Transcripts For CSPAN3 20th Century West And Federal Government 20170831

That was probably the most intense experience on the ground of being in the community, still very divided over that. I hope i can get to that as well. First a guessing game. This is somebody who said a lot of things that i think people have forgotten, including me. So who said that . Isnt it fun to be told that youre going to be tricked . Come on, suckers. Come on. Essentially. It is in your reading. You did. I said that . No. No. But in fact, it is so much something i could have said because the public lands are theyre the core of the way the federal government grows. Thats one of those bedrock reasons for saying the west and the westward expansion is key to the growth of the power of the federal government. So i felt that. [ inaudible ] no. Though he would turner . Yes, yes, yes. I was going to say ive sat at his desk. Matt got it. Frederick Jackson Turner said that. I am he is totally benefited from you folks being here because i reread the significance of the frontier of American History and i dont know what was going on. Theres like, what, seven oft quoted passages of the frontier strips the pioneer of his formal dress and puts him in a canoe. Theres few things like that everybody reads and all remember and this time i thought, i might as well read every word. Theres a lot of stuff about indians in there. Who knew . Apparently anyone who reads it would know that. But frequent references to the not necessarily to the significance of indians but to their presence and to the importance of settlers responses to them and to the national government. Responding to the presence of indians. The trails, the importance of indian trails. I actually thought, oops. What i think might have triggered my the 1986 patricia limericks response is that it is so much that essay is so much about the eastern and mid western United States. It is really focused on the not far west. And i think that might have been what set me off. In olden days. An interesting fact about frederick Jackson Turner is that he taught at utah state a couple summer schools. He taught utah state in where is it . Yes, indeed. It is in logan, yes. And it is that is a beautiful drive. I must say thats a lovely drive. Turner loved beautiful, open spaces. I think he enjoyed going there. In his papers at the time of his death was an early draft of an essay called the significance of mountains and deserts in American History. So, something had come there making him think i need to pay more attention to the place where i have taught summer school. Well so this is all to say that i hope im giving some kind of demonstration of how peculiar it is to think you really know something and then when you actually read the whole thing with care you think, oops. 30 years or more how many years . 35 years of misrepresenting frederick Jackson Turner. I owed the family an apology i think. Oops. But its good. It was actually a very reviving and wondrous thing. That brings us to the worlds columbian exposition 1893. There it is. The great white city. Very, very famous episode in political history, i suppose. Frederick Jackson Turner was there and he gave his frontier speech there that has more in it until i realized recently. When a cliff hanger that thing is to just the frontier is over. Era of really World History has closed. The frontier took strangers and transformed them into americans. It is over. Dont stop there, mr. Turner. Dont stop there, please. Please keep going. He didnt. Over his lifetime he would make various efforts to make equivalence. He thought education might be the form of continuing opportunity and continuing recruitment of people from outside into the American World so he did try to find but they were nowhere near as compelling a set of statements, nowhere near that as he was with this. And also, at the columbian exposition was buffalo bill cody. They were not on a Panel Discussion. Which is a shame. It is really a shame because that would have been great but they didnt need a Panel Discussion because Richard White wrote this great essay in the frontier in American Culture where he compares turner and cody and really brings them into a conversation. And n lots of ways so in essence he sees both of them as well, this is my phrase, not his, but workers, coworkers in the overproduction of frontier nostalgia, that turner and cody heaven knows had their differences, and they were both major practitioners in nostalgia for a west that had gone away. So cody shows were pretty much in the same spirit as the frontiers clothes, what will we do next . Well see the wild west. Well go see remember, never supposed to say show. That shows thats how you tell the world youre sophisticated and western culture studies. Because if you say codys wild west show that makes it clear youre an outsider. Because cody never said the word show and he didnt want people to call it a show. It was the wild west. It was the wild west. So, did you know that you could betray your outsider status so easily . Would you all like to say it together . Wild west. That was really very effective. You will find that gets you some place in very limited circles. Dont expect out in the world and everybody will be, oh man, how sophisticated this person is. Thats great. And richard does point out that the west that cody was seeing as lost and departed was a much wilder and unsettled kind of west and turner was feeling sad about the word tame seems to keep coming up here but the tamer, the taming of the west, that it started as wilderness. It turned into the side of log cabins. The log cabins turned into big, comfortable farmhouses. Thats the western process that is turner. And Richard White makes a very fine point about how turner didnt need to have visual illustrations in his text because his if he said log cabin, everybody had it in their minds. At that time. He had some of his key terms, stagecoach, wagon train or log cabin. Those the log cabin just showed up in peoples mind and it would be silly to say and heres a log cabin. So as to why that text can be so evocative is because the readers own mind in