William Yardley

In the first full workweek, overall ridership on the system, called Link, soared more than 50 percent on some days -- from about 35,000 daily riders the week before to a peak of 57,000 the Tuesday afterward.

It may be tempting to write off Williston as another boomtown heading for a bust, a story that has defined the American West, whether the resource was fur, gold or timber. But Williston believes it can build something more enduring. The way city officials tell it, closing the camps is a show of faith in the future.

Late last summer, with wildfires burning throughout the West and the U.S. Forest Service announcing yet again that it would have to borrow money to fight them, lawmakers from the region vowed that this would be the year Congress fixed the funding problem and found ways to make forests more resilient against fire.

The story of the wolves, the island and the ancient forest began long before there were struggling sawmills and endangered species. But that lost world has a name now: the Tongass National Forest, in southeast Alaska. So do the wolves and the island. They have all become prominent characters in one of the more remote but revealing battles for balance between ecosystems and economies in the West.

Loggers are cutting thousands of acres of old-growth trees on Prince of Wales Island in Southeast Alaska, and it has led to an intensified debate over the fate of wolves that call the island home.