John L. Allen

Horizons of the sublime: the invention of the romantic west

Abstract During the first four decades of the nineteenth century, a romantic image of the American West was invented. Beginning as early as the expedition of Lewis and Clark, romantic myths began to be created about the West and from these myths an image of the West as a place of romance was gradually produced. Much of the invented tradition that developed from the early images of the West was based in American interpretations of the European Romantic tradition and grew out of the art and literature that surrounded the American fur trade of the Rocky Mountains. Two different themes of romantic art and literature flourished during the fur trade era: the pastoral elegaic and scientific exoticism. Elements of both these themes are found in the art of Alfred Jacob Miller, George Catlin, and Karl Bodmer whose landscapes and portraits of the 1830s portrayed the fur trade era in its heyday, although Miller is most clearly associated with pastoralism and Bodmer with scientific exoticism. Romanticism also is found in the literature of the fur trade, particularly that of Washington Irving. The artists and writers of the fur trade period were responsible for the invention of a view of the West that was perpetuated by later nineteenth century painters and authors.

Division of the waters: changing concepts of the continental divide, 1804–1844

Abstract One of the major features of the continental geography of North America that was still misunderstood at the beginning of the nineteenth century was the drainage system between the Mississippi River and the Pacific. At the beginning of the century, Americans thought of the drainage system as symmetrical, with all major streams heading in a common source region and flowing in several directions to the Mississippi, the Arctic, the Pacific and the Gulf of California. The desired water route across the continent was based upon this view. During the first half of the nineteenth century the concept of the common source region and the water route underwent revision. Geographical information from early explorers like Lewis and Clark and Pike reinforced the older theories but gradually gave way before more accurate data acquired by the men of the Rocky Mountain fur trade. The fur trade lore was tested by John Charles Fremont in the 1840s and a new image was developed, one of a continental divide rather than a common source region. Although the idea of a commercial route across the continent still persisted after Fremont, it was viewed as a land route, crossing the Continental Divide at South Pass, rather than one by water.

A fabric of ideas and dreams: On the humanistic dimensions of geography

Karl W. Butzer, ed. Dimensions of Human Geography: Essays on Some Familiar and Neglected Themes. Chicago: The University of Chicago, Department of Geography, Research Paper no. 186, 1978. v + 190 pp. Figures, plates, tables, maps, footnotes, bibliography, and abstracts.