Results for "Farmer, Jared"

The epic story of the planet’s oldest trees and the making of the modern world  Humans have always revered long-lived trees. But as historian Jared Farmer reveals in Elderflora, our veneration took a modern turn in the eighteenth century, when naturalists embarked on a quest to locate and preci... Read More about Elderflora: A Modern History of Ancient Trees

Shrouded in the lore of legendary Indians, Mt. Timpanogos beckons the urban populace of Utah. And yet, no "Indian" legend graced the mount until Mormon settlers conjured it--once they had displaced the local Indians, the Utes, from their actual landmark, Utah Lake. On Zion's Mount tells the story of... Read More about On Zion's Mount: Mormons, Indians, and the American Landscape

Growth is a major issue in the contemporary American West, especially as more and more towns and states turn to tourism to spark their economies. But growth has a flip side—loss—about which we seldom think until something is irrevocably gone. Where once was Glen Canyon, with its maze of side-canyons... Read More about Glen Canyon Dammed: Inventing Lake Powell and the Canyon Country

At the intersection of plants and politics, Trees in Paradise is an examination of ecological mythmaking and conquest. The first Americans who looked out over California saw arid grasslands and chaparral, and over the course of generations, they remade those landscapes according to the aesthetic val... Read More about Trees in Paradise: The Botanical Conquest of California

From roots to canopy, a lush, verdant history of the making of California. California now has more trees than at any time since the late Pleistocene. This green landscape, however, is not the work of nature. It’s the work of history. In the years after the Gold Rush, American settlers remade the Cal... Read More about Trees in Paradise: A California History