"The linking of what [Hunter] Dupree terms 'bench marks' -- to the miles that interested the trader, soldier and sovereign, was one of the great intellectual feats of western civilization. One dramatic extension of this system occurred in 1785 when the new confederation of American states decided to order  a survey of its newly acquired western lands mapped on a grid in sections of one square mile.... a visible feature . . . etched on the land today."

"burned into the politics and economics... as well." Pursell, White Heat, p.73.

Patterns on the land

1. Land as commonwealth
2. Land of Little Rain
3. Land as circuitry
4. Land as an object of history
5. Land as weal
6. Land realism
7. Land as populated terrain
8. Land as place

rationalism | property | common property | land | landscape | what is landscape?

Contrast with Terry T. Williams | Gerald Durrell | D. H. Lawrence | Arnold Pacey | Tim Radford | Norris Hundley | Mary Austin | John Wesley Powell | Wallace Stegner |