In 1806 President Thomas Jefferson sent cartographer Thomas Freeman and botanist Peter Custis to explore the southen Louisiana Purchase westward to the Rocky Moutnains. Stopped by a Spanish army in what is today extreme southern Oklahoma, they did not complete their mission. President Jefferson minimized their failure by focusing instead on the success of their northern counterparts Lewis and Clark. Hence the fame of Lewis and Clark and the virtual anonymity of Freeman and Custis-until now, thanks to editor Dan L. Flores.
Dan Flores presents the primary documents created by Freeman and...
In 1806 President Thomas Jefferson sent cartographer Thomas Freeman and botanist Peter Custis to explore the southen Louisiana Purchase westward to...
These personal and historical meditations explore the human and natural history of the Near Southwest, a bio-region that embraces New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and slices of Colorado, Kansas, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Centuries ago, the Navajos named this region the Horizontal Yellow, a landscape characterized by yellowed grass stretching in all four directions, rivers that drain from the Southern Rockies to the Gulf of Mexico, and human cultures peculiarly adapted to the regional biome. The Horizontal Yellow's piney woods, oak savannahs, blackland prairies, rolling desert plains, desert scrub...
These personal and historical meditations explore the human and natural history of the Near Southwest, a bio-region that embraces New Mexico, Texas, O...
In May, 1876, a party of army engineers, teamsters, and a civilian draftsman with a military escort departed from Fort Elliott in the Texas Panhandle to conduct a topographic and scientific survey and to explore the headwaters of the Red River. Their reports of the land, water resources, insects, plants, birds, and geology of the central Panhandle were printed in a government document the next year but were little known for a hundred years. First Lieutenant Ernest Howard Ruffner was responsible for the exploration--both its conception and its execution. Ruffner began his work at Fort...
In May, 1876, a party of army engineers, teamsters, and a civilian draftsman with a military escort departed from Fort Elliott in the Texas Panhandle ...
A decade before the celebrated mountain men entered the Northern Plains and Rockies, some dozen little-known trading forays were launched into the plains of the Southwest. Anthony Glass led one of the most important. In 1808-1809, with a party of twelve hunter-traders, he acted as semi-official emissary of the U.S. government in the practically uncharted lands of the Taovaya-Wichita and Comanche Indians. His was the first party of whites ever to view the sixteen-hundred-pound meteorite venerated as a healing shrine by the Plains tribes. Alone among the early southwestern traders, Glass...
A decade before the celebrated mountain men entered the Northern Plains and Rockies, some dozen little-known trading forays were launched into the pla...
Depending on who is telling it, the history of Euro-American farmers on the Great Plains has been a story of either agricultural triumph or ecological failure--an optimistic tale of taming nature for human purposes or a dire account of disrupting nature and suffering the environmental consequences. In both stories, human beings dominate the narrative, whether as subduers or as destroyers of the natural processes that define this grassland ecosystem. In "On the Great Plains," author Geoff Cunfer poses an alternative scenario: that people were not the masters of nature on the Great Plains....
Depending on who is telling it, the history of Euro-American farmers on the Great Plains has been a story of either agricultural triumph or ecological...
Depending on who is telling it, the history of Euro-American farmers on the Great Plains has been a story of either agricultural triumph or ecological failure--an optimistic tale of taming nature for human purposes or a dire account of disrupting nature and suffering the environmental consequences. In both stories, human beings dominate the narrative, whether as subduers or as destroyers of the natural processes that define this grassland ecosystem. In "On the Great Plains," author Geoff Cunfer poses an alternative scenario: that people were not the masters of nature on the Great Plains....
Depending on who is telling it, the history of Euro-American farmers on the Great Plains has been a story of either agricultural triumph or ecological...
From the Wind River Range to the Canadian border, the northern Rocky Mountain West is an outsized land of stunning dimensions and emotive power. In Visions of the Big Sky, Dan Flores revisits the Northern Rockies artistic tradition to explore its diversity and richness. In his essays about the artists, photographers, and thematic historical imagery of the region, he blends art and cultural history with personal reflection to assess the formation of the region's character.
The volume features 140 color and black-and-white illustrations, ranging from prehistoric rock art to modernist...
From the Wind River Range to the Canadian border, the northern Rocky Mountain West is an outsized land of stunning dimensions and emotive power. In
Twenty years ago, Dan Flores' Caprock "Canyonlands" became one of the first books ever to treat the flat, arid landscape of the southern High Plains as a place of uncommon beauty and enduring spirit. Now a classic, "Caprock Canyonlands" has been favorably compared by readers to the work of such icons of nature and environmental writing as William Bartram, Aldo Leopold, John Muir, and Henry David Thoreau. Containing the author's stunning photography, a foreword by Puliczer Prize-winning author Annie Proulx, author of "Brokeback Mountain", an afterword by environmental historian Thomas R....
Twenty years ago, Dan Flores' Caprock "Canyonlands" became one of the first books ever to treat the flat, arid landscape of the southern High Plains a...
