The view from Philadelphia

Pacific Historical Review

Volumn 67, Issue 3, 1998, Pages 383-392

  Wrobel, David M ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0040205633     PISSN: 00308684     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3641755     Document Type: Review

References (33)

1. Included among these works are the five most notable standard bearers of the New Western History: Donald Worster, Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West (New York, 1985); Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (New York, 1987); Richard White, It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own: A New History of the American West (Norman, Okla., 1991); William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York, 1991); and Patricia Nelson Limerick, Charles E. Rankin, and Clyde A. Milner II, Trails: Toward a New Western History (Lawrence, Kans., 1991). Also especially noteworthy is Clyde A. Milner II, Carol A. O'Connor, and Martha A. Sandweiss, eds., The Oxford History of the American West (New York, 1994).
2. Included among these works are the five most notable standard bearers of the New Western History: Donald Worster, Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West (New York, 1985); Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (New York, 1987); Richard White, It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own: A New History of the American West (Norman, Okla., 1991); William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York, 1991); and Patricia Nelson Limerick, Charles E. Rankin, and Clyde A. Milner II, Trails: Toward a New Western History (Lawrence, Kans., 1991). Also especially noteworthy is Clyde A. Milner II, Carol A. O'Connor, and Martha A. Sandweiss, eds., The Oxford History of the American West (New York, 1994).
3. Included among these works are the five most notable standard bearers of the New Western History: Donald Worster, Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West (New York, 1985); Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (New York, 1987); Richard White, It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own: A New History of the American West (Norman, Okla., 1991); William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York, 1991); and Patricia Nelson Limerick, Charles E. Rankin, and Clyde A. Milner II, Trails: Toward a New Western History (Lawrence, Kans., 1991). Also especially noteworthy is Clyde A. Milner II, Carol A. O'Connor, and Martha A. Sandweiss, eds., The Oxford History of the American West (New York, 1994).
4. Included among these works are the five most notable standard bearers of the New Western History: Donald Worster, Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West (New York, 1985); Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (New York, 1987); Richard White, It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own: A New History of the American West (Norman, Okla., 1991); William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York, 1991); and Patricia Nelson Limerick, Charles E. Rankin, and Clyde A. Milner II, Trails: Toward a New Western History (Lawrence, Kans., 1991). Also especially noteworthy is Clyde A. Milner II, Carol A. O'Connor, and Martha A. Sandweiss, eds., The Oxford History of the American West (New York, 1994).
5. Included among these works are the five most notable standard bearers of the New Western History: Donald Worster, Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West (New York, 1985); Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (New York, 1987); Richard White, It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own: A New History of the American West (Norman, Okla., 1991); William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York, 1991); and Patricia Nelson Limerick, Charles E. Rankin, and Clyde A. Milner II, Trails: Toward a New Western History (Lawrence, Kans., 1991). Also especially noteworthy is Clyde A. Milner II, Carol A. O'Connor, and Martha A. Sandweiss, eds., The Oxford History of the American West (New York, 1994).
6. Included among these works are the five most notable standard bearers of the New Western History: Donald Worster, Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West (New York, 1985); Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (New York, 1987); Richard White, It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own: A New History of the American West (Norman, Okla., 1991); William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York, 1991); and Patricia Nelson Limerick, Charles E. Rankin, and Clyde A. Milner II, Trails: Toward a New Western History (Lawrence, Kans., 1991). Also especially noteworthy is Clyde A. Milner II, Carol A. O'Connor, and Martha A. Sandweiss, eds., The Oxford History of the American West (New York, 1994).
