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

by William Wyckoff

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.

Genres: History

348 pages, Hardcover

First published February 8, 1999

About the author

I was born and raised in sunny Southern California and explored much of the Golden State as I grew up there in the 1960s and 1970s. After living back East and attending graduate school (M.A. and Ph.D. in Geography) at Syracuse University in Upstate New York (1977-1982), I returned west in 1986 to become a college professor at Montana State University in Bozeman, MT. Since then, I have taught classes in World Regional Geography, Cultural Geography, Geography of the United States, and Geography of the American West in the Department of Earth Sciences.

I have managed to explore many corners of the West, eventually visiting every county in the 11 western states. Books on the West's mountains (THE MOUNTAINOUS WEST: Explorations in Historical Geography), Colorado's landscape (CREATING COLORADO: The Making of a Western American Landscape, 1860-1940), and Montana (ON THE ROAD AGAIN: Montana's Changing Landscape) were great preparation for completing my most recent book entitled HOW TO READ THE AMERICAN WEST: A Field Guide (University of Washington Press, 2014).

The Field Guide encourages people to explore the West's contemporary landscapes (both rural and urban) and to appreciate all the ways in which environment, history, and culture mingle in this amazing setting!

Reviews

[Sean Brady · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK. Interesting perspective on Colorado. Mostly general knowledge. How terrain influenced the development of Colorado.

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Colorado Geography at its finest...not the landscape so much as how humans, Europeans anyway, settled and utilized the land in Colorado. This book explains why towns ended up where they did, and why some thrived and others are ghost towns. From the early traders through the mining booms, logging booms, railroad booms, farming booms, and the inevitable busts, this book lays it all out....not as straight ahead history, but rather as an exploration of how it all came to be spatially and in relation to the region's geography and resources.

[Cat. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This took forever to read, but it was worthwhile in that I now have a much better sense of how the state became Colorado. It's a bit old, but the early years are all that matter (to me) anyway.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a good review of Colorado history presented with a different twist - the combination of landscape and resources leading to different socioeconomic regions in the state.