the 1890s and for many years after would supply that. So here are two nostalgics. And they are representing theyre both successful in their own way and if richards essay is really good about saying lets not have one be the sophisticated, serious expresser of the meaning of the west. Theyre both equally effective and theyre both equally creative and thoughtful in how they do that. Has anybody read this essay of yeah . I read it a while ago. Its i did i read it really a while ago. More of a while ago than given difference in our ages. I read it many whiles ago. And i reread it. And its really good. It really gives you something to do if the poor students are, oh, turner, who is that old guy . Theres a woman sitting at his desk. Oh. So, if you want to pep that up, pairing him with cody really does give you that angle. So, he does draw some very interesting comparisons between them and sees them as again kind of coworkers in this really broad Cultural Movement of what oh, this is important. I mean its what eliot would say several times. Deal with it. I dont know why someone couldnt research this. Im looking at you, britain. That something could look into that. Im on it. I mean, its pretty interesting that they were at in chicago at the Columbian Exchange in a proximity and thats interesting but this is really interesting. And really important for our understanding of regional conversations and so on. So, okay. Good. So, anyway, so back. Well, now back to the point. This is a really important point. So this is the term that david rebel uses and it is a helpful term and a helpful book of frontier anxiety. Frontier anxiety not anxiety felt by frontiers people but people not frontiers people who were around in the late 19th century and early 20th century, americans who were anxious about that hanging question. What will happen to the United States without a frontier . The anxiety of this is explained who we are. Thats going to be a rough transition and may not be anything on the other end of the transition but the unity and trouble and puzzlement and confounded people. So, this is a really good book. David wrobel. The end of american xengsal, frontier anxiety from the old west to the new deal and among aspects of it is its clear of that sense and cody and turner and many of their contemporaries that something really important had shifted in American History and something really important had better respond to that, that many of the Franklin Roosevelt new deal sorts in the federal leadership had that same sense. And sometimes very explicitly. Henry wallace apparently with the end of the frontier government had better get bigger because government has to step in and supply the services that the frontier once provided. If you dont have free land, you better have some other source of widely available understanding and opportunities. So, so the upsurge of this it seems to have been hard on people to deal with. So i think its okay to call it an after flix of of frontier anxiety. People to deal with so i think its okay to call it an aapplication of frontier anxiety and produced mixed results and some of those rumts were very troubling. I dont know how extremely troubling and really undesirable. So to use one of many examples, ive put the phrase of the time that will influence many of the thing that is come up the next few minutes for us, timber famine. I mean, really, thats a hard if youre not a beaver, its hard to be hungry for timber so its a weird word of associating timber with famine but the notion that the United States was the wonderfully forested part of a continent, the astounding forest resources, in some parts of north america had been ripped through, wisconsin, michigan, especially the upper midwest, just chopped. Cut over. Stumps. So that anxiety is to i mean, fear, terror, whatever, that that might continue. That with the far west with the pacific northwest, with the rockies, that the same calamity might happen there and the extraordinary riches of the continent would be a bunch of stumps. That timber famine, the notion that the United States that had been astoundingly timber rich might end up timber impoverished, that scared people. That scared not just people interested in the profession of forestry, but people who anybody who saw a picture of the cut over lands in upper michigan and upper wisconsin had a tremor to see that. So, those kinds of concerns, what are we going to do with this affliction of frontier anxiety . Just feel miserable . Something we can do . Is there Something Like an action to take . So, one weirdness of reading turning so closely is i realized that the fellow and i share quite an enthusiasm for phases and eras. And i had not realized until i was reading again about what kin folk, birds of a feather, we like doing that. Turner and i both like saying heres the Cumberland Gap thing. Heres the indian, the rancher, the grazer, lining things up in phases and sequence, and so, we have that in common. I like this quite a bit. I like it because it is a well, an experience that we have all had of having to do other drafts. Is there anyone in the room who writes so wondrously that the first draft is beyond excellent and you would stop there and everyone says dont touch a thing . Would you care to identify yourself or reach such ruse of hostility it is good not to raise it. Even with limericks. Excellent limericks. The lincoln limericks were three or four drafts. Ill say what you already know. Its a great habit to have in classes. I have told my students that. Before i met Jeff Limerick and got that surname, i sat in classes when i was bored writing limericks and it is brilliant as a technique because, well, well just cast you, bill. Pretend youre writing a limerick. You are thinking really hard. But youre sort of going, hmm, turner, burner. So youre thinking very hard and you might adds well look at me not and then think i have it now and then write it down. You look the most thoughtful note taker in the room. It worked really well for me as a strategy of a student. I have told classes of students that and they have adopted the technique which is fine which is better than