Her daughter, Risa, estimated that about half the students at Cody High regularly drank alcohol.

Friday nights in Cody can mean football and a movie, but after 11 o'clock, with nothing else to do, teenagers say they head to somebody's ranch or into the mountains toward Yellowstone National Park to drink.

"I think so many kids drink because the state is barren, desolate and boring to some people, and there is not really anything to do," said Isaiah Spigner, a recent high school graduate from Cheyenne who is headed for the University of Wyoming.

But geography alone does not fully explain why there is such a drinking problem among young people.

"We're a frontier culture, and people say, 'I work hard, and I'll be damned if I'm not going to have a beer or two on the way home,"' said Rosie Buzzas, a Montana state legislator who also oversees alcohol counseling services in the western part of the state. "There's a church, a school, and 10 bars in every town."

It has never been hard for young people to get alcohol in Montana, Buzzas said, in part because many parents think it is a rite of passage for children to drink.

"There are plenty of adults who tell me, 'What's the big deal? Kids just have to learn to drink,"' she said. Not long ago, three children, ages 9, 11 and 12, died of alcohol poisoning in an isolated town in Montana, but the deaths did little to change attitudes, she said.

"Something like that has a sobering effect, but it doesn't last," Buzzas said. "Kids aren't listening to what we say, they're watching what we do."

This year, Montana made it an offense to drink while driving, one of the last states to do so. But there was heavy opposition.

Wyoming still allows passengers in a vehicle to drink, as long as the driver is not holding the container. A bill that would have made that illegal was defeated. A minor in possession of alcohol can be fined, but will typically not lose a driver's license for a first offense.

At the nightly rodeo in Cody, beer signs are ubiquitous, and on the town's main commercial strip, a giant beer banner welcomes tourists.

Some cite a legacy of forcing children to grow up early in the empty West. From 1854 to 1929, about 200,000 orphan children arrived by train from the East and were offered to families for adoption. The orphan trains, as they were called, left a psychic print, some counselors and historians say.

"The idea that life is harsh, and you learn it at an early age, is part of our history," said Ralph Boerner, who counsels alcoholics of all ages in Butte, Mont.

"I asked everyone in my group the other night when they started drinking," Boerner said. "The latest was 15. The earliest was age 5."