wha 2010 spring newsletter
Post on 06-Mar-2016
219 Views
Preview:
DESCRIPTION
TRANSCRIPT
San Francisco who summered there in
rustic retreats and impressive lodges. By the end of the Com-
stock‘s glory days in 1880, the Tahoe Basin was virtually clear
cut. While Tahoe‘s forests fell before the ax, its scenic setting
continued to attract visitors via a rail line from Truckee, California
that connected to the east-west transcontinental railroad line. The
acclaim of Tahoe‘s spectacular scenery became so well known by
1900 that Congress briefly entertained proposals for the creation of
a national park throughout the Tahoe Basin, but established prop-
erty owners successfully opposed the park idea. Beyond the park
proposals, some saw Tahoe as the
water supply for the growing urban
populations of San Francisco or for
farms in Nevada. The latter was
partially realized when the Newlands
Reclamation Project in the Lahontan
Valley east of Reno diverted waters
from the Truckee River as it made
its way along a 116 mile route from
Tahoe to the Paiute Pyramid Lake
Indian Reservation. By and large
Tahoe made it into the Twentieth
Century without being dismantled
for urban water supplies or to supply the never-ending thirst of
desert agriculture. It continued to be a popular summer and even
winter sport destination with the growing popularity of skiing.
Year-round residences became common. On the south shore and
to a lesser extent on the north shore, large resort casinos marked
the skyline in the decades after Nevada legalized gambling in
1931. By the 1960s in the wake of post-World War II growth,
Tahoe communities began to experience traffic congestion, sewage
disposal problems, and erosion damage. All threatened air quality
Founded in 1961, the Western History Association exists to promote the study of the North American
West in its varied aspects and broadest sense.
“Jewel of the Sierra” - Lake Tahoe is Site of the 50th Annual WHA Conference (October 13-16, 2010)
Continued on Page 2
The Newsletter
As a longtime student of western agricul-
tural and resource history, William Rowley
offers an historical overview of Lake Ta-
hoe and the conference destination site.
He is a professor of Nevada history and
Environmental History at the University of
Nevada, Reno, and served as the Secretary
of the WHA from 1973-1990.
Lake Tahoe, or the ―Jewel of the Sierra,‖ is
the highest lake (6,225 feet) for its size in the United States, and
lies astride the elbow-like segment of the California-Nevada
state line. With both a Nevada and a California shoreline, the
interstate nature of the lake presents complicated governance
issues. In an 1845 Report on his western explorations John C.
Frémont noted sighting the lake on February 14, 1844 in a dan-
gerous mid-winter crossing of the Sierra. In that narrative he
called it ―Mountain Lake.‖ Subsequently Frémont tried to name
it Lake Bonpland after a well-known French botanist, but Cali-
fornians chose to call it by the short-lived name of Lake Bigler
after the state‘s third governor. Locals preferred the name given
by the indigenous Washoe people, ―Da-ow-a-ga.‖ Somehow
these syllables became trans-
formed into the word Tahoe,
which the California legislature
accepted as the official name in
1945. The discovery of the rich
gold and silver ore in what was to
be known as the Comstock Lode
began the 1859-60 ―Rush to
Washoe‖ followed by the creation
of Nevada Territory in 1861 and
Nevada statehood in 1864. The
new discoveries just a short dis-
tance from California‘s eastern
reaches and almost directly east of Tahoe attracted immediate
investment capital from San Francisco to develop deep under-
ground quartz mining that created the Comstock towns of Vir-
ginia City, Gold Hill, and Silver City. The underground drifts
and stopes required heavy bracing beams in a system called
square-sets demanding huge supplies of milled lumber. Most of
it came from the Tahoe Basin that also became a place of recrea-
tion for both Comstock residents and prosperous families from
Spring 2010
The WHA Newsletter is a semi-annual publication of the Western History Association. Wm. H. Holmes
Nominating Committee’s
Selection for President-
Elect is Albert Hurtado
Albert L. Hurtado was born and raised in
Sacramento, California, son of a Cuban-
American immigrant who was raised in
Connecticut and a fourth generation An-
glo-Californian mother.
Continued on Page 2
2
The WHA Newsletter Spring 2010
and the pris-
tine clear
nature of the Tahoe‘s waters. While environ-
mental scientists sounded alarm about these
threats to the clarity of the lake, local govern-
ments split by a state line struggled to offer
remedies. Finally in 1970 after the failure of a Bi
State Compact to govern the Basin, both Nevada
and California agreed to contribute to the forma-
tion of a bi-state agency empowered to address
the many environmental threats posed by the
urbanization of Lake Tahoe. In 2010 the Tahoe
Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) marked its
thirtieth anniversary as the chief environmental
governing body of this fragile alpine environ-
ment.
