July & West
Two sister publications and a small store, made in the belief that the American year and the American West are worth paying attention to — and that the people who keep them going deserve customers.
What we are for
Our mission is to champion and preserve American traditions and values, and to safeguard the survival of small businesses across the United States amidst a rapidly changing market landscape.
That is a large ambition for a small company, so we pursue it in a small way. We write about the things that make a place and a season what they are: the county fair, the first cold night, the copper town that outlived its mine, the pass that closes in October. We try to write about them well enough that a reader wants to go, or to stay home and notice. And where a story leads somewhere real, we point to the people already there — the historical society, the foundation that keeps the ghost town standing, the visitor center run by the town itself — rather than putting ourselves between them and you.
The two sites
July is the year as Americans actually live it: the first cold night and the last of the tomatoes, sugaring weather, the county fair, the long evenings after the solstice, the arguments over daylight saving. A month at a time, it asks what the season is for — and finds that the answer is usually a table, a porch, a field, or a room full of people who have done this before.
West is the country beyond the hundredth meridian, taken slowly: a copper town that outlived its mine, a highway the interstate forgot, a pass that shuts for the winter, a bar pilot heading out under the bridge at Astoria. It is about places that are still there, and the people who kept them.
The store
The July & West store carries a short list of things we would want ourselves for the season or the road. Wherever we can, we buy from small American makers and say so. The store is how the writing pays for itself; the writing is not for selling the store.
How the stories are made
The pieces here are written to be enjoyed rather than cited. They describe how a place or a month feels, and they may draw an atmosphere as much as report a fact. For anything you would act on — a road, a closing date, an opening time, a price — check with the place itself; that is why we link to it.
The photographs come from public archives (the Library of Congress, the National Archives, Wikimedia Commons) and from stock libraries, and the archive photographs are credited in our terms. Some pictures on stories that describe no particular place are illustrations made for the piece rather than photographs of it.
Write to us
Corrections, ideas for a story, a place we should know about, a small business we should carry — we read everything.