Reading three landscapes in the nineteenth-century U.S. West.

Previous work examining the interactions between people and their physical environment in the U.S. West has tended to neglect the spatial scale between individual sites, such as settlements and regions. This study seeks a solution to this problem by testing the methods of landscape history in three case studies in the State of Colorado. The use of historical maps alongside other manuscript sources reveals that western landscapes provide a fruitful arena for such work. For instance, it is possible to show that there is great variation in human settlement and land use within individual landscapes and between the case study areas. At the same time, is has been possible to chart patterns of change and continuity in the human use and alteration of the landscapes through the construction of settlements, roads, and field systems and to suggest reasons why these features took certain forms. Consequently, there is great potential for similar studies elsewhere in the U.S. West, and such studies are likely to have a significant impact upon on our understanding of the region’s history