President
John Wunder
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
President-Elect
Quintard Taylor
University of Washington
Executive Director
Kevin J. Fernlund
University of Missouri-St. Louis
WHA Council
Liping Zhu
Eastern Washington University
Peter Blodgett
Huntington Library
Maria Montoya
New York University
Virginia Scharff
University of New Mexico
Katherine Morrissey
University of Arizona
David Gutierrez
University of California, San Diego
Sherry Smith
Southern Methodist University
Dan Flores
University of Montana
Karen Merrill
Williams College
Nominating Committee
William Bauer, Jr.
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Barbara O. Reyes
University of New Mexico
B. Byron Price
University of Oklahoma
Emily Greenwald
Historical Research Associates, Inc
Marsha Weisiger
New Mexico State University
Lake Tahoe (cont.):
Map of Lake Tahoe. Courtesy of Google Images
Hurtado (cont.) Part of his mother‘s family lived in a nineteenth-
century carriage factory in Nevada City while
others operated a hop ranch on the outskirts of Sacramento. The carriage factory was a frequent
weekend retreat where Hurtado was free to rum-
mage through the rambling structure and to read
the stash of Frank Leslie‘s Illustrated and
Harper‘s Weekly newspapers. As a teenager his
interest in horses evolved into a serious determi-
nation to become a horse trainer in the California
tradition. Old men who had worked on the Miller
and Lux outfit taught him how. He learned about
the bosal and spade bit, the mecate and the fiador
knot. The future seemed to hold more and better horses.
In 1949 the family sold the hop ranch to the state
for the Sacramento State College campus where
the aspiring horse trainer completed a bachelor‘s
degree in history, an educational exercise that
was meant to provide him with employment in-
surance if some contrary colt crippled him. His
senior year changed his life. The required senior
thesis sent him looking into his family‘s old pa-
pers where he found a ledger with the promising
title, ―Secret Minutes of the Nevada City Law
and Order League, 1908.‖ The League turned
out to be a bunch of temperance advocates rather
than the bloody-minded vigilantes that he was
hoping to find, but the process of investigation
and discovery completely captivated him. Gradu-
ate school rather than a round corral defined his
future.
Continued on Page 3
Emblem on Nevada State Flag. Courtesy of Google
Images
3
The WHA Newsletter Spring 2010
50th Anniversary of the WHA
(1961 to 2011)
As the WHA approaches its fiftieth anni-
versary, John Wunder, Sherry Smith and
Quintard Taylor suggested that a commit-
tee of eight consider how the Association
might best approach our next fifty years,
looking broadly at how we might build on
our strengths and address areas needing
attention. Howard Lamar, Janet Fireman, David Edmunds, Benja-
min Johnson, Katherine Benton-Cohen, Anne Butler and Maria
Montoya agreed to serve on the committee, and I agreed to chair
it.
Thus far we have focused on the following: possible revision of
the WHA mission statement; expanding our membership and at-
tracting the next generation drawn to western history; working
with constituencies, such as other organizations, outside the
WHA; insuring the financial health and stability to sustain and
expand our activities; identifying trouble spots in the Associa-
tion‘s basic structure. Our hope is to draft a report in time to sub-
mit it to the council a few weeks prior to our meeting at Lake Ta-
hoe. The council then would decide how to proceed, or not, in
considering our report. Any suggestions especially regarding
broad areas to address, other than those mentioned above, are
most welcome. Please write me: ewest@uark.edu
Hurtado (cont.)
After a stint in the U.S. Army that included tours in
Central Texas and South Korea, Hurtado enrolled in the Masters‘
program in California State University, Sacramento, where he
studied Native American and Western history with Kenneth N. Owens. Owens did the best he could with him and then sent him
on to the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he be-
came the burden of Wilbur R. Jacobs. In the fullness of time Hur-
tado completed a doctoral dissertation and the degree was con-
ferred. Hurtado began his career as a public historian writing
National Register nominations in the California State Office of
Historic Preservation. Among his unheralded accomplishments
was the successful nomination of a nineteenth-century Sacra-
mento bordello, a feat that few other WHA members have
matched. He worked for several years as a contractor in cultural
resources management while holding adjunct appointments at Sierra College and the University of Maryland. In 1983 he landed
an assistant professorship at IUPUI and moved to Arizona State
University three years later. In 1998 he accepted the Travis Chair
in Modern American History at the University of Oklahoma. He
resides in Norman with his wife Jean and four unruly small dogs.