drowsiness and i will say one of the great things, sorry, i know this is not quite on the main track here but i did write very beautiful limericks of warn harding when there was a lecture on the administration and one has the most beautiful internal rhyme this appears in any limerick. So you know that he was his slogan is a return to normalcy . And that he was retreating from all the International Engagements of the first world war. So, wait. Okay. There was an old man named warren who hated all things foreign. He liked to normally, drunken informal and spent his time gambling and whoring. Good one. Thank you. Thank you. And it is i mean, i think everyone was skeptical when i said it had the most beautiful internal rhyme. You were probably skeptical. Was it the most beautiful internal rhyming . The english teacher among us. So theres a strategy ive given you for the rest of your lives to use there. You can certainly use it today if it helps you get ready for the party tonight. So, i like this notion of the three drafts of the American West, of the americanized west. So, the first draft of the americanized west, we dont know when it starts and when it ends but thats what weve been talking about. Westward expansion. Thats the first draft. We havent talked about the timber logging business but its in there with farming and mining and grazing and so on. So the second draft is what we are seeing with this session coming into being. The progressive era. The sort of, hmm, that first draft didnt really come out right. Cut over lands. Hmm. Mines that were once full of activity, abandoned. Hmm. Maybe theres something that we should be thinking about. Bison. Almost extinct. Hmm. So, various forms of looking at the outcomes of the first draft. Floods. In utah. Salt lake city, with deforested hillsides and mountainsides and floods. It is hard to think where you would look if you dont want the moment of thinking of this didnt seem to come out exactly as i would have liked so the progressive era is the second draft. And the third draft is still in progress. Whatever its features of the third draft, it certainly has to take into account the rise of environmentalism, continued population growth to the point where we have to say if its hard to say where western expansion started, it might be harder to say where it ended because word war 2 and military expansion and continuing into the cold war. That i dont know where you would say, well, period. Westward expansion. Completed, done. Still very significant issues of some of the Fastest Growing regions of the country in the west and the last 30 years. This is i guess tied to an environmentalism and a more conscious and inescapable reckoning. There was some of that in the second draft and it goes much deeper and much wider and this continued puzzle over legitimacy and authority to define progress. Whos really a deserving westerner who qualifies as a person who should be making decisions . As people in new jersey. What are the public lands to them . Do they have any legitimacy . Who gets to say what progress means . In these transformed times. So, that is one way of saying how crucial the progressive era was for the west because its the second draft. Its a big deal. And i believe this is true. If we had more time, maybe we could do it as a party game tonight. I believe this is true. Wherever you look in the American West today, wherever you direct your gaze youll see something that is a legacy of the progressive era. And i thought we might do it as a kind of party game and you have to suggest something i have to go, hmm. Ski slopes. Hmm. Well, and i can certainly do that one. So, this is the remarkable outcome and with this in the picture, the progressive era just gets astounding in the scale of its importance. Much of the west is the home of millions of people and it is now much of that is now owned as private property. And, even more of the west is still in public ownership. Which is a Pretty Amazing thing that quotation from turner. Turner didnt see it coming and didnt know thats what he was saying when he said the Public Domain is the key to nationalization and the growth of government. But i want do go back to this thing i was saying early on that what is happening here is that progress from first draft to second draft, from westward expansion to era is progress is changing the course and the adjustment, the earthquake of that, the rattling of assumptions and expectations, that rattling continues. So that that shift from the western expansion definition of progress transferring the Public Domain into private ownership going from that definition of progress to the progressive era one, maintaining that land in permanent ownership, that is a giant disoriented change. It is i think unmistakably almost a full reversal in the meaning of progress. It is not a full reversal because it has enthusiasm for finding resources in the west. I dont know how far i would go with how much short of 180 reversal it is but its big. We kabt be surprised that the shift even though it was under way 130 years ago, 140 years ago, we cannot be surprised that this shift still leaves some people and communities in the west unsettled and rattled. Heres a technique that has actually been incredibly helpful to me. I just learned about it in february of i guess it was a year ago february. This is a person named randy olson, one gifted commentator. He is a biologist. He was a tenured professor of biology at university of New Hampshire. He became more and more concerned about the troubles that scientists have in communicating to wider audiences. He left, a tenured job at the university of New Hampshire and he went to film school at the university of Southern California which scares me. Oh, scary. So, are we all breathing normally again . It is scary to think of that. He wrote, this is his second book and he knows my husband houston and likes my husband houston but its just too funny because houston the person likes this book and to have houston the husband sitting Reading Houston the book is funny. Houston, we have a narrative. Randy olsons book. What he offers in it and i really have found