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Book Review
| Preserving Western History. Edited by Andrew Gulliford. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005. vii + 415 pages, photographs, drawings, maps, bibliography, index. $34.95 paperback.
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| Preserving Western History is a collection of thirty-five essays by scholars and professionals addressing public history as it is practiced in the western United States. The goal of the volume's editor, Andrew Gulliford, was to bring together the fields of western history and public history. The authors approach the topic from diverse methodological vantage points, including environmental history, historical archaeology, museum studies, Hispanic and Native American cultural history, women's history, and historic preservation. Public history practitioners, often working on landscapes of historical interest, approach environmental topics as a matter of course, and environmental historians have much to learn from public history. |
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Designed as a college reader, this volume contains several topical essays that survey the literature most relevant to fusing public history with each of the book's organizing themes. As well, each essay is accompanied by several study questions appropriate for students in an upper-level public history or western history course. The range of essays show the rich variety of public history sites and topics in the West, and in a classroom setting might well serve to excite students about possible careers in western public history. Following the traditional western history mode, the geographical focus of the book is emphatically on the intermountain West and desert Southwest, with only a few forays into the Pacific coast region and the Great Plains. |
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While Preserving Western History is presented as a text for college courses, this book contains much for historians of more advanced training as well. Of most interest to environmental historians may be the sections "Environmental Public History," and "Historic Preservation and Cultural Landscapes." The essays in those sections combine environmental history and public history methodologies to various purposes. Especially notable are Gulliford's exploration of wildland firefighter tragedies and memorials, Jeffrey Nichols' account of fish stocking in Wyoming's Wind River Range, and several essays on defining and understanding uniquely western architectures. Also of note for environmental historians are studies of the impact of ecotourism and the Wilderness Act on the western landscape. |
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Along with essays addressing particular problems and topics in western public history, the volume contains two "Case Studies" concerned with particularly rich western landscapes. The first of these case studies involves the creation of a National Historic Site on the southeastern Colorado location of the Sand Creek Massacre, a 1864 murder of Cheyenne and Arapaho. Contributors to this case study include former U.S. Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, descendant of Sand Creek Massacre survivors and legislative sponsor for the site. The contributors discuss challenges encountered in this memorial's creation, which involved collaboration between historical research, anthropology, and traditional tribal methods. The second case study examines several approaches taken in the preservation of western mining landscapes, ranging from frequently visited ghost towns to abandoned mineshafts and tailing piles. The contributors to this case study discuss the environmental impact of mining wastes, the paradoxes of arresting the decay of ghost towns, and the roles of tourism and economics. These case studies allow for a multidisciplinary, in-depth discussion of the challenges and successes in presenting the public history of these historically complex and culturally sensitive sites. |
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Emily Brock is a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University in the Bill Lane Center for the Study of the North American West. She is revising her manuscript, entitled "Replanting and Restoring the Douglas Fir: Forest Science and Forest Practice in the Pacific Northwest, 1890–1973." |
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