Hurtado‘s books include Indian Survival on the California
Frontier (1988), Intimate Frontiers: Sex, Gender and Culture in
Old California (1999), and John Sutter: A Life on the North
American Frontier (2006) as well as two edited books, Major-
Problems in American Indian History (with Peter Iverson, 1994,
2 ed., 2000), and Reflections on American Indian History: Hon-oring the Past, Building the Future (2008). Herbert E. Bolton
and the Challenge of American History
News Release: Mormon Migration Website
Dr. Fred E. Woods, professor of Church History and Doctrine
at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, has recently re-
ported that the Mormon Migration website has been officially
launched at: http://lib.byu.edu/mormonmigration/index.php
This website is hosted by the Harold B. Lee Library at BYU. To
summarize its contents, this website comprises much of his
research on Mormon emigration, immigration, and migration
over the past fifteen years. This first stage of development in-
cludes all of the material from the Mormon Immigration Index
on compact disc (CD-ROM), namely, 543 voyages with about
90,000 Mormon passengers, and over 1,000 first person Latter-
day Saint immigrant accounts for the years from 1840 to 1890,
as well as additional information to interpret the story of the
Mormons immigrating to America during the nineteenth cen-
tury. In the next phase, Dr. Woods will add the digital scans of
the original passenger lists from 1849 to 1932 from European
Emigration Records consisting of passengers lists of foreign
converts from the British Isles and Scandinavia, with specific
records of Latter-day Saints from the Netherlands and Sweden.
In addition, the project will provide the extraction material for
over 2,000 additional voyages as well as the passenger lists and
many additional first person accounts for the entire period of
1840 to 1932. For further information, contact:
Dr. Fred E. Woods
Richard L. Evans Chair of Religious Understanding
Brigham Young University
365 E JSB
Provo, UT 84602
801-422-3366
Formation of the Committee on Race
in the American West At their October 2009 Council meeting, the
Council honored the request of a group of schol-
ars to form the Committee on Race in the Ameri-
can West (CRAW). The Committee includes
Maria E. Montoya, Chair, Karen Leong, Katie
Benton-Cohen, Karl Jacoby, Ernie Chavez, Pablo
Mitchell, Modupe Labode, and Barbara Reyes.
The Committee on Race in the American West (CRAW) shall
have as its function:
To keep the Council and the WHA membership informed
about the issues facing scholars of color in the field.
To promote excellence in the study of race and racial forma-
tions in the American West.
To advocate for increased inclusion and awareness within the
WHA of issues relating to racial diversity both in the history of
the American West and in the association itself.
CRAW has plans to develop initiatives that include: collaborating
with Program Committee members and WHA members to organ-
ize panels to submit to each year‘s Program Committee for con-
sideration; creating a survey of current western historians to as-
sess and address any noticeable pipeline issues; working with the
Western Historical Quarterly to highlight new scholarship by
scholars of color or concerning race in the American West; and
working with the Council to develop an award for the best article
published in the area of Race in the American West. Anyone in-
terested in working with CRAW and/or meeting at the annual
meeting in Reno this year should contact Maria Montoya at
(maria.montoya@nyu.edu).
Continued on Page 6
4
The WHA Newsletter Spring 2010
Enclosed with this newsletter is the ballot for the 2010 council and
nominating committee election. Ballots should be mailed to the
WHA office. All current members (exclusive of sponsoring mem-
bers) will receive a ballot. Joint members should receive two bal-
lots. Only ballots received by September 29, 2010 will be
counted. Please mark only one candidate for each position on the
enclosed postcard ballot and return it to the WHA office.
The following biographical statements have been provided by the
nominees.
Council Position A
Louis Warren is W. Turrentine Jackson Professor
of Western U.S. History at the University of Cali-
fornia, Davis, where he teaches environmental his-
tory, the history of the American West, California
history, and U.S. history. He is author of The
Hunter‘s Game: Poachers and Conservationists in
Twentieth-Century America (Yale, 1997) and Buf-
falo Bill‘s America: William Cody and the Wild
West Show (Alfred A. Knopf, 2005). He is also editor of a popu-
lar classroom text, American Environmental History (Blackwell,
2003), and co-editor of the new peer-reviewed, magazine-format
quarterly called Boom: A Journal of California. He has received
numerous awards for his writing, including the Albert Beveridge
Prize of the American Historical Association, the Caughey West-
ern History Association Prize, the Western Writer‘s of America
Spur Award, the Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize, and the
National Cowboy Hall of Fame Wrangler Award for Best Non-
Fiction Book.
Mark Fiege: I have been a member of the Western History Asso-
ciation since 1992. I received a Ph.D. in history from the Univer-
sity of Utah in 1994, the year that I began teach-
ing western American history at Colorado State
University, Fort Collins. I am author of Irrigated
Eden: The Making of an Agricultural Landscape
in the American West (University of Washington
Press, 1999). My article ―The Weedy West‖ ap-
peared in the Western Historical Quarterly in
1995 and won several prizes, including the
WHA‘s Oscar O. Winther Award. I have pub-
lished several book reviews in the WHQ and refereed article
manuscripts for its editors. In addition, I have served on various
WHA committees, and I regularly attend and participate in the
annual conference. My first WHA conference was 1992 in New
Haven, Connecticut, when I was still a graduate student. The or-
ganization and its members welcomed me then and have treated
me exceptionally well ever since, enabling me to improve my
scholarship and cultivate my interests in a lively intellectual com-
munity. I am excited about the WHA‘s 50th anniversary, and I
look forward to working with other members to maintain an or-
ganization that attracts a diversity of people from academic and
public history fields who have a common interest in the western
American past.
