricultural holding, with conservation easements and careful water management, can preserve habitats and wildlife corridors. However, a ranch divided into ‘ranchettes’, isolated villas, private roads and fences can fragment grasslands and migratory routes, increase pressure on water resources and further remove the land from food production.

The most serious ecological consequence is the loss of continuity. Vast grasslands and migration corridors only function if they remain extensive and interconnected. Every new housing development, every new road, every residential fence can transform an open landscape into a mosaic of enclaves. Mammals encounter obstacles, predators come into conflict more easily with humans and domestic animals, and rural communities lose the critical mass needed to maintain schools, essential services and local activities.

In the nineteenth century, Frederick Jackson Turner defined the West as a region shaped by the contrast between ancient institutions and ideas and the transformative influences of the open frontier. This encounter gave rise to a new environment for the individual, open to freedom and opportunity, in which the breaking with tradition took place through the emergence of new activities, new ways of growing, new institutions and new ideals. The myth of the frontier leaves a powerful legacy in the American West: the idea that freedom arises from distancing oneself from others, that private property is the foundation of autonomy, and that the federal government is an unreliable partner, if not an enemy. A ranch owner sees not just pastures, fences and water rights: he sees generations of labour, debts, droughts and sacrifices. The land is a conquest to be defended, not an abstract asset to be managed according to collective logic.

This culture explains why federal environmental regulations face such deep-seated resistance. A farmer who loses a calf to a wolf, or who sees a grizzly bear approaching apiaries and calving grounds, does not view the problem as a conflict ‘between the economy and nature’: they see it as a cost imposed by a distant bureaucracy. Protected species can, in fact, entail restrictions on land use, consultations with federal agencies, lengthy delays and expenses for fencing, livestock guarding or the removal of carcasses. Yet ranching culture itself holds valuable resources for conservation. Those who work the land know the watercourses, the routes taken by ungulates, the crossing points of predators and the effects of a harsh winter. The problem is not a lack of local knowledge, but the perception that decisions are taken without trust, without adequate compensation and without recognising the costs borne by those living in the area. The Endangered Species Act, the federal law of 1973, protects species at risk of extinction and their critical habitats, imposing restrictions and consultation procedures even on public and private activities that may affect their survival. The upcoming mid-term elections will not only determine the composition of Congress: they could also change the political climate in which wildlife regulations are enforced, funding for national parks is allocated, and the relationship between federal and state authorities is shaped. Federal law remains the central legal framework, but its implementation depends on appointments, administrative rules, budgets and political will.

In New York or Los Angeles, nature is often seen as an asset to be protected, an image to be consumed, a promise of well-being or a resource for the ecological transition. In Montana and Wyoming, however, it is an everyday force: frost, drought, wildfires, predators, floods, insects and livestock diseases. Those who work on ranches do not idealise the wilderness: they traverse it, endure it and try to make a living from it. This divide gives rise to two incompatible languages. In coastal cities, people talk of ‘biodiversity’, ‘carbon’, ‘climate refuge’ and ‘pristine landscape’. In rural counties, they talk of permits, taxes, water, roads, livestock, hunting and the right to make decisions about their own territory. Neither language is false, but when one prevails over the other, environmental policy loses its legitimacy. The risk is that the protection of parks and natural resources will come to be perceived as a form of reverse colonisation: urban elites and Silicon Valley investors arrive with capital, cultural models and rules; they buy up land and landscapes and impose a vision of the territory that the long-standing inhabitants do not feel is their own. The energy transition, large protected areas, building restrictions or policies on predators can thus be seen not as public goods, but as decisions taken by those who will never have to pay the price. This dynamic can undermine conservation itself. If local communities feel excluded, they tend to oppose even reasonable measures; if, on the other hand, they receive economic benefits, decision-making power and practical tools, they can become the parks’ most reliable allies. No ecosystem is truly protected against those who inhabit it.

Whilst the rest of America moves at a frenetic pace, the West continues to build defences against the advance of a homogenising modernity. Are that cohesion and that fortitude truly an expression of universal values – or merely the last stand against the future?