Imagining the Big Open

by Nicholas, Liza; Bapis, Elaine M.; Harvey, Thomas J.; Flores, Dan

• ISBN13: 9780874807387
• ISBN10: 0874807387
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-03-05
• Publisher: Univ of Utah Pr

Summary

The American West has long played a role in our consciousness as a place apart, a site of perpetual optimism and romanticism. In Imagining the Big Open a wide range of scholars deftly examine our projections upon and uses of the New West-a projection that not only includes how we imagine the West but how we use Western places. Addressing the history, popular culture, geography, and public policy of the region the contributors unravel our collective psyche where SUVs and REI cards exist in symbiosis with the wilderness movement and Sierra Club memberships.

Table of Contents

Foreword	vii
Dan Flores
Preface	ix
Acknowledgments	xv
Part One: Power Shifts	1	(70)
Regional Unifier or Social Catspaw? A Social and Cultural Historical Geography of Salmon Recovery	3	(24)
Joseph E. Taylor III
``Way Out West . . . Ghost Towns, Gray Wolves, Territorial Prisons & More!'' Celebrating the Wolf in the New West	27	(18)
Karen Jones
Narratives of Place and Power: Laying Claim to Devils Tower	45	(26)
Wendy Rex-Atzet
Part Two: Playing in the Wild	71	(52)
Patagonia, Gary Snyder, and the ``Magic'' of Wilderness	73	(19)
Michael Lundblad
Urban Climbers in the Wilderness: Mounts Hood, Rainier, and Shasta and the History of Popular Mountaineering	92	(19)
Gordon Sayre
Fishing the Hatch: New West Romanticism and Fly-Fishing in the High Country	111	(12)
Ken Owens
Part Three: Making Places	123	(58)
Reinventing Red Lodge: The Making of a New Western Landscape, 1884--2000	125	(26)
Meredith Wiltsie
William Wyckoff
Yellowcake to Singletrack: Culture, Community, and Identity in Moab, Utah	151	(12)
Michael A. Amundson
From ``Last of the Old West'' to First of the New West: Tourism and Transformation in Jackson Hole, Wyoming	163	(18)
Lawrence Culver
Part Four: Choosing Histories	181	(58)
Buffalo Chips or Computer Chips? The Battle over the Future of the Great Plains	183	(20)
Amanda Rees
Reno's Silver Legacy: Gambling on the Past in the Urban New West	203	(17)
Alicia Barber
Contesting Boot Hill: The Saga of Metaphorical Dodge City	220	(19)
Robert R. Dykstra
Jo Ann Manfra
Part Five: Deconstructing Sundance	239	(42)
Scripting the West: Robert Redford's Persona and Film	241	(18)
Elaine M. Bapis
1-800-Sundance: Identity, Nature, and Play in the West	259	(13)
Liza Nicholas
The Sundance Kid and Sundance: The West as Nature	272	(9)
Thomas J. Harvey
Contributors	281
Index