2010 Candidate Information Council Position B
Sandra Schackel has been a committed WHA member since
her graduate school days at the University of New Mexico in
the 1980s. She received her PhD in 1988 in
American history with special fields in the
American West and Women's history. For
twenty-one years, she has taught many varia-
tions on these topics at Boise State University.
She is currently teaching her final class at
BSU and this summer will return to Santa Fe,
New Mexico, to take up the southwestern life-
style she left behind twenty plus years ago.
She has presented papers, moderated and com-
mented on panels, and organized CWWH events many times
at WHA conferences. She has served on the Program Commit-
tee twice (once as co-chair), the Nominating Committee, the
Oscar O. Winther Prize committee and the Jensen/Miller Prize
committee. An early member of the Coalition of Western
Women Historians, she has served in several capacities in this
organization, including four years as Chair of the Steering
Committee. She has always been and continues to be an active
and engaged member of WHA, an organization that has in turn
been of great support and inspiration to her throughout her
academic career.
Considering retirement a transition in one's life journey, Sandy
expects to stay involved and engaged with history while living
in the Southwest. In this next part of her life, she looks for-
ward to serving as a member of the WHA Council. As a re-
covering academic, she will continue to research and
(hopefully) publish on topics yet to be explored, including the
elusive Elvis essay on teenagers and their developing sexual
identity. To her Idahoactivities of hiking, rafting, skiing, and
camping, she will add the welcome task of grandmothering in
Santa Fe. Life is good.
Joseph E. Taylor III is an Associate Profes-
sor in the History and Geography Depart-
ments at Simon Fraser University. He has
been a WHA member since 1992 and served
previously on the Walter Rundell Award
Committee. Jay‘s research focuses on envi-
ronmental relations in the rural West. He has
written Making Salmon: An Environmental
History of the Northwest Salmon Crisis
(Seattle 1999) and Pilgrims of the Vertical:
Yosemite Rock Climbers and Nature at Risk (Cambridge
2010), as well as essays in the WHQ, Environmental History,
Pacific Historical Review, Pacific Northwest Quarterly, Ore-
gon Historical Quarterly, Journal of Historical Geography,
and Journal of the History of Biology. He has also contributed
to public history projects in Oregon, Washington, and British
Columbia, and has served as an expert witness in a tribal treaty
case. Jay‘s central aim is the continued vitality of the WHA,
especially increasing interest in the organization among under-
graduate and graduate students.
5
The WHA Newsletter Spring 2010
Council Position C
George Miles is curator of Western Americana at Yale‘s Be-
inecke Library. Since 1981, he has built the library‘s collection,
provided reference service to patrons from around the world, and
promoted use of the collection through teaching, exhibitions and
publications. He is co-editor with William Cronon and Jay Gitlin
of Under and Open Sky: Rethinking America’s
Western Past (1992), author of James Swan:
Cha-tic of the Northwest Coast (2003), and co-
author with William Reese of Creating Amer-
ica (1992) and America Pictured to the Life
(2002). A member of the WHA since 1981, he
has served as chair of local arrangements for
the 1992 meeting, on the nominating committee
(1997-1998), on two program committees
(1983 & 2002), and two terms on the Dwight L. Smith-ABC-
CLIO Prize committee. He is presently a member of the
Caughey Western History Prize Committee. At the 1992 meet-
ing, he organized a meeting of librarians and archivists from
around the country to discuss issues and opportunities facing the
field. The meeting has become an annual tradition. Miles taught
multiple classes for the Rare Books School at Columbia Univer-
sity and at the University of Virginia. He has consulted with the
American Antiquarian Society, the American Heritage Center at
the University of Wyoming and the Western History Department
of the Denver Public Library. He served on the advisory commit-
tee for ―Lewis and Clark: The National Bicentennial Exhibition‖
and is a member of the executive committee of the Howard R.
Lamar Center for the Study of Frontiers and Borders at Yale.
Theresa Salazar: Since July 1999, she has been the Curator of
The Bancroft Collection, Western Americana, overseeing one of
the largest collections in the country related to the American
West. In 2005, she took on the responsi-
bility for the Latin Americana collections
of the Bancroft Library. She has worked
on the selection and narrative for numer-
ous collaborative digital projects, includ-
ing The Japanese American Relocation
Digital Archive (JARDA); The Chinese
in California; California Cultures; and The 1906 San Francisco
Earthquake and Fire. Along with her other responsibilities she
provides instruction for classes on the UC Berkeley campus and
beyond, and is interested in how students uses primary resources,
both onsite at a repository or remotely. She has organized numer-
ous exhibitions at the Bancroft and contributed articles to books
and journals including: The Chinese in California Through West-
ern Eyes, 2008 (Bancroft Keepsake 53); ―The Bancroft Collection
of Western Americana: Reflections on the Past; Planning for the
Future,‖ in Journal of the West, Winter 2008; and ―Western Ameri-
cana,‖ in Exploring The Bancroft Library, 2006. A member of
WHA since 1999, she is currently on the following WHA com-
mittees: the WHA Dwight L. Smith (ABC-CLIO) Award Com-
mittee and the 2011 WHA Program Committee. From June 1989
till June 1999, she was Special Collection Librarian, University
of Arizona Library, Tucson, AZ, which included materials on the
American southwest and the US/Mexico borderlands. She has
also worked in The Prints and Photographs Division of The New
York Public Library and The Manuscript Division of The Library
of Congress.
