western history

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  4/28/2023
  

  From Mayor to Homeless: Craig Coyner's Life Tracked the Changes in Bend, Oregon and the West

  Deindustrialization, addiction and high housing costs, plus frayed social services and mental health care, have fed a housing crisis on the west coast. One town's mayor experienced this firsthand. 

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• 2/12/2023
  

  Scientists: The Unsung Heroes of the American West

  by Elliott West

  From animal husbandry to epidemiology, the work of scientists was critical to America's conquest of the west, while the region also provided critical evidence in the debate over Darwin's theory of natural selection. 

• 
• SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
  10/11/2022
  

  How 1880s Levi's Sold for $76K

  Among the period-correct details establishing the provenance of the pants was an inner tag proclaiming the garments were made with only "white labor" in the era of Chinese exclusion. 

• 
• SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
  10/5/2022
  

  Patty Limerick Speaks on Her Dismissal from CU's Center of the American West

  by Colleen Flaherty

  All five members of the center's executive committee have resigned in support of Prof. Limerick. She has argued that her dismissal will make other scholars reluctant to commit to public engagement outside the university wall. 

• 
• SOURCE: Colorado Sun
  10/3/2022
  

  More Information on Removal of Prof. Patricia Limerick from CU Center of the American West

  A report alleged that the professor misused the time and work of center staff for personal projects; it remains unclear if the report was the reason for her removal from an academic center she founded. 

• 
• SOURCE: Vox
  9/23/2022
  

  The 100-Year Old Miscalculation that Drained the Colorado River

  The Colorado River Compact is based in an egregious exaggeration of how much water flows through the river—and how much downstream farms and cities have been entitled to use. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  11/25/2021
  

  What Slavery Looked Like in the West

  by Kevin Waite

  "Historians typically study Black and Native slavery as discrete systems. But America’s wealthiest slaveholders didn’t draw a fixed line."

• 
• SOURCE: Texas Monthly
  6/29/2021
  

  The Resurrection of Bass Reeves: Was the Real "Lone Ranger" Black?

  Only recently has popular culture revived interest in Bass Reeves, one of the first Black men to serve as a US Marshal, and the scourge of Texas fugitives. 

• 
• SOURCE: Denver Post
  6/6/2021
  

  The KKK Ruled Denver a Century Ago. Its Legacy is Still Felt

  Historian Robert Goldberg describes how the Klan worked in the 1920s to dominate local goverment in the Colorado city and the state government. 

• 
• SOURCE: National Geographic
  5/10/2021
  

  The Bloody History of Anti-Asian Violence in the West

  by Kevin Waite

  An 1871 massacre of Chinese residents in Los Angeles was the pinnacle of anti-Asian violence in the late 19th century west. 

• 
• SOURCE: Bloomberg CityLab
  4/21/2021
  

  How the U.S. Postal Service Forever Changed the West

  Cameron Blevins's new book documents the role of the postal service in enabling the westward expansion of the United States and the conquest of Native American peoples. 

• 
• 3/28/2021
  

  Ammon Bundy's Ongoing Religious War

  by Betsy Gaines Quammen

  Ammon Bundy has been looking for another battle since the takeover of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge. With a new administration promising increased regulation of public lands use, he may choose one soon. 

• 
• SOURCE: National Geographic
  3/8/2021
  

  Oregon once Legally Banned Black People. Has the State Reconciled its Racist Past?

  Activists in Oregon are working to recover knowledge of the state's forgotten African American history, which is as old as white settlement in the region. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  2/28/2021
  

  The Lie at the Heart of the Western

  New novels disrupt the stories of white heroism at the heart of the Western genre and grapple with the multiethnic, violent, and exploitative history of the continent. 

• 
• SOURCE: Mother Jones
  2/1/2021
  

  The Forgotten History of Wyoming’s Black Miners

  African Americans were an important, but largely forgotten, presence in the mining industry of the far west, a story that connects race, national expansion, and labor politics in the Gilded Age. 

• 
• 11/15/2020
  

  Reckoning with Marcus Whitman and the Memorialization of Conquest

  by Cassandra Tate

  The same period that saw the public affirmation of the Confederate Lost Cause myth saw a proliferation of monuments that portrayed the conquest of the indigenous people of the west as virtuous pioneering. The case of Marcus Whitman shows a national reckoning is in order.

• 
• SOURCE: Zócalo Public Square
  8/19/2020
  

  For 100 Years, El Monte Has Celebrated A Blatant Historical Falsehood. Why?

  by Romeo Guzmán

  The city of El Monte in southern California has embraced a false origin story--that the town was the end of the Santa Fe trail--to focus public history on white/anglo settlers and not the Native, Mexican, and Asian immigrant people who have also built the city. 

• 
• 8/2/2020
  

  From Historical Injustice to Contemporary Police Brutality, and Costs of Monuments to the Unworthy

  by Billy J. Stratton

  Silas Soule and Joseph Cramer, two Civil War-era heroes who rebelled and refused to join a brutal attack against Native peoples represent the moral courage we would do well to honor.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  6/14/2020
  

  The Pandemic and Protests Have Exposed the Truth About California

  by Miriam Pawel

  The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the notion of American exceptionalism. The same is true for the golden myth of California, where American inequalities are perhaps most starkly displayed.

• 
• SOURCE: TIME
  5/26/2020
  

  Understanding the Origins of American Gun Culture Can Help Reframe Today’s Gun Debate

  by Jim Rasenberger

  The past is a morally untidy place. As a result, it is also a place, perhaps the last one left, where we can meet and lower our weapons for a while.