The stars of the shoot were all women in their 20s who had come to the mountains to live the ski life.

Of course, dreams are often tempered by reality. The story, headlined “A Very Nice Kind of Ski Bum,” neatly summed up both the allure and the pitfalls of a move to Aspen:

They consider a skier’s life not to be a parenthetical experience but a real alternative to urban existence, one free from frustration, noise and the frustration of having to choose between marriage and a less than satisfying job. The only problem with Aspen is finding a way to survive.

In 1971 Aspen was not quite the playground for the rich that it is today (that status really took root in the 1980s), but the transition was in process, and it was being felt by the town’s working class. “Housing is practically non-existent and prices are tourist-level high,” LIFE wrote. One of the women in the Dominis photo essay said that she needed to work so many hours as a hotel maid to support herself that she barely had time to ski. Still, overall, the story painted a romantic picture of the adventure they had embarked on: “The women figure, why wait until you’re 40 to have fun.”

One of Dominis’ photos shows four young women sharing a one-bedroom apartment. That apartment certainly wouldn’t make it into the kind of stories you can find today on Aspen’s luxury homes—but it is a certain kind a paradise. Sure, it’s a mess, and the quarters are cramped. But the women don’t seem to care. It can be that way when you are taking a stab at living your dream.

These four women shared a one-bedroon apartment in Aspen, Colo., 1971

John Dominis/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sue Smedstad, who had come to Aspen six years previous, received a free ski pass as one of the perks of her job as statistician for the Aspen Skiing Corp., 1971.

John Dominis/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sue Smedstad drover her friends in her jeep as they searched for good snow in Aspen, 1971.

John Dominis/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women tubed in Snowmass Mountain, Aspen. Colo., 1971.

John Dominis/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Lyn Carlson came to Aspen, Colo., from Lousville, Ky., and supported herself by working the doors at an apres-ski club, 1971.

John Dominis/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Gail Ramsey moved from Wisconsin to Aspen to sing in a nightclub, but after her band broke up she ended up tending bar, 1971.

John Dominis/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Lisa Brooks, 24, came to Aspen for the ski life, but she made so little in her job as a chambermaid that she couldn’t do much skiing, 1971.

John Dominis/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Leslie Smith, 25, came to Aspen and started her own store, the Birdog Trading Co., when she found that employment opportunities were scarce, 1971.

John Dominis/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Carolyn Zinke, came to Aspen from Wisconsin with a teaching degree and, after a few years in the resort town she was proficient enough to gain work as a ski instructor, 1971.

John Dominis/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

From a 1971 story on the many young women who moved to Aspen, Colo., to live and work

John Dominis/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Phyllis Garrett, 21, lived in a one-room mountain cabin after following her sister to Aspen, Colo., 1971.

John Dominis/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dawn Clark left a college study tour in Hong Kong to live the ski life in Aspen, 1971.

John Dominis/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sandy Sollitt, 22, came to Aspen, Colorado from Chicago to enjoy the ski life, 1971.

John Dominis/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

From a LIFE story on young women enjoying the ski life in Aspen, Colorado, 1971.

John Dominis/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

From a 1971 story on the many young women who moved to Aspen, Colo., to live and work.

John Dominis/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

From a 1971 story on the many young women who moved to Aspen, Colo., to live and work.

John Dominis/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A 1971 LIFE story documented the influx of young women who had moved to Aspen, Colorado to live, work and ski.

John Dominis/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post Oh, To Be Young and in Aspen appeared first on LIFE.

Photo by Eliot Elisofon/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Photo by Eliot Elisofon/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Welcome to the 50s, and also the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs. The staff of lifeguards proved ready to channel their inner Esther Williams.

Colorado was full of all kinds of fun and games. At a rodeo in Ridgway, Colo., the action got a little wild, and a ride on an old-time looked a little hairy too. The train, which carried tourists along the canyon walls above the Animas River, also known as the River of Lost Souls, made the 90-mile round trip between Durango and Silverton daily, and had been featured in the filming of Around the World in 80 Days.

Photo by Eliot Elisofon/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Photo by Eliot Elisofon/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Looking back at car culture from those years can feel like its own kind of natural wonder—a parking lot becomes as attractive as the attraction. But then, the attractions on the trip were pretty darn good too. Below: Bryce Canyon in Utah, and then onto Yosemite, with its bears and Old Faithful.

Photo by Eliot Elisofon/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Photo by Eliot Elisofon/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

In this last photo, below, a family from Louisville headed out into the Idaho hills with a crew that included a cook, a wrangler, and pack mules for a multi-day trek. Their deep dive underlines the appeal of the Western United States. It’s about the breathtaking scenery, but it’s also about a journey back to a time when this country was wild.