Nominating Position A
Alessandra Jacobi Tamulevich is Acquisitions Editor for
American Indian, Latin American, and Classical Studies for the
University of Oklahoma Press and has been with the Press since
2003. Alessandra works directly with authors on scholarly mono-
graphs and general-audience books as well as with series editors
for the New Directions in Native American
Studies Series, the Civilization of the
American Indian Series, the American In-
dian Law and Policy Series, the American
Indian Literature and Critical Studies Se-
ries, and the Oklahoma Series in Classical
Culture. Her goal is to build on the OU
Press‘s long tradition of publishing path-
breaking works on American Indian history
and disseminating unique scholarship. It is especially important
for her to promote Native perspectives and agency. Alessandra
has served on the WHA‘s Indian Student Scholarship Committee
to help promising Native students attend the conference.
Alessandra was raised in Germany and earned her M.A. from the
Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. A
full scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service
(DAAD) enabled her to study at the University of Arizona in
Tucson, where she pursued her interest in American Indian stud-
ies. Before joining the University of Oklahoma Press, Alessandra
gained publishing experience at the University of Nebraska Press
and held positions at the library for the Center of North American
Studies, J. W. Goethe University and at the Santa Barbara Inde-
pendent in Santa Barbara, California.
Andy Kirk: I received my Ph.D. in history with an emphasis on
the American West and Environmental history from the Univer-
sity of New Mexico, 1998. I also studied western history at the
University of Colorado Denver where I re-
ceived my B.A. & M.A. I‘ve been a mem-
ber of the WHA for 19 years and attended
all but one annual meeting during that time.
I consider the WHA my home association
and am always happy to have the opportu-
nity to serve this most unique academic or-
ganization. My research and teaching focus
on the intersections of cultural and environ-
mental history in the modern American
West most recently resulting in, Countercul-
ture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environ-
mentalism (University Press of Kansas, 2007). I also work exten-
sively in public history. In 1999 I founded UNLV‘s public his-
tory program. Multidisciplinary interests and a desire to create a
dynamic program of engaged scholarship grounded in place
shaped the design and activities of our program and my own pub-
lic history research. We‘ve specialized in innovative cooperative
federal and regional research partnerships. Projects include re-
search on the historic and cultural resources of Western National
Parks, The Nevada Test Site Oral history
2010 Candidate Information
Continued on Page 6
6
The WHA Newsletter Spring 2010
Cummings Prize. Professor Kelman‘s arti-
cles and review essays have appeared in a
number of scholarly and popular publica-
tions, including The Journal of American
History, Journal of Urban History, Reviews
in American History, Technology and Cul-
ture, The Christian Science Monitor, The
Nation, Slate, The Times Literary Supple-
ment, and many others. He is currently
writing a book about the struggle to memorialize the Sand Creek
Massacre.
Thomas Andrews: I specialize in the social and environmental
history of the Rocky Mountain West. Born and raised in Boul-
der, Colorado, I received my B.A. in history and international
studies from Yale and my M.A. and Ph.D.
from Wisconsin-Madison. My first book,
Killing for Coal: America's Deadliest Labor
War (Harvard University Press, 2008), won
the Bancroft Prize, the George Perkins
Marsh Prize, the Caroline Bancroft Award,
the Clark Spence Prize, the Vincent DeSan-
tis Prize, and the Colorado Book Award. I
have also authored prize-winning articles on
assimilation and native resistance in federal
day schools for Native American children;
intercultural conflict and cooperation be-
tween Hispanos and Native Americans on a southern Colorado
frontier; and the erasure of labor from Colorado's leisure land-
scapes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
My current projects include a book-length report for the National
Park Service on the environmental history of the Colorado River
headwaters region of Rocky Mountain National Park and An Ani-
mals' History of the United States, under contract with Harvard. I
have received grants from the EPA, the Huntington Library, the
National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council
of Learned Societies, the Charles Redd Center, and other organi-
zations. I am passionate about working with current and future K
-12 history teachers, and have participated in a range of Teaching
American History programs, as well as workshops organized by
the National Center for History Education, the National Center
for History in the Schools, and Gilder-Lehrman.
Project http://digital.library.unlv.edu/ntsohp/, and Preserve Ne-
vada a statewide cultural research and preservation group dedi-
cated to linking research in western cultural preservation and
environmental sustainability. If elected to the nominating com-
mittee I will bring my enthusiasm for engaged multidisciplinary
research and teaching to my work in shaping the future direction
of the WHA.
