After COVID Emerges the American West

Boom towns on the brink of the apocalypse

The American West is no stranger to feverish periods of boom followed by crushing eras of bust.

The gold rushes of California, Pikes Peak, the Black Hills and the Yukon dominate the first pages of western history books. By then, though, the whole western half of the continent had already experienced one of the most dramatic population declines in human history; the decimation of the western indigenous peoples via diseases, conflicts with migrating eastern tribes and…