William Wyckoff

Rural gentrification and nature in the Old and New Wests

The rural American West is a rapidly changing region. Geographers often use the Old West and New West to describe the economic, cultural, and environmental shifts happening within the communities of these regions. However, previous research on the rural West often overlooks the larger economic processes and cultural variables at work in the creation of these regions. Using a case study of Hamilton, Montana, to explore the New West and Anaconda, Montana, to examine the Old West, this paper seeks to begin a richer discussion of the rural American West. These two communities exemplify the interrelated impacts of shifting geographies of capital investment, processes of rural gentrification, and the formative role of nature as a cultural variable in shaping development within the region.

REVISING THE MEYER MODEL: DENVER AND THE NATIONAL URBAN SYSTEM, 1859–1879

D. R. Meyers model of frontier urban growth hypothesizes predictable links between an emerging frontier center and the national urban system. The effectiveness of Meyers model is evaluated through a content analysis of nonlocal economic place-name mentions in 19th century Colorado newspapers. Using Denver as a case study, the changing pattern of its links to the national urban system between 1859 and 1879 suggests elaborations and revisions in the Meyer model. Interpretations offered by Vance, Conzen, Muller, Pred, and others are used to pose an alternative model of frontier center linkages with a dynamic national urban system.

Central place theory and the location of services in Colorado in 1899

Abstract Central Place Theory predicts the geographic distribution of services in an economy. Using the 1899 Colorado State Business Directory, this case study examines retail grocers, physicians, wholesale grocers and dentists. As predicted by the theory, the distribution of grocers, physician, and dentists closelyailable parallels population patterns. Higher order services such as dentistry are available at few centers while low order services such as groceries and medical care are widely available. On the other hand, the distribution of wholesaling corresponds to location theories for producer services. These services concentrate in highly accessible trade entrepots and gateway centers. Overall the 1899 pattern is much like today.

Seems like I Hardly See Them Around Anymore : Historical Geographies of Riparian Change along the Wind River

Riparian areas—and the cottonwoods, water birch, bull berry, and currants that flourish within them—hold special significance for Tribes of the Intermountain American West. These species have served ceremonial and practical purposes for generations. Yet cottonwoods have experienced well-documented declines over the past several decades, and serve as indicators of overall riparian change. Research generally attributes this shift to the development of water control infrastructure, altered flood regimes, invasive species, and grazing, and rightfully so. Less attention has been paid to the cultural and historical geographies underlying these vectors of change. This research focuses on the Wind River as a case study to examine the cultural and historical factors related to riparian change. Using remote sensing, interviews and document analysis, we specifically examine boundaries between tribal/non-tribal lands along the Wind River and (1) heterogeneous patterns of riparian change, (2) significant differences in settlement patterns and the development of water infrastructure, and (3) distinct differences in water governance and its power relationships. We conclude that riparian change is heterogeneous; differs temporally, spatially, and between cultural boundaries; and relates to a socio-ecological interplay of values, practices, and policies that underlie water control, flood regime change, and proliferation of invasive species. Ultimately this research suggests that examinations of riparian change would benefit from additional in depth analyses of cultural and historical geographies, and their temporal and spatial relationships. Furthermore, tribal sovereignty over land and water may have significant impacts on overall landscape mosaics, particularly regarding the maintenance of species that support traditional lifeways.

Colorado: a historical atlas

corporations, and governments in the Pacific. This book seeks to deconstruct the complexity of black-box leviathans, whether they are mining corporations or ‘grassroots’ indigenous collectives. It expands on themes addressed in Rumsey and Weiner’s (2004) comparative analysis of Papua New Guinea and Australian indigenous experiences with mining. The Pacific region is a hotbed of tensions between international corporations seeking resources and the indigenous groups that seek to profit from or manage their extraction. But Golub reminds us that these spaces of negotiation are not bilateral. Negotiations between landowners, affected people, and mining companies are often quickly politicized and the very definitions of who is considered part of the affected population problematized. Leviathans at the Gold Mine presents a timely reminder that even unwieldy and complex actors can be deconstructed to reveal individual motivations and sub-collective strategies. This book provides a useful structure and method for analyzing complex actor networks and relations between transnational corporations and local communities.

The Last Days of the Rainbelt

Out on the Colorado plains, you can still take old U.S. Highway 40 east of Denver. The lonely two-lane road leaves the Front Range and the famous Colorado high country far behind. Before you hit the Kansas line, you’ll encounter vast grasscovered prairies, occasional cattle, patches of irrigated land, and a procession of little wind-blown towns with names like Wild Horse, Kit Carson, and Cheyenne Wells.

The Republic of Nature: An Environmental History of the United States. Mark Fiege. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012. xii and 584 pp., maps, photos, illus., notes, bibliog., index.

Buddhist philosopher Thich Nhat Hanh popularized the concept of interbeing in the United States about a half-century ago. Simply put, interbeing stresses the interrelatedness of all things in the human and natural worlds: Every book we read contains clouds because the trees that produce the paper depend on their life-giving moisture. Similarly, people are both the product and producers of the soil they till. Although not explicitly invoked by author Mark Fiege, that notion of interbeing becomes a central philosophical precept in The Republic of Nature: An Environmental History of the United States. In scanning American history, Fiege encourages us to find the intermingling of people and nature wherever we look. As he notes in his introduction, where he takes readers on a tour of the Lincoln Memorial, “What you see is the product of a long process in which the republic extracted resources from its landscape and rearranged them in a record of change over time. Everything before you contains an element of the natural, whether marble, trees, or grass, humid air or damp bodies, or the Smoky Bear hats and green uniforms of National Park Service rangers” (p. 13).