2010 Candidate Information
Nominating Position B
Jeff Shepherd received his Ph.D. from Arizona State University
in 2002 and is interested in the histories of Indigenous people,
especially in the American Southwest and northern Mexico. His
book, We are an Indian Nation: A History of the Hualapai Peo-
ple (University of Arizona Press, 2010) draws upon archival re-
search, participant observation, and oral
histories to investigate the relationships
between Indigenous nation building and
American colonialism. He has received
grants from the American Philosophical
Society, the Max Millett Research Fund,
the Ft. McDowell Indian Nation, and
Texas Tech University. He has also been
a research fellow at the D‘Arcy
McNickle Center for American Indian Culture at the Newberry
Library; and with the National Endowment for the Humanities to
study environmental and borderlands history. He received a
grant and contract from the National Park Service to write an
environmental history of the Guadalupe Mountains in west Texas
and southern New Mexico, which he plans to publish by 2013.
He is beginning a history of Indigenous peoples along the Mexico
-US-Canada borders, tentatively titled ―Creating Homelands,
Contesting Borders: Race, Space, and Belonging among the To-
hono O‘odham and Blackfeet Peoples;‖ and he is co-editor with
Myla Vicenti Carpio of the series, Critical Issues in Indigenous
Studies, with the University of Arizona Press. He teaches gradu-
ate and undergraduate courses on Indigenous, Western, Border,
and Public History, and he is Managing Editor of H-Borderlands.
Durwood Ball is an Associate Professor of
History and editor of the New Mexico His-
torical Review at the University of New
Mexico in Albuquerque. He is the author of
Army Regulars on the Western Frontier,
1848-1861 (2001) and co-editor with Paul
Hutton of Soldiers West: Biographies from
the Military Frontier, 2nd edition (2009). He
is currently researching a biography of fron-
tier dragoon/cavalry officer Edwin Vose
Sumner.
Nominating Position C
Ari Kelman is an associate professor in the Department of His-
tory at UC Davis. His first book, A River and Its City: The Na-
ture of Landscape in New Orleans, won the 2004 Abbott Lowell
Hurtado (cont.)
will be published in 2011.He has published many articles on Na-
tive American, California, borderlands, gender, and public history.
Hurtado‘s publications have won the Billington Prize, Caughey
Prize, Bolton Award, Palladin Award, Neurerberg Award, Koontz Award, and Westerners International Award.
Hurtado‘s service to the WHA includes program committee
chair (1991), nominating committee (1991-1992, chair 1992),
Executive Council (1995-97), Walter Rundell Award Committee
(1998-2000, chair 2000), WHQ Board of Editors (2003-2005),
MartinRidge Award Committee (2006-2008), Co-chair Local Ar-
rangements Committee (2007), and chair of the Bolton-Cutter
Award Endowment Fund Committee (2007-2008).
7
The WHA Newsletter Spring 2010
In Memoriam We had heard a world of talk about the marvellous beauty of
Lake Tahoe, and finally curiosity drove us thither to see it. Three
or four members of the Brigade had been there and located some
timber lands on its shores and stored up a quantity of provisions
in their camp. We strapped a couple of blankets on our shoulders
and took an axe apiece and started--for we intended to take up a
wood ranch or so ourselves and become wealthy. We were on
foot. The reader will find it advantageous to go horseback….We
plodded on, two or three hours longer, and at last the Lake burst
upon us--a noble sheet of blue water lifted six thousand three
hundred feet above the level of the sea, and walled in by a rim of
snow-clad mountain peaks that towered aloft full three thousand
feet higher still! It was a vast oval, and one would have to use up
eighty or a hundred good miles in traveling around it. As it lay
there with the shadows of the mountains brilliantly photographed
upon its still surface I
thought it must surely
be the fairest picture
the whole earth af-
fords.
We never moved a
muscle all night, but
waked at early dawn
in the original posi-
tions, and got up at
once, thoroughly re-
freshed, free from
soreness, and brim
full of friskiness.
There is no end of
wholesome medicine
in such an experience.
That morning we
could have whipped
ten such people as we
were the day before--
sick ones at any rate.
But the world is slow,
and people will go to "water cures" and "movement cures" and to
foreign lands for health. Three months of camp life on Lake Ta-
hoe would restore an Egyptian mummy to his pristine vigor, and
give him an appetite like an alligator. I do not mean the oldest
and driest mummies, of course, but the fresher ones. The air up
there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious.
And why shouldn't it be?--it is the same the angels breathe. I
think that hardly any amount of fatigue can be gathered together
that a man cannot sleep off in one night on the sand by its side.
Not under a roof, but under the sky; it seldom or never rains there
in the summer time. I know a man who went there to die. But he
made a failure of it. He was a skeleton when he came, and could
barely stand. He had no appetite, and did nothing but read tracts
and reflect on the future. Three months later he was sleeping out
of doors regularly, eating all he could hold, three times a day, and
chasing game over mountains three thousand feet high for recrea-
tion. And he was a skeleton no longer, but weighed part of a ton.
