Moab, Utah –Emily Niehaus happily acknowledges she took a circuitous route to become a housing advocate. She tallies her master’s degree in applied sociology and following that, stints as a loan officer, bookkeeper and case worker.

In this issue: A Photographic Chronicle of America’s Working Poor—Smithsonian journeyed from Maine to California to update a landmark study of American life – Just north of Sacramento is a tiny settlement that residents call La Tijera, The Scissors, because two roads come together there at a sharp angle.

In the quarter ending Sept. 30, 2016, Rural Community Assistance Corporation (RCAC) closed 13 loans totaling nearly $2 million to assist rural communities in Alaska, California, Colorado, New Mexico and Washington.

Elk City is similar to many small, isolated, rural towns in the West where residents mostly rely on themselves. With so few residents, it’s fallen upon Elk City to organize to a volunteer fire department, emergency medical services and, in recent years, an all-volunteer water management team. Now, the town’s most pressing need is to improve its wastewater treatment.

All children get stomachaches, Melanie Whelchel thought when her 3-year-old son Jessen suffered yet another one in 2013. At the time, she blamed a virus, although Jessen had been vomiting. Even an X-ray of a lump on Jessen’s abdomen indicated harmless constipation. But during one feverish middle-of-the-night attack, with Jessen curled up in agony, a frantic Whelchel rushed him to an emergency room in Chico, where they live.