Calibrating the data logger…
Visions of the Landscape: People, Place and the Black Canyon of the Gunnison RiverIn "Visions of the Landscape: People, Place and the Black Canyon of the Gunnison River" I argue that using a la longue duree in conjunction with approaches common to environmental history illuminates several important aspects of human inhabitation in one particular environment.Through my investigations, I first found that climate and the unique environment of western Colorado have always been important factors in shaping how people relate historically to the region.Moreover, I found that nearly all people, across vast expanses of time, have reacted to the powerful topography of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison River in their attempts to understand themselves and this place.The Utes, and perhaps those that came before, viewed the canyon as some sort of sacred place.Moreover, it is likely that the Utes used the canyon in their attempt to understand their relative position in their physical and psychic worlds.Anglos who later inhabited the region also reacted to the wilds of the canyon in unique and interesting ways.To some the canyon offered a testing or proving ground for progressive conservation, a place where technology and know-how could be used to rectify nature's failings.To others, the canyon represented a place to apply and practice preservation.Over the twentieth century, the sometimes dueling ideologies of conservation and preservation have battled to define western Colorado, and especially the Black Canyon.The competition between these ideologies has resulted in a bifurcated landscape-one that is protected and revered and dammed and developed.
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