This is no fancy sketch, but the truth. His disease was consump-
tion. I confidently commend his experience to other skeletons.
—-From Mark Twain‘s Roughing It (1872)
Born Janet Estelle Shaw in Philadelphia on May 22, 1923, the
historian and friend known to all in WHA as Janet Lecompte died
on February 28, 2010 at the Newton-Wellesley Alzheimer‘s Center
in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Best remembered for her book,
Pueblo, Hardscrabble, Greenhorn: The Upper Arkansas, 1832-1856, this now-classic monograph was chosen by both Westerners
International and Western Writers of America as the best work in
non-fiction for 1978. Lecompte reached out to both scholars and
lay readers with a writing style that captivated and informed her
readers. The culmination of over 30 years of research, the book
brought together the major themes of Lecompte‘s lifetime of work
on the expansion of the fur trade out of St. Louis into the Rocky
Mountains and the Southwest, as well as the socio-economic fabric
of life in remote parts of a multi-cultural borderlands frontier.
Janet spent her early years in Denver and finished high school at
Ogontz School, a private academy in Pennsylvania. An English major at Wellesley, she graduated in 1944 and married Oliver P.
Lecompte, a recent graduate of Yale. Back in Colorado, Janet and
Oliver continued family traditions of success in business and par-
enthood, raising six children (five to adulthood), and contributing
to the cultural and economic life of Denver and Colorado Springs.
Although not drawn to history at an early age and determined to
become a successful writer of fiction, summers at home from col-
lege found Janet working with her mother typing transcriptions of
notes compiled by Francis W. Cragin, a professor at Colorado Col-
lege who interviewed dozens of early Colorado settlers and their
descendants prior to his death in 1937. Deposited at the Pioneers Museum in Colorado Springs, the ―Cragin Papers‖ contained valu-
able biographical information on Colorado and New Mexico‘s
earliest fur trade-era families, archival data that Janet mined
throughout her life.
Recognized by LeRoy Hafen, State Historian of Colorado, as a
gifted researcher and writer, Janet‘s first major publication ap-
peared in The Colorado Magazine in 1950 as ―Huerfano Butte,‖ co
-written with her mother, Dorothy Price Shaw. Four years later,
she was on the trail of the places and characters that would become
central in her study of Arkansas River settlements twenty-five
years later with ―The Hardscrabble Settlement, 1844-1848.‖
During the 1960s, Janet worked closely with Hafen to produce 34
of the 292 biographies in his multi-volume Mountain Men and the
Fur Trade of the Far West through the A. H. Clark Company. In
the course of that research, Janet‘s ability to read and translate both
Spanish and French served her well as she combed archives in St.
Louis, Santa Fe, the Newberry and Huntington libraries, and the
national archives of the US and Mexico. By the end of the project,
no one knew the fur trade of southern Colorado or the leading fur
trade families of St. Louis better than Janet Lecompte. Further-
more, she was one of only ten women historians among the 102
contributors to the series. Her sketches of Creole and French-Canadian fur traders opened doors for subsequent studies of lesser
known mountain men and their families. Ethnohistorians in Can-
ada and the U.S. recognized the value of these biographies and
invited her to present at meetings. Eventually she filled a void by
publishing her fourth and final book through A. H. Clark as
French Fur Traders and Voyageurs in the American West (1995),
twenty-two reprints of the Hafen-series biographies (five of her
own), with a new look at the French contribution to the history of
the American West. –Bill Swagerty, University of the Pacific
Twain on Tahoe
Mark Twain. Courtesy of Google Images.
8
The WHA Newsletter Spring 2010
away. This said, it will take no longer to get from the Reno air-
port to the conference hotel than it did to get from the Denver
airport to the Grand Hyatt.
Most of you will probably fly into Reno and shuttle from there to
the hotel. The WHA has an agreement with North Lake Tahoe
Express (NLTE), a local shuttle company. Because there is rela-
tively limited ground transportation, I would advise that you
make your reservation with NLTE ahead of time, to avoid any
delays at the airport. You may find our link to NLTE on the
WHA‘s website (www.westernhistoryassociation.org).
On a different note, I would like to urge you to study the candi-
date information provided inside and vote. You should find an
attached ballot. I mention this because voter turnout, which is
never very high, was somewhat down last year. So please take a
moment to reinvigorate the democracy of our intellectual associa-
tion by exercising your franchise. Kevin Fernlund
Dear Members,
There are a number of ways to test the strength of an association.
Certainly one such test is whether an association is able to fill a
major hotel in a bad economy. Well, in October 2009, at the
WHA‘s 49th Annual Conference, we not only met our room block
(1,000 room nights) at the Grand Hyatt Denver, we exceeded it.
And we not only met our food and beverage minimum, $35,000,
we exceeded it. In fact, over eight hundred and one attendees
registered for the conference. Simply put, the Denver meeting
was a financial success.