7. Walter Nugent, "Where is the American West?: Report on a Survey," Montana: The Magazine of Western History, 42 (1992), 2-23. The majority of respondents to the survey stretched the eastern boundary of the West into the Plains. Some respondents included the Pacific Coast, and a smaller number included Alaska and Hawaii.
8. Jonathan Raban, Bad Land: An American Romance (New York, 1996).
9. William E. Riebsame, quoted in Karen J. Winkler, "An Atlas of the American West Maps the Region's Boundaries and Attempts to Find Its Heart," Chronicle of Higher Education, Dec. 5, 1997, A20-21, A20.
10. Walter Prescott Webb, Divided We Stand: The Crisis of a Frontierless Democracy (New York, 1937).
11. For an excellent overview of religion in the West, including the half-century since World War II, see Ferenc M. Szasz and Margaret Connell Szasz, "Religion and Spirituality," in Milner, O'Connor, and Sandweiss, eds., The Oxford History of the American West, 359-391.
12. Earl Pomeroy, The Pacific Slope: A History of California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, and Nevada (Lincoln, Nebr., 1991), v.
13. For more on Frontierland, see Michael Steiner, "Frontierland as Tomorrowland: Walt Disney and the Architectural Packaging of the Mythic West," Montana: The Magazine of Western History, 48 (1998), 2-17, and John Findlay, Magic Lands: Western Cityscapes and American Culture after 1940 (Berkeley, 1992), 53-64. It is worth noting that important centers of Western art, history, and culture, such as the Autry Museum of Western Heritage in Los Angeles, the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska, and the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma, all fall outside of the boundaries of the New West.
14. For more on Frontierland, see Michael Steiner, "Frontierland as Tomorrowland: Walt Disney and the Architectural Packaging of the Mythic West," Montana: The Magazine of Western History, 48 (1998), 2-17, and John Findlay, Magic Lands: Western Cityscapes and American Culture after 1940 (Berkeley, 1992), 53-64. It is worth noting that important centers of Western art, history, and culture, such as the Autry Museum of Western Heritage in Los Angeles, the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska, and the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma, all fall outside of the boundaries of the New West.
15. See Raymond A. Mohl, ed., Searching for the Sunbelt: Historical Perspectives on a Region (Knoxville, Tenn., 1990).
16. Bernard De Voto, "Footnote on the West," Harper's Monthly Magazine, 155 (1927), 712-721, quote on 714.
17. Carey McWilliams, "Myths of the West," North American Review, 232 (1931), 425. On this issue, the late Wallace Stegner remarked: "I don't think the rest of the West looks upon California as a part of the West. . . . It's part of the East; it's just the other end of the dumbbell, and the West's in-between on the handle"; Wallace Stegner and Richard W. Etulain, Conversations with Wallace Stegner on Western History and Literature (Salt Lake City, 1990), 188.
18. Carey McWilliams, "Myths of the West," North American Review, 232 (1931), 425. On this issue, the late Wallace Stegner remarked: "I don't think the rest of the West looks upon California as a part of the West. . . . It's part of the East; it's just the other end of the dumbbell, and the West's in-between on the handle"; Wallace Stegner and Richard W. Etulain, Conversations with Wallace Stegner on Western History and Literature (Salt Lake City, 1990), 188.
19. William E. Riebsame, General Editor, Atlas of the New West: Portrait of a Changing Region (New York, 1997), 46.
20. One is reminded of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century fears that the receding frontier would no longer be able to assimilate the nation's new immigrants.
21. Mary Murphy, "Searching for an Angle of Repose: Women, Work, and Creativity in Early Montana," in David M. Wrobel and Michael C. Steiner, eds., Many Wests: Place, Culture, and Regional Identity (Lawrence, Kans., 1997), 172. Limerick suggests as much in her essay, "The Shadows of Heaven Itself," in the Atlas, 157.
