History 4120 Spring 2004
Week 11 Federal Presence
reading: Richard White: excerpt from It's Your Misfortune and None of my Own
Richard White is currently on the faculty of Stanford University. You might be interested in his comments as part of a Round Table discussion: sponsored in June 2002 on the nexus of self and subject, on the stories we tell about our own lives and the stories we write about history. In other disciplines—anthropology, for example—authors increasingly include personal vignettes in their scholarly books and articles. Historians have for the most part avoided such explicit self-reflection. But the questions remain: Do the ways we imagine and narrate our own pasts shape the histories we write, or are our own lives and our constructions of them mostly irrelevant? Is self-revelation a useful way to acknowledge our standpoints, interests, and assumptions, or more often a route to self-indulgence? Should we reflect on ourselves—on or off the printed page—as we write a less personal past? In the round table that follows, our essayists grapple with these and other questions. http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/89.1/white.html
Also read: The West chapter 9
view these maps:
Federal Government Agency in the West
- The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is responsible for managing 262 million acres of land--about one-eighth of the land in the United States--and about 300 million additional acres of subsurface mineral resources. The Bureau is also responsible for wildfire management and suppression on 388 million acres.
- Most of the lands the BLM manages are located in the western United States, including Alaska, and are dominated by extensive grasslands, forests, high mountains, arctic tundra, and deserts. The BLM manages a wide variety of resources and uses, including energy and minerals; timber; forage; wild horse and burro populations; fish and wildlife habitat; wilderness areas; archaeological, paleontological, and historical sites; and other natural heritage values.
- The Bureau of Land Management administers public lands within a framework of numerous laws. The most comprehensive of these is the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA). All Bureau policies, procedures and management actions must be consistent with FLPMA and the other laws that govern use of the public lands
On August 25, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed the act that established the National Park Service as an office of the Department of the Interior.
The government’s aim, as stated in the National Park Service Organic Act of 1916, was to "conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment for the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations."
- American people own 191 million acres of land within the National Forest system. here are a total of 155 National Forests in 44 states across the country.
- President Theodore Roosevelt added more than 140 million acres to the National Forest system during his presidency.
More than 60 million people in 3,400 communities in 33 states rely on National Forests for their drinking water.
With 4,400 campgrounds, 121,000 miles of trails and 96 Wild and Scenic Rivers, our National Forests are truly America's favorite playground.
Some 360 threatened or endangered species rely on America’s National Forest areas. (Land area reports, 2002: http://www.fs.fed.us/land/staff/lar/LAR02/
Indian Reservations Lands Today
And the U.S. Drought Monitor: http://www.drought.unl.edu/dm/monitor.html
