GEOGRAPHY, HERITAGE, AND THINGS: ANALYZING AN AGRICULTURAL LANDSCAPE IN SOUTHERN IDAHO

Abstract

The enduring appearance of agriculture landscapes in the American West belies their dynamic nature. The Clover Tract, a 4,000-acre agricultural development in southern Idaho, was part of a reclamation and irrigation infrastructure project that transformed the landscape through topographical reshaping, new technologies, and cultural and economic forces. Geographic, heritage, and thingly theoretical approaches are used to analyze this cultural landscape. The interdisciplinary approach demonstrates the physical landscape’s entanglement with everyday human actions and meanings. Heritage professionals should consider how cultural geographers’ approaches reveal heritage.

Keywords:

• agricultural landscape
• heritage
• Idaho
• irrigation
• thing

Acknowledgments

The author owes gratitude to residents of the Clover Tract who participated in interviews. The author also thanks the journal’s anonymous reviewers for their suggestions and insights that improved the essay.

Notes

1. All oral history quotations in this essay are extracted from interviews by the author with residents of the Clover Tract as approved by the Kansas State University Institutional Review Board.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a Small Project Research Grant awarded by Kansas State University.