Our membership recruitment efforts were also successful last
year, with membership topping 1,300. Over half of the new mem-
bers were graduate students, which speaks well of our associa-
tion‘s future. Between the revenues we generate at our meetings
(and thank you for staying at the conference hotel!) and the dues
we collect for membership, we ended last year in the black. For
those of you who have moved up a membership category, e.g.,
from Regular to Sustaining, a special thank you. This extra con-
tribution makes a very big difference to the WHA. Also, the
value of our investments, the return on which is used to fund our
awards program, has largely recovered from the Crisis of ‗08,
even if many universities and colleges, including my own, con-
tinue to struggle with the economic fallout. Indeed, I am very
happy to report that thanks to your continued support the WHA‘s
finances remain solid.
Our Teaching Western History Committee, co-chaired by Brian
Collier and Lindsey Passenger, has some big news. The WHA
has received another $15,000 grant from the U.S. Library of Con-
gress. This is our second LOC grant. We received one in 2009,
too. The LOC grant will allow the WHA to host a workshop--"A
Teaching with Primary Sources and Active Learning Work-
shop"—concurrent with the WHA's next annual meeting. The
WHA will put up $5,000. So between this grant and the grant in
2009, the WHA will spend $40,000 building ties to the K-12
community.
We are now busy preparing for our 50th Annual Meeting, which
will be held on October, 13-16, 2010, along the northeast shore of
Lake Tahoe. John Wunder, the WHA President, and I conducted
a site visit of the conference hotel in January. We both came
away very excited about the location, the facilities and amenities,
and the spectacular outdoor setting. If you have never been to
Lake Tahoe, this is a meeting you will not want to miss.
Unlike our other meetings, the conference hotel is not located in a
downtown location. The Hyatt Regency Lake Tahoe is a resort
located in a village. The room rate at the hotel is $139.00 per
night—which includes a $10.00 resort fee, although the two
charges will appear separately on your bill. If visiting an urban
center is a must, the city of Reno, Nevada, is about 45 minutes
Fromthe Director
From the Director
The First WHA Program Cover, 1961.
DWIGHT L. SMITH_____________________
ROBERT M. UTLEY____________________
SARA JACKSON_______________________
RUNDELL GRADUATE
STUDENT AWARD_____________________
INDIAN STUDENT CONFERENCE
SCHOLARSHIP________________________
TRENNERT-IVERSON SCHOLARSHIP__________________
HUNTINGTON- RIDGE FELLOWSHIP___________________
WHA ENDOWMENT FUND_______________
GRADUATE STUDENT MEAL FUND__________________
TOTAL________________
Your support of the WHA enables us to continue to lead the field of Western History and to recognize excellence in that field with our annual and biannual awards. Please consider
making a monetary contribution to our Awards and Endowments fund.
Name
Mailing Address
City State or Province Zip
Country
Affiliation (if applicable)
Phone
E-Mail (email and phone for WHA office use only)
PAYMENT:
Acceptable payment methods: check or money order in U.S. dollars, or credit card (below)
The Western History Association is a not-for-profit organization, EIN# 54-6044435.
QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS FORM? CALL 314-516-7282 OR EMAIL TO WHA@UMSL.EDU.
AWARDS AND ENDOWMENTS: RAY ALLEN BILLINGTON_________________
BOLTON-CUTTER_____________________
ARRELL M. GIBSON____________________
MICHAEL P. MALONE___________________
OSCAR O. WINTHER___________________
ROBERT G. ATHEARN__________________
JOHN C. EWERS_______________________
W. TURRENTINE JACKSON______________
JOAN PATERSON KERR_________________
HAL K. ROTHMAN______________________
MASTERCARD VISA DISCOVER (CHECK ONE) **no debit cards
Name on Card (print) Authorized Amount $
Card Number Exp. Date /
Signature
Please submit this completed form with payment to:
WESTERN HISTORY ASSOCIATION
University of Missouri-St. Louis 152C University Center
One University Blvd. St. Louis, Missouri 63121
Fax: 314-516-7272
AWARDS AND ENDOWMENTS:
Wm. H. Holmes
Western History Association University of Missouri-St. Louis
152C University Center
One University Blvd.
St. Louis, MO 63121
The Western History Association Legacy
I have already included the Western History Associa-
tion in my long-term plans.
Please send me more information about remembering
the Western History Association in my giving plans.
Name______________________________
Address
____________________________________________
______________________
Email ______________________________
Phone______________________________
Please clip and mail this form to:
Western History Association
University of Missouri-St. Louis
152C University Center
One University Blvd.
St. Louis, MO 63121
Estate Planning
A family‘s financial future may be se-
cured through estate planning.
Often estate planning includes the oppor-
tunity for you to make a significant con-
tribution to a charity or charities of your
choosing.
WHA Members who
care for and love this as-
sociation may help to en-
sure its long-term future
by bestowing their assis-
tance through their estate planning.
Please consider adding the Western His-
tory Association to your estate plans by
completing this form. We‘ll contact you
soon.
top related