this to be almost too useful, the a. B. T. Method of communication. And but therefore. Randy is a scientist and hes looked to different public figures and how they use or do not use the a. B. T. Method, and hes really seen a very its i guess you could say a correlation and may be more than that. I think its probably causation. Of the effectiveness of presenters, writers as well as speakers who use the a. B. T. Method. Here is mine, my adoption of this, and it does lead me to uncharacteristic brevity. This is why its too useful. Sometimes if you use the a. B. T. Method, i think this is a fairly effective one, then the audience is sort of, well okay, stop now. We got your point. You cant do that because were here for a while longer so anyways here we have the abt of this session. The progressive era was a time of change and so then you use your and, reformers responded with vi gar and grit to social, political, and Economic Conditions that troubled them. But v to get that dynamic, but some features of our heritage from the progressives have proven to be troubling in their own right. Therefore, bring it back, we are invited to reckon with the complex heritage of the progressives and positive and productive ways. We can map the escape route from a sense of inevitable and dismay because we are equipped with the necessary skills to accept that invitation. Of working with progressives. So i will say this. A person representing one of the Major Political parties in 2016 is a person who says, and, and, and, and, and. And i wont use any gendered pronouns or anything like that but its quite striking when you start to think about what happens in political public expression and whos using and, but, therefore. It doesnt have to do with the quality of the thought but how effectively it gets through. I think academics are created to and and. Or just leaping to the therefore. Very handy thing. This is the core of the inheritance of the progressives that we may fight over the public lands but at least we have public lands to fight over and its a wonderful gift to have such an occasion for dispute. Here is d there are two or three other big frameworks that i would like to install in our conversational framework. These are two historically derived romances and i think its right to use the word romance because theyre appealing, they are seductive, they pulled people in a process that has as much sentiment and emotion as it has reason and evidence. And they have to learn to live together. Theyre not doing great. At that. The romance of centralized authority and expertise is a legacy of the progressive era. That we will do better, we will avoid less of these unhappy outcomes that we saw in the first draft of western history, will avoid much less of those if we hand decisions an authority over to a centralized federal government place. It will be an agency, thats a good chance it will be part of the department of interior and there will be experts and they will think and they will then offer solutions and resolutions that will guide better behavior. That is a powerful romance and it is so intense when it comes into play i think gifford pinch is probably the best example of somebody who really seems to offer that dream. The first chief forester, Theodore Roosevelts great friend, really in many ways the founding first leader of the Forest Service, charismatic, really smart, really thoughtful. So Gifford Pincho represents that. But many, many acts of legislation, many executive branch decisions all rest on that notion that someone in the department of the interior or Forest Service and agriculture, someone in those two agencies will have a very smart thought and that will make things work better. So the romance of centralized authority is very strong and the romance of local control is just about as strong and that is the legacy of westward expansion, that the locals go to places, settle, they know the place, develop the place, know it intimately, the legitimate ones, they got there first. They really know what should happen there. So those romances are both very powerful and neithers going to go away and they need to be friends. Not going so good right now but that will happen with friendships, right . I mean, just ask. How many people in the room have had a good friendship that turned into a bad situation but then came back as a good friendship . How many have had that . Yeah. Yes. Thats right. You have green and red and yellow cards and one among us remembered that. Im sure if i asked this other question, how many had a good friendship that went poorly and remained poorly, wed probably have plenty of that. Im not asking that. Im not asking that. I think i could take that on blind faith. You guys are pretty quick on the draw. But you also were there with the youve had friendships. Okay. Im not going to say, well, this cant ever happen. I think it has happened. I think that in ways that few people would ever know about. Its happening on the ground level all around the west. In the ill just go with harny county. Nationally famous for armed people taking over public lands. Right . For 10, maybe 20 years, before that, a group called the High Desert Partnership met. There were federal officials from the wildlife refuge, bureau of Land Management, ranchers, towns people, environmentalists from portland, oregon, and they met and fought and then reached a consensus plan for the management of the wildlife refuge. Did anybody see that in the newspapers or press coverage or blogs . So i think there is this problem of, heres a positive story, well, no ones going to be interested in that. Lets get some more armed men. So that would be a place, High Desert Partnership is where that cohabiting came back together. I have no idea of why that wouldnt figure in anybodys national reporting, or maybe it did and i just missed it. But okay. So, these are several people who have interesting view of both westward expansion. I dont know they would use the phrase of progressive era, what that might mean to them. But they certainly have a colorful and interesting and imaginative view of western history that there was a time, for