The Mountain West: Interpreting the Folk Landscape (Creating the North American Landscape)

"Myth, image, and fantasy find their basis in a reality: the West is not like the East in a variety of measurable ways, in climate, terrain, religion, politics, and the propensity to purchase Elvis Presley memorabilia," write the authors in this innovative study of the West's "folk landscape," settled places made and remade by generations of inhabitants. Looking at artifacts like wooden fences, log houses, hay derricks, and other architectural elements that owe much to the indigenous peoples of the West, they propose ways in which the landscape can be read as if it were a book to reveal the hidden history of place.