Hal K. Rothman

Out Of The Woods: Essays in Environmental History

Covering a broad array of topics and reflecting the continuing diversity within the field of environmental history, Out of the Woods begins with three theoretical pieces by William Cronon, Carolyn Merchant, and Donald Worster probing the assumptions that underlie the words and ideas historians use to analyze human interaction with the physical world. One of these - the concept of place - is the subject of a second group of essays. The political context is picked up in the third section, followed by a selection of some of the journals most recent contributions discussing the intersection between urban and environmental history. Waters role in defining the contours of the human and natural landscape in undeniable and forms the focus of the fifth section. Finally, the global character of environmental issues emerges in three compelling articles by Alfred Crosby, Thomas Dunlap, and Stephen Pyne. Of interest to a wide range of scholars in environmental history, law, and politics, Out of the Woods is intended as a reader for course use and a benchmark for the field of environmental history as it continues to develop into the next century.

Saving the planet : the American response to the environment in the twentieth century

Part 1 INTRODUCTION: THE TWENTIETH CENTURY AND ITS MANY VISIONS 3 Chapter 2 From conservation to environmentalism-continuities and contradictions. Part 3 SETTING THE STAGE: THE DIVERSE CURRENTS OF THE 1890s 11 Chapter 4 Industrialization and reform. John Muir, the Sierra Club, and the preservation of nature. Federal legislation. Part 5 PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATION 34 Chapter 6 Theodore Roosevelt and the new approach to conservation. Addressing water pollution. Gifford Pinchot and scientific forestry. Implementing Progressive conservation. The Hetch-Hetchy controversy. Part 7 CONSERVATION AS BUSINESS AND LABOR POLICY 60 Chapter 8 Jazz Age values. Water in the West. New Deal projects. Effects of the Great Depression. Part 9 THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF CONSERVATION 85 Chapter 10 Post-World War II social changes. The problems of growth. Conservation revived. The Echo Park Dam battle. Part 11 THE RISE OF AESTHETIC ENVIRONMENTALISM 108 Chapter 12 The mood of the 1960s. Calls to action. Perils of atomic testing. Rachel Carsons Silent Spring. Paul Ehrlichs The Population Bomb. Environmentalism as a new center of consensus. The Santa Barbara oil spill. Part 13 THE LIMITS OF QUALITY OF LIFE 131 Chapter 14 The dangerous bargain between industry and its workers. A legal revolution. The federal response to environmental concerns. Environmental Impact Statements. The Alaska Pipeline. Earth Day. Toxic wastes. Part 15 BACKLASH: FULL STOMACHS AND EMPTY POCKETS 158 Chapter 16 Impact of the oil crisis and the Vietnam War. The Sagebrush Rebellion. James Watt. Swelling ranks of environmental groups. Reagan administration policies. The Wise Use movement. Part 17 A NEW ENVIRONMENTALISM 184 Chapter 18 Three Mile Island. Hazardous waste and Love Canal. New grassroots activism. Dumping in Nevada. Part 19 A Note on Sources 206 Part 20 Index 210

Selling the Meaning of Place: Entrepreneurship, Tourism, and Community Transformation in the Twentieth-Century American West

Tourism, as much as any other industry, has defined the high and low points in the development of the twentieth-century West.1 Despite its importance and its inclusion within an earlier generations matrix of scholarly inquiry, the subject has remained largely unexplored even as its significance to the western economy has increased. Over the past century the West has experienced a proliferation in the varieties of tourism, from the marketing of the regions scenery and mythic past to the post-World War II development of recreation and entertainment. Tourism has also emerged as a hoped for panacea to which people turn when they seek to revive areas in economic decline. Because tourism is a malleable industry designed to anticipate and cultivate trends in American society, its growth since 1900 has been influenced by changing cultural iconography, increased wealth and broader distribution of income, and

A Regular Ding-Dong Fight: Agency Culture and Evolution in the NPS-USFS Dispute, 1916-1937

