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Paradox is a place that seemed to invite those estranged from society. The West is wide open, and many who crossed it in the 19th century were leaving society behind, at least temporarily. But to be estranged from it is altogether different. Some of the people who came to the Paradox Valley had no place among civilized men and no use for their laws either. One of those men was Axel Peterson. In 1910 he arrived in Paradox, a hard-drinking drifter in his mid-thirties. He looked

Driving north through the narrow end of Lion Gulch, the red rock walls suddenly open to reveal a sweeping view of the “Slaughterhouse of the West.” This is Paradox, Colorado, a settlement named for the strange, paradoxical course of the Dolores River, which cuts across the valley rather than flowing along it. Unfortunately, the valleys past is not as paradoxical. Its a history marked by violence and lawlessness in the 19th century and into the 20th, like many across the west.

A few weeks ago, I found myself roaming the alpine forests of the La Sal Mountains on a job that promises remote unpredictability. I was out on a fire assignment, one of those long days in a four-wheel-drive engine, chasing wildfires racing across the landscapes of the American West. When the call came, I wasn’t thrilled about the timing. Some of my best friends were in town, and I had been savoring a rare stretch of time off amid a whirlwind summer of work. But the Deer Cree

That morning my legs moved slowly, twisting and stretching a bit in recovery from trekking in the footsteps of countless others in that...