instance, Harney County where ranchers were very prosperous and collaborative and very good natured and they had complete control of the land and they used the land wisely. In Harney County theres astounding tension and anguish in the early period in the 19th century and early 20th century. There was a guy pete french, one powerful cattleman, out of my way, kind of guy. To have a notion that you will go there and you will speak for the importance of returning returning the land to the ranchers hmm. Well, im not making them come and go. Im not doing that. Thats not what im doing. Anyway, its a very imagine native form of history and makes buffalo bill cody looked like a fact and accuracy kind of guy in some ways. So here they are. Heres the progressive legacy. I dont know that they ever got it particularly about i think ranchers in the area tried to say, we have a complicated history. When i got to speak in Harney County, that was the first question to them. I asked the audience there, does it give you an advantage in dealing with contention to have had such a contentious history 100 years ago. A good share of them said yes, they thought it did. They know theyve had a contentious history. The bundies were from elsewhere and they didnt know that. Heres the progressive legacy in a fairly great map that shows you the percentage of land and individual states still under in federal ownership, public ownership. Little bit like the water precipitation maps we saw before. Is there anybody who with would like me to interpret this map as to which region pretty striking. And if you wondered, doesnt it seem like nevada is often really, really crabby, well okay, that could be part of it. This does not include indian reservations. But it does include because i mean reservations are sovereign lands. It wouldnt be included in that. But thats not thats not, of course, what happened there. We can certainly describe the historical process that led to that, that much of these lands were high elevation, they had limited precipitation. They were rugged. And uneven terrain. They were remote. It was difficult to get to them. They were in some ways, the phrase used, the leftover lands, the land that nobody wanted. A good share of that land is land that didnt go into private ownership because homesteaders werent that goofy, they were full of hope but they wouldnt have said, i have an idea, how about the middle of the nevada desert, heres my hope. There are ranchers there and people who take that up, but there are plenty of other areas where homesteading might have occurred and gave up because it was too hard. Theres reasons for that and, of course, the progressive era reckoning with the first draft of western expansion and then saying, maybe theres a different way of possessing and directing and owning those lands. Heres the different agencies that create that pattern that you just saw, the percentages. So the smallest one is probably orange, the fish and wildlife services, the National Wildlife services. I guess the National Park service is second smallest, the olive green ones and then the yellow is the vast one, the bureau of Land Management, sometimes called the nations largest landlord. The biggest unit of Land Management. Forest service behind your Land Management but quite sizable that the lime green, light green, which i have come the Forest Service people are very charming, many of them, refer to their Forest Service uniforms as their pickle suits, so its very funny. A darker green than that. The green we have for park service here. Theyre pretty interesting. They have a phrase not all of them use but some of them used it. I heard them use it. When they want to know when did you feel like a Forest Service person, when did you think okay, thats who i am, my identity, they will phrase that as when did you get your green underwear . So, pretty funny. So i used to say, oh, federal agencies and cultures, i dont think so. I think cultures are something you have to be people who live in a community for ages but now i think, okay, cultures. Okay. So and then we also have in here the gray, the department of defense. Because military lands are very important. Military lands are sometimes very interesting environmental preserves because if you bomb them, and then stop bombing them, for a phase, that is a wonderful opportunity for wild fowl, birds, animals to take hold so theres actually been quite a pattern of people wanting to go study at the nevada test site, which is not where Everyone Wants to go, but the bird that would be one stupid bird that would say i dont think id care to be here because theres been bad history in this area. There are sometimes, not always, but sometimes wildlife refuges. So, okay, were going from this as an outcome of the progressive era, just the creation all of these agencies are not necessarily precisely. The Forest Service certainly is and the Forest Service would land directly in the progressive era. Bureau of Land Management, well get to that in a second. Little bit more complicated chronology. I will have several heritages we will go through here of the complicated second draft progressive era heritage for the 20th century and the 21st century. So the first of the heritages is the most unmistakable. Yeah. When we studied history, the way things are now are not the way they always were or will be. The federal government is claiming the land, has there been a time in the 100 years since the progressive era where the federal government claimed land and maybe we should sell that to private . Thats a good question. First of all i would rewrite that second draft a little bit that the federal government and the progressive era was not claiming land. It was taking land in the Public Domain because what happens just a little bit tedious but the formation of the United States is a nation requires that the first states to cede their lands to the west and that becomes Public Domain and then louisiana purchase, that becomes Public Domain so it is not the federal government taking land. Its the federal government reclassifying land already in their possession. But in terms of your question over the