34.95 cloth. (ISBN 978-0-295-99167-2)

Cultural geographers explore many intersections between places and writers. This study examines two memoirs (This House of Sky, Heart Earth) and three novels (English Creek, Dancing at the Rascal Fair, Ride With Me, Mariah Montana) published by Montana author Ivan Doig between 1978 and 1993. Set in his native Montana, these works have been cited for their powerful place-based imagery and language. Doigs example is used to explore the concept of “place-defining” literature introduced in 1991 by geographer James “Pete” Shortridge. I identify five qualities in Doigs writing to mark his contribution to place-defining literature. These include (1) Doigs accurate descriptions of Montana localities and landscapes, (2) Doigs descriptions of the seasonal round of activities and weather, (3) Doigs use of national and global events to shape local narratives, (4) Doigs emphasis on work and labor, and (5) Doigs use of vernacular language to connect past and present landscapes within his stories. Doig exemplifies what Shortridge describes as a critically acclaimed writer who provides “penetrating, accurate insights into regional culture” (Shortridge 1991, p. 280). Doigs Montana memoirs and novels are an invaluable source of insight to those interested in defining the place identity and regional character of Big Sky Country.

Ivan Doig's Montana and the creation of place-defining literature

(both domestic and foreign), I was disappointed to find only bits and pieces of sugar-production data sprinkled through the book. Because Hollander periodically refers to increases in acreage in various regions, and in other parts of the book addresses differences in the quantity of sugar produced, a handful of tables or graphs detailing both acreage and sugar production in different regions throughout the twentieth century would have helped readers grasp more clearly the relative impact of sugar-producing regions. I was further disappointed to find virtually no discussion of the relatively recent decline of sugar in Louisiana and the Caribbean. Hollander correctly identifies the development of high-fructose corn syrup in the uf731uf739uf737uf730s as another source of competition for cane (and beet) growers everywhere. Given her effort to highlight the competition among sugar producers in different locations, she might have devoted a bit more attention to the decline of competitors elsewhere. Minor quibbling aside, Hollander’s conclusion successfully grafts the emerging Everglades restoration and ethanol biofuel stories into her political economy of sugar in South Florida. At the same time that former President George W. Bush and his brother, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, were promoting restoration of the Everglades, they were promoting ethanol production, including some from South Florida sugar. The sugar question remains a hot-button issue. Environmentalists continue to hammer Big Sugar, as well as several smaller sugar growers in South Florida, dumping virtually all blame for the region’s ecological problems on agriculture. Meanwhile, free-trade economists persistently complain about the disparity between U.S. prices for sugar (uf733uf735.uf730uf732 cents per pound) and the global price (uf731uf739.uf736uf737 cents per pound), while domestic sugar producers retort that both supplies and prices in the United States are plentiful and reasonable. Meanwhile, a weak economy is trashing Florida Governor Charlie Crist’s plan to buy out South Florida’s U.S. Sugar Corporation. Hollander’s book situates all of these recent issues with a thoughtful and useful analysis of the range of interests that have dominated the production of sugar in Florida and elsewhere since the turn of the twentieth century.uf6deChristopher F. Meindl, University of South Florida

HISTORICAL ATLAS OF THE AMERICAN WEST. By Derek Hayes.

It is also these chapters that most clearly connect the theme of urban imagination to questions of modernity. Both Ankara and India’s steel towns were experiments in modernity with national implications. Ankara, as the new capital of Turkey under Atatürk, integrated classical and Western design as a show of modernity and state hegemony (pp. 162–66). The steel cities, built from scratch, also borrowed from “garden city” planning ideals (p. 191). The only discussion of modernity in the European urban context is provided by Margaret Cohen’s examination of nineteenthcentury Parisian waterways as sites of urban sociability-turned-sewers. Hers is also the earliest case study in the volume. This brief work nicely complements other works on Paris, most notably David Harvey’s (2003) Paris: Capital of Modernity. Missing from many of the discussions of modernity, however, is adequate discussion of how modernity is defined. As Çinar notes in her piece on Ankara, the definition of modernity can refer to “a lifestyle, an epoch, a process, a structure, an intellectual movement, a culture, an economic activity, a value system, or a cluster of institutions” (p. 151). Modernity is also time and place contingent, as modernity in 1850s Paris is a different process than in 1950s India. Yet, such distinctions are often missing. Five of the case studies in Urban Imaginaries are of cities in the Islamic world, thereby inviting comparison. The intersection of Islam with Western modernity provides for particularly fascinating analysis, one most comically played out in Ankara. There, nearly a halfcentury following the death of the secularist Atatürk, the imposing Kocatepe Mosque was situated across from his mausoleum (p. 172), claiming the space for a new form of Islamic modernity. The strength of Urban Imaginaries lies in its diversity—disciplinary, temporal, methodological, and topical. A collection like this can devolve into “islands” of conversation, with only superficial connections made among the case studies. Such is not the case here. To the geographer’s chagrin, most of the selections in Urban Imaginaries lack visual support, particularly maps, an unfortunate omission considering the degree to which these types of images can be used to promote particular imaginations. The goal of Urban Imaginaries is not to present a model of the modern city. Indeed, to a degree, these essays represent a reaction to recent attempts at classifying cities to fit with theories of globalization. Contributor Anthony King, for instance, critiques Edward Soja’s (2000) classification of Los Angeles as prototype “postmetropolis,” arguing it is instead “postcolonial” (p. 12). However, it is easy enough to read elements of Los Angeles into some of the urban settings described in Urban Imaginaries—for example, the “privatopia” (Dear and Flusty 1998) depicted in Shami’s west Amman, or the 1991 plans—almost Disneyesque in nature—to rebuild downtown Beirut and create three Grand Axes (p. 248) that recalled the “modern” capitals of Paris, Washington, DC, and New York.