Environmental History of the American West

Summary

Environmental historians of the western United States have focused especially on public lands and the management of water in a region of capitalist development characterized by aridity and with mountains at its heart. With the rise of the New Western History in the 1980s and 1990s, environmental factors, whether interpreted in regional or frontier process terms, became more central. By the late 1990s, historians of the region were focusing on hybridity between nature and culture and blurring the boundaries between the environment and humanity in cities and suburbs, mining, agriculture, or health. The dominance of a singular view of scientific expertise guiding public management of nature was displaced by a concern with Indigenous knowledge, multiple ways of knowing the environment, and scientific practice. New areas of study were opened up with proliferating scholarship by the 2000s, including the Nuclear West and fossil fuel energy development, as well as the roles and experiences of those engaged in work and leisure, animal history, and other topics, and increasingly situating the American West in a global, transnational, or comparative context. Environmental historians have also turned toward social justice concerns such as climate, Indigenous land reclamation, and critical analysis of the role settler colonialism in the region. Throughout all of this, core concerns around the control and management of water and public lands have remained important.