last 100 years, yes, there have been lots of land swaps. Im not sure if you would take that exactly in that category but if youre trying to consolidate a National Park and theres private Land Holdings that got caught up in the designation of public land as National Park land, there will be swaps sometimes where you swap some federal land for that. One of the most interesting stories of wonderful i heard a wonderful, wonderful talk a couple months ago about it. Jared farmer has an article which i hope comes out soon on how for defense work, military research and testing and personnel locations how in the new deal land got redesignated as military land and that we talked about National Monuments and the antiquities act, this is a very casual thing where president roosevelt wants to do that shgs Franklin Roosevelt wants to designate land. For military lands. The secretary general says you cant do that. You dont have executive authority. Then people talk to the attorney general and the attorney general says, you can do that. So its an amazing story. Its interesting all the no, National Monument things were getting right now, in fact the designation of military lands is interesting. Theres changing status as to whether theres really much of an occasion of saying heres a big block of land, well acquire that. The federal government certainly acquires land to round out borders and so on, but its never anywhere near the scale of this situation. But great question. So bureaucrats. Here are two very famous bureaucrats. Lewis and clark. And they were on a federally funded and mandated expedition. They were bureaucrats. I have a Campaign Going thats going quite poorly to take the word bureaucrat and just make it a word of neutrality that says someone who works for a state or federal or county government. Or, any number of other kinds of agencies and organizations. Im trying to do that because i can imagine that the states people are going, really, why would you take out such a cause . Im doing it because what we do as a society and ive done it myself, is when you find a person who works for an agency or bureau, and you admire them, you go to the department of Motor Vehicles and treated well and you move quickly and the forms are simple and theyre you think, and the person whos helping you with that, you think, well probably you just think thats a great person but if you were going to have to classify them professionally you would say thats a great Public Servant. As soon as you find a bureaucrat that you like you take them out of the category of bureaucrat and reclassify them as a Public Servant which leaves only drudges and petty tyrants over in bureaucrat. Yes, lauren . I think the word rat in the word i never thought of that. You said bureau worker, isnt that the same the word rat i havent thought about that word for years, and i never noticed the rat in there. Okay. Get your cards here. Is that well, i have my own answer. You can answer however you want. If you agree with me i should make use of laurens idea there of applied history and public communication you would put up a green. If you think i will take a tough conversation and make it worse and talk about rats, thats a possibility, or yellow, i dont know, its possible it might work. If you think i should go to town with the insight that has never come to of before the word rat is conspicuous please dont take a complicated world and make it more complicated bringing rats who are not popular. Red for that. And then the reds are not holding back. The redss are im sorry, lauren, im sorry. But the greens might i think the narrow edge on it. Secretary of the interior james watt has a habit when people are getting sentimental about prairie dogs, theyre not dogs, and they are rodents and secretary watt and others who share this point of view called them parry rats which is sort of ew, i dont think i care about a prairie rat. Its a powerful term. Prairie dogs . No. That wont work either. How interesting. Im trying to do Something Like this going theres two bureaucrats. You have heard of them just to see if i can repopulate that category. Last year we had a woman who worked for the National Park service in sometimes and she was never anything but enraged by my effort to use the word bureaucrat. She felt she wasnt a bureaucrat. Worked for the park service. So i must acknowledge that not everybody is coming on board with this, and though i would say this represents an important and under recognized aspect of westward expansions legacy, my wonderful comrade at the university of washington, he went through the census for the western states and territories 1870, 1880, 1890 and looked at peoples professional and occupational categorization and defined cat gor gore i categories broadly, and had clerk, somebody working in a government agency, somebody working in a mercantile operation, so clerks, not just in government or in business but the package together, cowboys, he also made very broad in ways that would be disturbing to some, anybody who worked with livestock, so sheep raisers are in here, too. That did not go over well with the cowboys to have that in there. So he did that year after year after year for those tenyear periods, and look at that, theres only one census, just before the just a few years before the cattle boom collapsed, so just when the cattle boom was at its peak, when there in 1880 where there are slightly more cowboys than clerks. And in 1870, there are more clerks than cowboys and in 1890, look who is coming out ahead here, thats really a striking thing there. So clerks are important in western history and im not sure i would want to give a prize for this but would someone name a Great Western film where the main character is the clerk . Whats the man who shot liberty bell . Theres a thought. Theres a thought. Right, yeah. Usually what theyre doing is cowering. This is usually the stance of the clerk. You have seen them. Theyre not [ inaudible ]. This is i could have played the clerk, here i am. So, this is what with all of these agencies, and i did leave out one of them, in some way or another its fine to tie them all to the