Photo by Eliot Elisofon/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The post The Highs of a Rocky Mountain Road Trip, 1959 appeared first on LIFE.

Here, LIFE.com looks back, through the lens of the great Margaret Bourke-White, at a period when as LIFE phrased it in a May 1954 issue there was a “Dusty Plague Upon the Land.”

The delicate, lethal powder spread in a brown mist across the prairie horizon. Across Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico, the darkening swirls of loosened topsoil chewed their way across the plains, destroying or damaging 16 million acres of land. Man fought back with such techniques as chiseling. . . . driving a plow six inches into the soil to turn up clots of dirt which might help hold the precious land from the vicious winds. Against the dusty tide these feeble efforts came too little and too late. Two decades after the nation’s worst drought year in history, 1934, the southern plains were again officially labeled by the U.S. government with two familiar words “Dust Bowl.”

The threatening storm rose above a farm near Hartman, Colo. Once range land, it was almost ruined by wheat farming.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A protective pattern was spread across a farm near Walsh, Colo. by farmer using two tractors (upper right).

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A Colorado farming family during the 1954 Dust Bowl.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The antidust measure of furrowing land, taken by a conservation-minded farmer in Baca County, went for naught when a neighbor’s unfurrowed land blew across his farm, killing a crop of winter wheat.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

An irrigation ditch near Amity was cleared of dust, which filled it for 20 miles to depth of six feet.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Colorado dust bowl, 1954.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Colorado Dust Bowl, 1954.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Colorado Dust Bowl, 1954.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Colorado Dust Bowl, 1954.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Colorado Dust Bowl, 1954.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Colorado Dust Bowl, 1954.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Coloradans Art Blooding and his family inspected their newly bought farm in 50-mph wind.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Colorado Dust Bowl, 1954.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Wild ducks that had choked to death on the dust made a graveyard of what was at one time a watering stop on their spring migrations.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Felled broomcorn lay near Walsh, once ‘Broomcorn Capital of U.S.’

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Colorado Dust Bowl, 1954.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A farm house was damaged by a dust storm, Colorado, 1954.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Colorado Dust Bowl, 1954.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Colorado Dust Bowl, 1954.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Colorado Dust Bowl, 1954.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A Colorado farming family during the 1954 Dust Bowl.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The post ‘Plague Upon the Land’: Scenes From an American Dust Bowl, 1954 appeared first on LIFE.

Born on a sheep ranch in Wyoming, Dr. Ceriani attended Chicago’s Loyola School of Medicine but opted not to pursue a medical career in the big city. In 1946, after a stint in the Navy, he was recruited by the hospital in Kremmling, and he and wife Bernetha, who was born in Colorado, settled into the rural town. Dr. Ceriani was the sole physician for an area of about 400 square miles, inhabited by some 2,000 people.

Eugene Smith’s at-times almost unsettlingly intimate pictures illustrate in poignant detail the challenges faced by a modest, tireless rural physician—and gradually reveal the inner workings and the outer trappings of what is clearly a uniquely rewarding life.

“Country Doctor” was an instant classic when published, establishing Smith as a master of the commanding young art form of the photo essay, and solidifying his stature as one of the most passionate and influential photojournalists of the 20th century. In 1979, the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund was founded to support those working in the profoundly humanistic style of photography to which Smith dedicated his life and his art.

Dr. Ernest Ceriani made a house call on foot, Kremmling, Colo., 1948. The generalist was the lone physician serving a Rocky Mountain enclave that covered 400 square miles.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Ralph Pickering held his 5-week-old baby while waiting to be Dr. Ceriani’s first patient of the day. Pickering, a horseback guide to tourists coming to see the majestic Rocky Mountains, traveled from an outlying ranch to reach the doctor’s office.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Dr. Ceriani sat at the bedside of a patient as he assessed flu symptoms during a house call. When Smith began “Country Doctor,” he shot for a period of time with no film in his camera, to help Ceriani get used to his presence without wasting precious film.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

In the backseat of a car, Dr. Ceriani administered a shot of morphine to a 60-year-old tourist from Chicago, seen here with her grandson, who was suffering from a mild heart disturbance.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Dr. Ceriani examined a feverish 4-year-old girl suffering from tonsillitis. Although most of his patients were children, Ceriani was initially inexperienced in pediatrics when he started his practice, and studied up on it whenever he had the chance.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Though he had no vacations and few days off, Dr. Ceriani did have use of a small hospital, which was equipped with an X-ray machine, an autoclave and an oxygen tent, among other medical necessities. Here, he explained an X-ray — he developed the film himself — to one of his rancher patients.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The doctor taped a patient who broke some ribs after a horse rolled over him. “His income for covering a dozen fields is less than a city doctor makes by specializing in just one,” LIFE’s editors noted, “but Ceriani is compensated by the affection of his patients and neighbors, by the high place he has earned in his community and by the fact that he is his own boss. For him, this is enough.”

