< PREVIOUS ] [ 2008 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
About 15 years ago, High Country News published a
long article of mine. Its working title was Is
Denver Necessary?
Therein I argued that Denver had developed, then essentially gutted, a vast hinterland of about 300,000 square miles. The city had once seen the countryside as a source of raw materials for its industries and as a market for its products, and it invested in the hinterland. But since about 1970, the hinterland was basically a source of water for continued suburban development in the metro area.
There was more to it than that, though. The big picture
was that the Mountain West had been developed as part of a
Chicago empire after the Civil War. That is, the bucolic
scene of steers in a mountain meadow was an extension of
the packing plants of the Windy City, just as the rancher
ordering from the Sears, Roebuck catalogue was part of the
same extended urban system, all linked by railroads with
names like Chicago & Northwestern,
Chicago,
Rock Island & Pacific
and Chicago, Burlington
& Quincy.
And in the 1990s, I argued, the West was coming under the dominance of a different city, Los Angeles. Instead of producing tangible products like timber, beef, and minerals, we were promoting intangibles like amenity lifestyles and quality recreational experiences.
At the time that I saw this Chicago-L.A. conflict for the West, I pondered another city that might have been a player: Houston, a symbol of the energy industry. But back then, the 1970s energy boom had long collapsed, and an oilman Texas president had been turned out of office after only one term.
So Houston wouldn't be a player in the future, I decided. Meanwhile, we should find our own ways of handling things, rather get stuck in these dichotomies of Chicago clear-cutting vs. West Coast total preservation.
I've been wrong about a lot of things over the years,
but one big mistake was writing off Imperial Texas
(a phrase coined by cultural geographer Meinig).
Every time I pick up the morning paper, there's another
story about oil, gas or uranium development in the
West.
One way to interpret this: The federal government controls a lot of land in the Mountain West. Texas took over the federal government a few years ago (George Bush, Dick Cheney, Tom Delay, Bill Archer, etc.). Ergo, Texas now controls the Mountain West.
So we went from developing as part of Chicago's
hinterland with an extractive and agricultural economy, to
a serving as Greater Frontierland for a few years with an
amenity economy, and now we're being colonized by a Texas
energy economy. Bernard DeVoto called the West a plundered province
in
1934. and the description seems to fit as well now as it
did nearly 75 years ago.
Somewhere along the way, we should have learned how to define ourselves and stand up for ourselves, but we never grew a city that could help us do that.
Back to my old question: Is Denver Necessary? It would be nice if it were, but it doesn't appear to want to be.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 2008 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >