Traditional interpretations of the American West have concentrated on the importance of its aridity to the region's cultural evolution and development. But the West is marked by a second fact of physical geography that distinguished it (from the experiences of settlers) from the east. As pioneers struggled with the climate west of the hundredth meridian, they were also confronted by mountains strewn across the region and offering their own set of limitations and opportunities. This volume focuses on these green islands of the Mountainous West that have witnessed patterns of settlement and development distinct from their lowland neighbors. In thirteen essays, the contributors address the mountains by means of five themes: the mountains as barriers to movement, islands of moisture, a zone of concentrated resources, an area of government control, and a restorative sanctuary. The focus ranges from California's Sierra Nevada to the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, Utah, and Montana. William K. Wyckoff is an associate professor, Department of Earth Sciences, Montana State University. He is the author of The Developer's Frontier: The Making of the Western New York Landscape and of articles in many journals, including The California Geographer, Social Science Journal, Geographical Review, and Journal of Historical Geography. Lary M. Dilsaver is a professor in the Department of Geology and Geography, University of South Alabama. The author, with William Tweed, of Challenge of the Big Trees: A Resource History of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, he has also written articles in journals such as Geographical Review, Annals of Tourism Research, and Yearbook of the Association of Pacific CoastGeographers.

Among historians of Utah and the American West, few names have greater resonance than Bernard DeVoto, Dale Morgan, Juanita Brooks, Wallace Stegner, and Fawn Brodie. Each of these writers made enduring contributions not only to our knowledge of the American West but also to our view of the region and its history. In many ways their writing set the standard for scholarship and interpretation, and their influence is still felt today. Yet they were not flawless. As Gary Topping explains in this, the first comprehensive appraisal of their work, each had serious shortcomings. DeVoto and Stegner, master storytellers, distorted their histories with excessive use of literary and artistic techniques; Morgan, the thorough researcher, failed to see larger contexts and interpretive possibilities; Brooks, courageous in finding damning new information on the Mountain Meadows massacre, stopped short of drawing conclusions that might alienate her from her fellow Mormons; and Brodie, psychobiographer extraordinaire, nonetheless succumbed to reading too much into the lives of her subjects based on her own emotions and conflicts. All five writers experienced Mormon Utah in the formative stages of their lives and, whether they wanted to or not, fashioned their work on the American West under that indelible influence. Topping shows ultimately how, despite weaknesses, each created exemplary models of diligent research and narrative elegance while establishing new traditions in western historical scholarship.

Juanita Brooks became one of the best-known historians of Mormon and Utah history. Her autobiography is a valuable source of information on early southern Utah and Mormon history.

The first in Krista Michelle Breen's adventures of Dakotaroo. T.J. Thompson's world is thrown upside down when her beloved Appaloosa pony mysteriously disappears into the fog. T.J. and her fearless friend Adrienne Brooks embark on a puzzling cross country journey in search of Dakotaroo. Aided in their adventure by Adrienne's annoying younger brother Phillip, the girls soon begin to understand the strange destiny of T.J.'s Appaloosa.

Boundaries Between skillfully relates the history of the Southern Paiutes from their first contacts with Europeans through the end of the twentieth century. In an engaging style, Martha C. Knack combines contemporary oral histories, meticulous archival research, original ethnographic fieldwork, and an astute critical perspective on Indian-white relations. Before the arrival of European Americans, Southern Paiutes foraged the arid hills and valleys of the area known today as southern Utah, northern Arizona, southern Nevada, and southeastern California. By all the ?rules? of history and anthropology, such a small-scale, foraging culture should have disappeared long ago, but the Southern Paiutes survive, and their story unsettles assumptions about the role that social complexity, power, and culture play in the dynamics of human history.

First Published in 2006. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.