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There are remote communities in the Sierra Nevada where you can’t get a Starbucks grande latte, much less walk into a Walmart. And that’s a good thing say locals, who’ve worked the land for generations and are proud of their rural heritage. But loggers and ranchers worry about the future of livelihoods dependent on forests and rangelands. Suburban sprawl is already gobbling up the Sierra foothills. And as development races up the mountainside, it threatens not only the landscape and its resources, but also rural residents and their ways of life.

In the first of a 3-part series on preserving the Sierra's agricultural heritage, Saving The Sierra producers jesikah maria ross and Catherine Stifter traveled an hour north of Lake Tahoe to learn about local strategies to preserve one of the last, best rural places in the Sierra Nevada - the Sierra Valley.