Creating Colorado: The Making of a Western American Landscape, 1860-1940

Wyckoff, William

ISBN 10: 0300071183 / ISBN 13: 9780300071184

Published by Yale University Press 1999-02, 1999

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 6666-IUK-9780300071184

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Creating Colorado: The Making of a Western American Landscape, 1860-1940
• Publisher: Yale University Press 1999-02
• Publication Date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0300071183
• ISBN 13: 9780300071184
• Binding: PF
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Sprawling Piedmont cities, ghost towns on the plains, earth-toned placitas set against the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, mining camps transformed into ski resorts―these are some of the diverse regions in Colorado explored in this fascinating book. Historical geographer William Wyckoff traces the evolution of the state during its formative years from 1860 to 1940, chronicling its changing cultural landscapes, social communities, and connections to a larger America and showing that Colorado has exemplified the unfolding of a complex western environment.

Wyckoff discusses how nature, capitalism, a growing federal political presence, and national cultural influences came together to produce a new human geography in Colorado. He explains the ways in which the state’s distinctive settlement geographies each took on a special character that persists to the present. He leads the reader through the transformation of the state from wilderness to a distinct region capable of accommodating the diverse needs of ranchers, miners, merchants, farmers, and city dwellers. And he describes how a state created out of cartographic necessity has been given uniqueness and meaning by the people who live there.