Cattle in the Cold Desert

by James A. Young, B. Abbott Sparks

The volume traces the history of white settlement in the Great Basin from about 1860, along with the arrival of herds of cattle and sheep to exploit the forage resources of a pristine environment and, through the history of John Sparks, a pioneer cattleman, illustrates how the herdsmen interacted with the sagebrush/grasslands of the cold desert West.

Genres: History

255 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1986

About the author

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Reviews

[Corinne Schroeder]

This is a highly informative book on the history of various topics relating to the Great Basin, North America's largest biome.

At times dry, this book can hold your attention if a particular topic is interesting to the reader. For example, the history on haying in the area wasn't something that kept my eyes open but the history of fire regimes and cattle drives did.

I appreciated how the authors kept a critical eye on things and provided a balanced viewpoint. Largely, the Great Basin is a fragile ecosystem that has become highly degraded due to overstocking and then non-commonsense laws (although how one makes site specific regulations, who's to say) on how to improve the range based on what we now know to be faulty science.

I think for fellow rangeland ecologists, particularly those in the Great Basin, who care about these spaces, this book provides a good look into how we got to where we are today. The great "experiment" of ranching in the Great Basin by white dudes took guts. Now, it will also take brains if ranching is to survive the ecological disaster that is a combination of introduced annual grasses, fire, overstocking, and climate change.