Spring 2015: Landscapes of the American West
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
CELEBRATING Our 10th Anniversary and 20th Issue A Publication of the Foundation for Landscape Studies A Journal of Place Volume x | Number ıı | Spring 2015 Essays: Strange Beauty: Landscapes of the American West 3 Elizabeth Barlow Rogers: Time and Place: Deep Thoughts on a Journey Down the Colorado River Dan Flores: Mother Earth Laid Bare: Learning to Love the Badlands of the American West. Elihu Rubin: Pilgrimage to Rhyolite: In Search of the American Ghost Town Paula Panich: California Treasure: Henry Huntington’s Jewel-box Desert Asher Price: Lonesome Drive: The Wide Open Spaces of West Texas Joni L. Kinsey: Shoshone Falls: The Niagara of the West Ethan Carr: Eastern Design in a Western Landscape: Olmsted, Richardson, and the Ames Monument Place Maker 21 Paula Deitz: Stephen F. Byrns Contributors 23 Letter from the Editor 2015 Book and Grant Awards Dear Site/Lines Reader, notably Georgia O’Keeffe, the American Ghost Town,” Ethan Carr describes how 2015 John Brinckerhoff Marion Harney he hundredth elevated America’s badlands Elihu Rubin explores one of the achievement of Oakes Jackson Book Prize Winners Place-Making for the meridian separates in the eyes of the general these lost settlements. and Oliver Ames in building Imagination: Horace Walpole Patricia Bouchenot-Déchin the American West public. But even elements of In addition to valuable the Union Pacific portion and Strawberry Hill and Georges Farhat from the rest of the Western landscape that natural resources, the West of the first transcontinental Ashgate, 2013 André Le Notre in Perspective the country. West have not benefited from was replete with another railroad is memorialized by Yale University Press, 2014 Susan Herrington Tof this line of longitude, a signature artist have their kind of wealth, that of sub- Henry Hobson Richardson’s Cornelia Hahn Oberlander: annual rainfall is less than charms. As described in lime scenery. Artists such as sixty-foot-high pyramidal Vittoria Di Palma Making the Modern Landscape twenty inches a year and Asher Price’s “Lonesome Thomas Moran accompa- monument constructed of Wasteland: A History University of Virginia Press, here a gradual transition Drive: The Wide Open nied government-sponsored rusticated granite blocks Yale University Press, 2014 2014 begins from a landscape Spaces of West Texas,” the surveyors on extended field quarried from a nearby Sonja Dümpelmann of cultivated fields into an flat, big-sky vacancy of end- expeditions, portraying a outcrop. Those who opt to Flights of Imagination: 2015 David R. Coffin arid terrain of mountains, less rangeland fascinates – part of their country as yet take the short unpaved road Aviation, Landscape, Design Publication Grant Winner deserts, and savanna. Those even before the hip art unseen by many Eastern- off Interstate 80 twenty University of Virginia Press, who have not attuned their colony of Marfa comes into ers. In “Shoshone Falls: miles east of Laramie, Elizabeth Milroy 2014 eyes to buff-colored sand, sight. The Niagara of the West,” Wyoming, will see how this A Greene Country Town: ridges cleaved by arroyos, Succulent plants hold Joni Kinsey tells the story magnificent structure of William Penn’s Legacy and tabletop mesas, and sparse a particular attraction for of how the display of a architectural genius sits in the Birth of Philadelphia’s vegetation – a blond and many people, and displays magnificent Moran canvas stark grandeur on a knoll Public Parks rose rather than a green of cacti are often found in failed to garner sufficient above the treeless high Penn State Press landscape – do not necessar- greenhouses. However, in Congressional support for a plains. ily consider the West attrac- horticultural conditions bill to create Shoshone Falls In closing, I am proud tive or interesting in terms that more closely approxi- National Park. Instead the to say that 2015 marks the friends with whom we have our mailing list, and in the of place. The editors of, and mate their native South- Congress passed the 1902 tenth anniversary of the spoken. future only readers who con- contributors to, this issue of western habitats, they can National Reclamation Act, Foundation for Landscape We agree that the design tribute on an annual basis, Site/Lines disagree. be planted out-of-doors. In after which a massive hydro- Studies and that this issue and format of Site/Lines, in whatever amount they As the American frontier “California Treasure: Henry electric dam impounded is the twentieth publica- which make it satisfying to deem desirable, will receive pushed westward in the Huntington’s Jewel-Box the flow of the Snake River tion of our biannual journal the eye and hand as well as Site/Lines. Please, therefore, nineteenth century, parts Desert,” author Paula