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Dr. Ceriani used a syringe to irrigate wax from an elderly man’s ear to improve his hearing.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Dr. Ceriani examined the stitches in the lacerated hand of a young patient.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Two friends transported Dr. Ceriani to Gore Canyon so he could enjoy a few hours of recreational fishing, a rare treat for the hard-working physician.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Dr. Ceriani fly-fished on the Colorado River.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Thirty minutes into his fishing excursion, Dr. Ceriani was called to an emergency: A young girl hasd been kicked in the head by a horse and was badly injured.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The child’s worried parents looked on as Dr. Ceriani, surrounded by nurses, examined their two-year-old daughter.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Dr. Ceriani had stitched the girl’s wound to minimize scarring, but he then had to find a way to tell the parents that her eye could not be saved and they needed to take her a specialist in Denver to have it removed.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The doctor helped a rancher carry his son into the hospital. The inebriated young man dislocated his elbow when he was thrown from a bronco at a rodeo.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The injured elbow required a painful reset.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

“Don’t tell my mother,” said the young man. Still under the effects of ether, he didn’t realize she’d been holding his hand during the procedure.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Dr. Ceriani checked the blood pressure of 85-year-old Thomas Mitchell, who came to the hospital with a gangrenous leg. Knowing that Mitchell might not be strong enough to endure the necessary amputation, Ceriani had been postponing surgery.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

When Mitchell finally rallied, the doctor gently carried him from the basement ward up to the operating room of the hospital, which had no elevator.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Dr. Ceriani gave the 85-year-old man spinal anesthesia before amputating his gangrenous left leg.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Dr. Ceriani responded to a late-night call when an 82-year-old man suffered a heart attack at a boarding house. Town marshal Chancy Van Pelt and one of the man’s fellow tenants stood by.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Knowing the man who suffered the heart attack at the boarding house will not make it through the night, Dr. Ceriani called for a priest from the kitchen.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Dr. Ceriani helped the town marshal carry the heart attack victim to the ambulance. There, the country doctor would see that his patient was as comfortable as possible, knowing there was nothing he can do to save him.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The treeless ranching community of Kremmling, Colo., stood on a 7,000-ft. plateau beneath the towering Rocky Mountains.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Dr. Ceriani held 11-month-old son Gary as his wife, Bernetha, steadied 3-year-old Phillip on a fence while watching a parade. Though they’d been married for four years at the time Smith was profiling the doctor, Mrs. Ceriani still struggled with the unpredictability of her husband’s schedule.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A fund-raising committee in Kremmling was able to raise $35,000 in 1947 to purchase the home of the town’s retiring physician and turn it into a 14-bed hospital. The funds were used to stock the tiny hospital with as much equipment — some of it war surplus — as could be afforded. Middle Park Hospital had only three wards that could accommodate 14 patients. With a new hospital in place, the town then put out a call for a new general practitioner — a call answered by Dr. Ceriani.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

After finishing a surgery that lasted until 2 AM, Dr. Ceriani stood exhausted in the hospital kitchen with a cup of coffee and a cigarette. “The nurses,” LIFE noted, “constantly admonish him to relax and rest, but because they are well aware that he cannot, they keep a potful of fresh coffee simmering for him at all hours.”

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Not published in LIFE. Dr. Ernest Ceriani in the small Kremmling, Colo., hospital.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Not published in LIFE. Doctor Ceriani checked 4-year-old Jimmy Free’s foot, cut when the boy stepped on broken glass.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Not published in LIFE. Dr. Ceriani examined his handiwork after the partial amputation of a patient’s leg, Kremmling, Colo., August 1948. The patient, Thomas Mitchell, was suffering from a gangrenous infection.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Not published in LIFE. An operating room in Kremmling, Colo.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Not published in LIFE. Dr. Ceriani with a patient.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Not published in LIFE. Dr. Ernest Ceriani delivered a baby.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Not published in LIFE. Maternity ward, Kremmling, Colo., 1948.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Not published in LIFE. An incubator in Kremmling, Colo., 1948.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Not published in LIFE. The contents of a country doctor’s bag, Kremmling, Colo., 1948.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Not published in LIFE. Doctor Ceriani and town marshal Chancey Van Pelt carried a patient from a cabin in the hills near Kremmling, Colo., 1948.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Not published in LIFE. Dr. Ernest Ceriani on his way to a house call in foul weather, Kremmling, Colo., 1948.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The post ‘Country Doctor’: W. Eugene Smith’s Landmark Photo Essay appeared first on LIFE.