Go West Young Man

Courtesy of Kansas Memory www.kansasmemory.org

By Grant Bacon

The Enduring Frontier Heritage

Courtesy Kansas Memory www.kansasmemory.org

•The ghosts of western future and past still haunt the western present

•In the past new western lands offered the full range of cultural amenities

•Today creative western developers promise an escape from over civilization

The Enduring Frontier Heritage

•Today marketers or promoters draw on legacies of “Old West”

•Longing for open vistas and “scars” of development

•Landscapes are less “pure”

•West became the fastest growing region of country

•Western regional identity endures frontier heritage

Courtesy Kansas Memory www.kansasmemory.org

Primacy, Authenticity, Promise and Place

Courtesy of Western History and Genealogy from the Denver Public Library www.history.denverlibrary.org/images/index.html

•What is attachment to place? Why does it exist?

•Old pioneers emphasized the fact that they had been in place for longer than Indians or Hispanics

•Sense of place is not always a negative or a positive

•Commonly assumed Indians have a stronger sense of place.

Primacy, Authenticity, Promise and Place

Courtesy of Western History and Genealogy from the Denver Public Library www.history.denverlibrary.org/images/index.html

•The West is full of sacred Indian places

•Surge of white settlers displaced Native peoples

•One culture gained at the expense of another

•Sense of place that white settlers developed were an assault on Indian attachments to place

•Large Indian populations live in cities far from their cultural homelands or where they have a sense of place

Primacy, Authenticity, Promise and Place

Courtesy of Western History and Genealogy from the Denver Public Library www.history.denverlibrary.org/images/index.html

•Claims that westerner’s raised attachments to place are tied to part of the notions of the West as a land of promise

•Human need for self validation is a vital aspect to gaining a sense of place

•People try to convince themselves and others that they did the right thing by coming to, going from, or staying in a specific place

•I

Californication in the Contemporary West

Courtesy of Western History and Genealogy from the Denver Public Library www.history.denverlibrary.org/images/index.html

•Some westerners expressed their Caliphobia by saying “Don’t Californicate Oregon” “Washington is full, get out”

•Example of Regional Identity

•Daniel Boonesque quality of fleeing congested spaces to enjoy wide open spaces of the West

•Former Californians are unwestern?

Californication in the Contemporary West

Courtesy of Western History and Genealogy from the Denver Public Library www.history.denverlibrary.org/images/index.html

•California less western than the Intermountain West and Pacific Northwest because its so racially diverse

•New immigrants were not welcomed because they were seen as people who would be wards of the state or would drive wages down

•Big business was supportive of unrestricted migration

•Effect on property values?

Californication in the Contemporary West

Courtesy of Western History and Genealogy from the Denver Public Library www.history.denverlibrary.org/images/index.html

•Anti immigrant talk and action of the late 19th and early 20th century mirror the contemporary expressions of fear aimed at Mexican and other Latino’s of the West

•Stereotype of outsiders?

•People often define who they are by what they are not, who they are not, and where they are not

Change, Mythology, and Regional Identity

Courtesy of Western History and Genealogy from the Denver Public Library www.history.denverlibrary.org/images/index.html

•We can reminisce with fond thoughts about the way things used to be, but regions and cultures will continue to change

•Western cultures and places somehow seem purer when they do not change

•If remember the past selectively the aspects remembered are typically the positive overlooking other elements

Change, Mythology, and Regional Identity

Courtesy of Western History and Genealogy from the Denver Public Library www.history.denverlibrary.org/images/index.html

•Communities and individuals in places with the longest heritage have richer, stronger senses of place

•According to this rubric those with deepest regional roots are most likely to protect their cherished places from change

•A recent change in place does not take away from the new arrival’s attachment to the mythic imagery of westernness

Change, Mythology, and Regional Identity

Courtesy of Western History and Genealogy from the Denver Public Library www.history.denverlibrary.org/images/index.html

•By 1990 over 80% of “westerners” live in metropolitan areas

•In 10 years, it has grown to 90%

•These metropolitan spaces seem unwestern

•Must move on from the presumption that sense of place is rooted in the land

The sense of nature can be at your doorstep or at least close by, even in urban settings

The past and the future

Above pictures Courtesy of Western History and Genealogy from the Denver Public Library www.history.denverlibrary.org/images/index.html

http://jorgenmodin.net/images/armored%20car.jpg/viewbi-lingual.com/School/virtualtourgyoshu2.htm

•THERE ARE NO EASY LESSONS TO BE LEARNED FROM THE PAST THAT WILL GIVE A FULLER UNDERSTANDING OF WESTERN PROMOTION

•THE PAST DOES NOT HOLD A SURE PROMISE FOR RESOLUTIONS OF THE PROBLEMS FACING THE WEST TODAY

•BUT…seeing how our actions and attitudes in the present reflect those of the past does help us think more carefully about the claims we make about the TRUE sprit of the West