Panich just upstream from the falls, Site/Lines. Today the largest practical to carry in a pock- if you have not already made of the landscape considered describes how an industrial- thereby diminishing their question we face, if we are etbook or briefcase, should a gift to the Foundation for unfit for settlement and ist, with the assistance of crashing cascade of water to move forward into the not be sacrificed. Heretofore Landscape Studies within cultivation acquired the a talented and passionate and foreclosing the oppor- next decade, is one of fund- we have sent copies of each the last three years and wish pejorative name of “bad- horticulturist, created “one tunity to preserve one of ing. Site/Lines is a donor- issue to approximately two to receive our next issue, lands.” Dan Flores brings of the greatest botanical gar- the sublime wonders of the supported publication, and thousand persons presumed send us your contribution these “useless” areas into dens on any continent.” American West. its continuance depends on to have an interest in our now to help underwrite its focus in his article “Mother The West is famously The so-called win- votes of approval from read- principal subject, place, future publication. Earth Laid Bare: Learning the place where schemes ning of the West involved ers in the form of regular regardless of whether they to Love the Badlands of for getting rich from newly transcontinental railroads donations. Because of the have ever returned our With gratitude the American West.” Several discovered ore were rife. built by Gilded-Age East- high cost of printing and solicitation envelope with and good green wishes, American artists, most When things went awry in ern financiers. In “Eastern mailing, we have discussed a check or made an online On the Cover: the boom-and-bust econ- Design in a Western Land- the option of publishing the donation. Now it is essen- L. Prang and Co., After Thomas omy, many mining towns scape: Olmsted, Richardson, journal solely in an elec- tial to make the necessary Moran, Shoshone Falls on the Snake were abandoned and fell and the Ames Monument,” tronic format. This idea has economy of cutting back River, chromolithograph, 1876. into ruin. In “Pilgrimage met with near-unanimous Elizabeth Barlow Rogers to Rhyolite: In Search of rejection by readers and President 2 Strange Beauty: Landscapes of the American West Time and Place: Deep Thoughts on a Journey still designated its desert areas as “unknown territory.” Awe priority – waterproof splash gear to keep me dry when the Down the Colorado River becomes amazement as your gaze drops from the canyon’s boat ran the rapids. ou can’t consider the formation of the Grand Can- rims to the base of the cliffs, and you realize that you are Did I say “rapids”? In several places along our route, the yon and the Colorado, the river that flows through riffling the pages of a book of earth’s history that spans 1.2 water roils over invisible rocky debris that the eroding canyon it, without considering the subject of time. In doing billion years. walls have spilled into the river. Particularly treacherous in so, you are confronted with relative time scales: fact as well as reputation is the rapid known as Lava Falls. the brevity of our human lives – mortal time; the When I first knew my grandmother as a child, I was fasci- Here is what I read (and maybe shouldn’t have) about Lava Ycenturies and millennia memorialized in written records nated by her facial topography. Her wrinkles were not the Falls in Tom Martin and Duwain Whitis’s Guide to the Colo- and archaeological finds – historical time; and the hundreds crow’s-feet or frown lines that show up in midlife but instead rado River in the Grand Canyon before we departed: of millions of years in which the processes responsible for the soft folds and runnels that mark people as genuinely Lava Falls Rapid is formed by tons of rocky debris washed Earth’s formation and its physiognomy occur – geological elderly. When she died in her mid-nineties, I was on the brink into the river from Prospect Canyon. The large Prospect time. of adulthood, the callow period of life when one assumes Canyon drainage is susceptible to flash flooding like other Then there is another kind of time – suspended time – a that vigor, health, and good looks are permanent entitle- side canyons, but it drops 1,500 feet in a little over a mile, period in which normal life simply stops and another real- ments. Now I am surprised to see that my daughter is no eroding out the gravels and volcanic debris that have filled ity – one with an almost dreamlike quality – takes its place. longer the little girl to whom I read bedtime stories, but a the once-deep side canyon. The 200-foot-high bluffs on Suspended time implies life according to the diurnal rhythm mother with children in the full bloom of young adulthood.