progressive era, the timing is complicated for a few of them, but bureau of reclamation in 1902, and then the dam building federal agency which well speak of a little bit more later. The Forest Service, the Gifford Pincho well, terrain. Well just call it that. That the forests had been the forest reserves were created as of 1891. The president gets the power to create forest reserves. Again, thats interesting. Thats a sort of National Monument power originally to do it as the president. Congress didnt like that and fights back on it. But the Forest Service came in to being because there were all these designated areas that were forest reserves. They fell under the management of the General Land Office, the land dispersing agency. Gifford pincho yearned to be in a position to get that out of the General Land Office. I will say he had some very strong feelings. As he might. They were evidence based that interior had problems of corruption. I think we have already spoken of that. That with indian offices, indian agents with the land office, that was like, a great river of money going by. Appointed officials and dipping into that was very tempting. So, giveford pincho had reasons to think it would be better to get the forest reserves out of the General Land Office and out of the department of interior and over to the department of agriculture with the Forest Service. Thats usually offered. I think a little bit of substance to it, that was because Gifford Pincho thought of trees as a crop so they should be in agriculture. I think thats small compared to the get it out of interior and another agency where its not pulled into the history of that kind of troubled department. National park service, 1916, is the original enabling act but there are parks that precede that. Certain areas, yellowstone being the most conspicuous that are National Parks before there is a National Park service but 1915 the official creation. Finish and wildlife is too complicated. I wont take us there because there are different agencies that exist and operate merge and the power to designate refuges comes into play very big and obvious ways with Theodore Roosevelt. These dor roosevelt, in fact, designated the mallhorn National Wildlife refuge. Thats complicated timing and comes into a more forceful era with the progressive era and then the bureau of Land Management. Good luck getting the start date for that thing. Because it goes back to the General Land Office from the early 1800s, which passes that lanz, distributes land, and then becomes kind of an effective steward of the forest reserves and people have often noticed that frederick Jackson Turner tells us homesteading has ended and continued and the General Land Office continued in some ways more claims not necessarily successful ones, remained after into the frontier than before it. In the 1930s, kind of late arriving progressive era action the grazing act creates the Grazing Service which regulates and allocates excess to the grazing lands. The dust bowl is one good explanation for the lobbying force that led to that. When dust comes from the west and is in the skies over washington, d. C. , people vote for a grazing act at that stage to regulate land use. The Grazing Service, General Land Office, merge in 1946. Doesnt look like a progressive era timing and goes back to that. Students love this. When you start giving them the history of federal agencies, the students are just, oh, my lord, theyre just well, theres a video game waiting to happen that would make that so fun. Children would go this is fun, i get to be a bureaucrat today. This is so fun. Or a bureau rat. So they do have lives of adventure. The talk i give on the department of interior. I do call it hairraising tales from the department of the interior. Because they are hairraising tales, especially people who were involved in, well, this is not just interior, its also agriculture and Forest Service. But you walk into an area where the locals have used the forest as they wanted to and you are the federal agent whos going to say, actually, hmmm, there isnt that many grazing here. That is hairraising. That is not that is not for the people who wanted an easy life. And sometimes they work in bureaucracies. That look much more like bureaucracies. The happened office places and those kind of places, they are work away at your desk. But thats a bureaucrat. So they come in all forms. And some of them are out in the field. Now for after local control and the competing romances of local control and centralized authority and expertise, this is the second big idea of thinking about this big picture that i would like to put forward. This is the notion of thinking of the public lands as a grand experiment in testing the compatibility of conservation and democracy. What i mean by that is that every day in the west is generating new findings in a planetary experiment of great consequence. My starting premise here is that much of what we consider the practices of conservation among europeans and euro americans started with very concentrated authority, started with colonial governors, going to faroff outposts. Taking a few naturalists and scientists with them. The naturalists get to know a few of the species. They say the local people are endangering the wellbeing of these creatures. Could we keep the local people from cutting wood in this area . So that these creatures will not be reduced . And so theres that. Theres colonial governors. Quite early on limiting the activities of the local Indigenous People on behalf of conservation goals, and of course in europe, theres kings and aristocracy with their game preserves with their hunting areas. With their parks. And that is a very centralized authority of limitations on what the peasants and locals can do on that land. So conservation comes with some pretty bad political baggage. Colonial governors . Theyre very popular. Children want to grow up, id like to be, my adviser, wonderful story about that. He went to a party when he was in graduate school. And his date, it was a costume party. You had to come as what you really wanted to be in life. So his date wanted to live