Heritage, amenity, and the changing landscape of the rural American West

Abstract

The production landscapes that once dominated the rural American West are being transformed into amenity landscapes intended largely for consumption by in-migrants and visitors. However, once people settle in the rural West, a newly realized amenity may be recognized: the region's relic cultural landscape. This paper builds upon a 2007 study that used resident-employed photography to assess the varying environmental perspectives of, and social interactions between, newcomers and long-established ranchers in a rural Colorado valley. Photographs taken by both lifelong ranchers and newer nonagricultural residents highlighted two relic landscapes in the valley: its cemetery and one-room schoolhouse. This study investigates these particular cultural landscapes, their histories, meanings, and what their futures in this region may hold, given the in-migration. Using archives, landscape interpretation, and interviews with key informants, this paper analyzes how newcomers may appropriate these relic landscapes and further develop them as cultural amenities in their new environment. Simultaneously, long-established ranchers may defend these landscapes of their own heritage against such co-optation. The interests of newcomers in these historic relics impacts how they are, and will continue to be, managed, possibly creating new opportunities for social interaction among these groups.

Keywords:

• heritage
• amenity
• cultural landscape
• American West

Acknowledgements

The author sincerely thanks Alyson Greiner and the anonymous reviewers of this manuscript for their thoughts, critiques, and help in its evolution. The author also thanks Soren Larsen, Steven Schnell, Tim Anderson, and Sarah Smiley for their input on previous drafts. Any and all remaining errors are my own. This research was made possible in part by the Department of Geography at the University of Georgia through its financial support of my travel to the area in 2007. Finally, the author thanks all of his informants in the beautiful Garden Park and Beaver Creek valleys of Colorado, and he also wish them the best in their efforts to balance past and future in their area.

Notes

1. There is no definition for what constitutes a long-term or short-term resident in Garden Park or Upper Beaver Creek. For this study, long-term residents are defined as those families who can either trace their ancestry in either valley to their first Anglo residents and/or have resided in one of the valleys since before the development surge of the later 1990s. Newcomers are defined as those who have come into the valleys since the valleys opened up to non-agricultural residents in the late 1990s. What constitutes an agricultural or non-agricultural resident can also become blurry. One family of “non-agricultural” residents grows grapes for their own wine production, while other “agricultural” residents own one horse in order to take advantage of agricultural land use tax breaks.

2. From 1977 to 2011, the University of Kansas Geography Department operated a 3-week field camp in Garden Park every summer. I took the class as a student in 2001, helped organize and co-teach the course in 2004 and 2005, and revisited the area in 2007. Though a number of themes were used as material for students to research at camp, exurbanization's environmental and social impacts in Garden Park and the surrounding region (including Upper Beaver Creek more recently) dominated the past decade's classes. Curtis J. Sorenson and James R. Shortridge established the geography camp over 30 years ago. As our relationships with these communities grew, our camp always respected the wishes of those residents who declined interviews. In addition, we did not outwardly express the existence of private cemeteries in the valleys to those newcomers who may have otherwise been unaware of them.