22. Mary Murphy, "Searching for an Angle of Repose: Women, Work, and Creativity in Early Montana," in David M. Wrobel and Michael C. Steiner, eds., Many Wests: Place, Culture, and Regional Identity (Lawrence, Kans., 1997), 172. Limerick suggests as much in her essay, "The Shadows of Heaven Itself," in the Atlas, 157.
23. For more on the theme of "region as reaction" see Clyde A. Milner II, "The View from Wisdom: Four Layers of History and Regional Identity," in William Cronon, George Miles, and Jay Gitlin, eds., Under an Open Sky: Rethinking America's Western Past (New York, 1992).
24. Atlas of the New West, 49, 65.
25. Take, for example, the late James Dickey's wonderful essay, "The Starry Place Between the Antlers: Why I Live in South Carolina" (retitled offprint), originally published under the title "Why I Live Where I Live," Esquire, 95 (April 1981), 62-64. Dickey, a resident of Oregon, California, and then Washington, prior to Columbia, South Carolina, closes the essay by answering the question he poses in simple, yet mystical terms. South Carolina is where he found his "balance . . . the starry place between the antlers: between the bucks of the rhododendron gullies and those of the ocean, the mountain horns and the swimming" (p. 64). Such powerful pronouncements of attachment to place could be found for most places in the country.
26. Take, for example, the late James Dickey's wonderful essay, "The Starry Place Between the Antlers: Why I Live in South Carolina" (retitled offprint), originally published under the title "Why I Live Where I Live," Esquire, 95 (April 1981), 62-64. Dickey, a resident of Oregon, California, and then Washington, prior to Columbia, South Carolina, closes the essay by answering the question he poses in simple, yet mystical terms. South Carolina is where he found his "balance . . . the starry place between the antlers: between the bucks of the rhododendron gullies and those of the ocean, the mountain horns and the swimming" (p. 64). Such powerful pronouncements of attachment to place could be found for most places in the country.
27. For a concise overview of the urban West, see Carol A. O'Connor, "A Region of Cities," in Milner, O'Connor, and Sandweiss, eds., The Oxford History of the American West, 535-563. For more on the link between urbanization a nd western regionalism, see Carl Abbott, "The American West and the Three Urban Revolutions," in Gene M. Gressley, ed., Old West/New West: Quo Vadis? (Worland, Wyo., 1994), 73-99.
28. For a concise overview of the urban West, see Carol A. O'Connor, "A Region of Cities," in Milner, O'Connor, and Sandweiss, eds., The Oxford History of the American West, 535-563. For more on the link between urbanization a nd western regionalism, see Carl Abbott, "The American West and the Three Urban Revolutions," in Gene M. Gressley, ed., Old West/New West: Quo Vadis? (Worland, Wyo., 1994), 73-99.
29. Abbott points out in "The American West and the Three Urban Revolutions," that "[t]he dozen largest western metropolitan areas (as of 1990) accounted for 28 percent of all the population increase in the United States between 1940 and 1990 and for 36 percent for the 1980s" (p. 98).
30. From the poem "Out Where the West Begins," by Arthur Chapman (Copyright 1919).
31. Carey McWilliams, "Myths of the West," 427; Wallace Stegner, "On Western History and Historians," in Stegner and Etulain, Conversations with Wallace Stegner, 156. For more on this theme of the diversity of the regions that comprise the West, see David M. Wrobel and Michael C. Steiner, "Many Wests: Discovering a Dynamic Western Regionalism," in Wrobel and Steiner, eds., Many Wests, 1-30.
32. Carey McWilliams, "Myths of the West," 427; Wallace Stegner, "On Western History and Historians," in Stegner and Etulain, Conversations with Wallace Stegner, 156. For more on this theme of the diversity of the regions that comprise the West, see David M. Wrobel and Michael C. Steiner, "Many Wests: Discovering a Dynamic Western Regionalism," in Wrobel and Steiner, eds., Many Wests, 1-30.
33. Carey McWilliams, "Myths of the West," 427; Wallace Stegner, "On Western History and Historians," in Stegner and Etulain, Conversations with Wallace Stegner, 156. For more on this theme of the diversity of the regions that comprise the West, see David M. Wrobel and Michael C. Steiner, "Many Wests: Discovering a Dynamic Western Regionalism," in Wrobel and Steiner, eds., Many Wests, 1-30.