The battles between the National Park Service and United States Forest Service are legendary. In the decades since 1916, when Congress established the junior of the pair, the two agencies have grappled incessantly. Although programs of land use were the ostensible cause of much of the controversy, in reality the two agencies debated incommensurable values-each had a different vision of the highest form of use of the land in dispute. Political considerations such as position in the federal bureaucracy and territoriality also played an important role in the rivalry. Both sides had distinct constituencies, avid supporters, and congressional influence. They also had domains that interlocked and aspirations that frequently overlapped. Both the Park Service and the Forest Service were land management agencies, but they were formed in different times, espousing different value systems. The philosophy of the Forest Service was of a piece with that of the Progressive Era. It emphasized concepts of the greater good as proscribed by the scientific and responsible few. The Park Service grew out of an emerging national marketplace which focused on advertising, promotion, and consumption. What it offered the American public was shaped by that confident and aggressive focus. As great as the often underestimated disparity between conservation and preservation, the distance between a proscriptive world view such as that of the USFS and its reactive counterpart as developed by the Park Service was even greater. Their conflict revealed a clash between the dominant value systems of different eras in the twentieth century. Yet their similarities were as responsible for their rivalry as their differences. The two agencies were heirs to different branches of the same tradition that, when codified in the federal bureaucracy, placed both agencies in the position of defining their missions in juxtaposition to the other. They operated in a largely closed environment, with an advantage to one side necessarily resulting in a loss for the other. As a result, the squabbles between the two agencies often seemed petty, motivated by little more than

Playing the Odds: Las Vegas and the Modern West

Playing the Odds gathers nearly seventy columns written by Hal Rothman between 1998 and 2006 for newspapers and magazines in Las Vegas and the wider West. Initially written for a general audience and published posthumously here as a collection, these essays reflect the broad swath of interests that defined Rothmans career and suggest the powerful role historians can play in their ever-changing communities. Rothman acts as provocateur, using his knowledge of the past to generate discussion, action, and social responsibility in the present and future. In his foreword, William de Buys observes,

A Past with a Purpose: Administrative Histories and the National Park Service

A Green Shrouded Miracle: The Administrative History of Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area, Ohio by RON COCKRELL. Omaha, Neb.: National Park Service, Midwest Regional Office, 1992; xxii + 542 pp., notes, maps, charts, illustrations, photographs, appendices, bibliography, index; paperbound. Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument: An Administrative History by PETER RUSSELL. Southwest Cultural Resources Center Professional Papers No. 48. Santa Fe, N. Mex.: Southwest Regional Office, National Park Service, 1992; xviii + 182 pp., maps, notes, photographs, appendices, selected bibliography, index; paperbound. Casa Grande Ruins National Monument, Arizona: A Centennial History of the First Prehistoric Reserve, 1892-1992 by A. BERLE CLEMENSEN. Denver, Colo.: Denver Service Center, National Park Service, 1992; viii + 238 pp., maps, notes, photographs, appendices, bibliography; paperbound.

Public Historians and Southwestern History

History of Fort Davis, Texas by ROBERT WOOSTER. Southwest Cultural Resources Center, Professional Papers No. 34. Santa Fe, N. Mex.: Southwest Cultural Resources Center, Division of History, National Park Service, 1990; vi + 416 pp., notes, maps, photographs, illustrations, bibliography; paperbound. In the Land of Frozen Fires: A History of Occupation in El Malpais Country by NEIL C. MANGUM. Southwest Cultural Resources Center, Professional Papers No. 32. Santa Fe, N. Mex.: Southwest Cultural Resources Center, Division of History, National Park Service, 1990; viii + 106 pp., notes, maps, figure, photographs, selected bibliography; paperbound. Cookes Peak-Pasaron Por Aqui: A Focus on United States History in Southwestern New Mexico by DONALD HOWARD COUCHMAN. Cultural Resources Series No. 7. Las Cruces, N. Mex.: Las Cruces District, Mimbres Resource Area, Bureau of Land Management, 1990; maps, notes, photographs, bibliography, appendices; paperbound. A Forgotten Kingdom: The Spanish Frontier in Colorado and New Mexico, 1540-1821 by FREDERIC J. ATHEARN. Cultural Resources Series No. 29. Denver: Colorado State Office of the Bureau of Land Management, 1989; x + 104 pp., map, notes, illustrations, bibliographic essay, bibliography; paperbound.

The End of Federal Hegemony: The Wilderness Act and Federal Land Management on the Pajarito Plateau, 1955–1980

The cultural revolution of the 1960s and 1970s changed the very nature of life in the U.S. The traditional order in American society disintegrated under the weight of its own inconsistencies, as the rules governing everything from individual behavior to race relations were modified to reflect a more inclusive ethos. The handling of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal promoted mistrust of government and its agencies. By the mid-1970s, a growing number of Americans viewed the actions of elected officials and bureaucrats with a jaundiced eye. Citizens spoke out against what they saw as socially condoned inequality and injustice, challenging the previously accepted norms of life in the U.S. The era had a distinctly utopian quality. Americans expressed profound desire to perfect their society and themselves.1 One of the lesser known consequences of this transformation was the change in the way that federal agencies concerned with natural resources managed their collective domain. Before the 1950s,