in france and be french and she came as the eiffel tower. She was unhappy, coming as the eiffel tower she had to lie down in the back seat to get to the party. She was not enjoying herself. Then they had a terrible time. They got there and there were quite a few International Students and my adviser grew up in alabama and he loves hot weather. Lamar loves hot weather. He goes to this party and is dressed in a pith helmet. He wants to look like somebody who lives from the tropics because he loves hot weather. He comes to this party and he looks like a white imperialist. So theyd rather talk to the eiffel tower. Than to the white imperialsist. He had quite a funny story about that. He was not a white imperialist but some people have gone to costume parties as them, i guess. Topdown authority and the origins of the practices of european and euro american conservation. Who did Gifford Pinchot learn his techniques from . His key, key teacher . I thought our technician was going to want to answer that. He didnt want to answer that, but i thought oh, theres a hand, somebody knows who Gifford Pinchots teacher was, somebody with earphones. Thats pretty fun. Maybe hes getting it fed to him in the earphones. I should not call attention to the meta structure that we have here. Sorry. I think were going to wait a little bit before we tell you who Gifford Pinchots mentor is. I think well keep that hanging for a little bit. So that is the experiment when the progressive era hits. It takes that experiment and gives those public lands the incredibly Important Role of the laboratory where this experiment proceeds where you get to see if you can get democracy in to compatibility with conservation practices. What happens in a representative democracy, republican and democratic government, when you also sometimes need centralized authority as you had it with the colonial governors and with the aristocrats and kings. So the important thing to say before we leave the aristocrats i will never be able to say either word with clarity from now on one of the important things of the aspects i have brought to your attention of the control exercise by people over power in europe over their estates, and it draws attention to the importance of game keepers who regulate the poachers and so on and that youll notice everyone is getting it right now, that encourages you to read lady chatterlys lover. Because the main character there is a game keeper. So you may read quite a stimulating book, but youre reading it because it gives you such insights into the history of conservation. And its practices. So ill work on that for some of those other books that we passed around as children to enjoy. Heres a cartoon, of which there were many that make this point. This is Gifford Pinchot made a lot of people mad. He would be portrayed in a way that echos what im saying, that he has that cultural baggage to carry, and you dont even know yet who his mentor was, but youll hear about that soon. Theres this guy who really tries to make the bureaucrat an interesting feature. This is mel brooks, the territorial governor, not so easy to make interesting, but i guess he tried. But i dont know if Popular Culture helped or hurt us with that. So okay. The first complicated heritage is all these bureaucrats of consequence hitting the west. The second one, the complicated heritage number two, steering buy science. So progressives are all about science. They really feel strong, warm emotion for science. If we could have that paradox of the strong feeling for that. And i will use the word faith. That science is the bedrock of a positive belief that is hard just to call a thought or an understanding, but something that really does come into faith, that well send scientists out on field explorations and they will graph and chart and note. Were back to Thomas Jeffersons instructions to merrywetter lewis, theres a hope, a belief that theyll be very smart and theyll be the ones who provide centralized authority with guidance. And then nature in a way that is maddening, turns out to be extremely complicated. So all of the faith. Gifford pinchot thought that fire could simply be eliminated from the forests. Study the forest, learn their ways, never have to have fire again. I use this image because it was for me the moment of thinking, this is out of my conceptual range. Ive always given it a good shot to understand forestry. I have lots of friends, im a member of the society of American Forests society of american foresters, thats ha im a member of, and i hang out with these people and try to follow that and when i read nancys wonderful book forest dreams forest nightmares about the management of the forests in eastern oregon, the Blue Mountains there, thats where i read like three paragraphs about how significant soil organisms are for the health of a forest. If you clearcut a forest and then replant the forest it might not work. A good chance it wont work. The sun light will have scorched and defeated the soil organisms and those little tiny things just are working away. And when the Forest Service cut in the area Nancy Langston was writing about they left the soil exposed. And when they replanted, it didnt work. They put the same kind of trees in, and theyre, what happened here . And it was these ittybitty rather unattractive creatures. Theyre not mosquitos, but theyre not anything that were on my mind before. Then when i read that paragraph in nancys book, i thought, this is getting out of my cog native zone here. Everything is so complicated and expect scientists who are specialists in many cases, naturalists in the 19th century, broader more specialists, the entomologists may not be speaking to the hydrologists. They may not have ever met each other. So the dilemmas of taking on complicated outdoor situations with conventional Scientific Method is really hard. And this is our saving the American West publication where we tried to help with the dueling experts problem. That wasnt supposed to happen. If you were a progressive deferring to the science and authority of science, the experts werent supposed to fight each other. They were supposed to think, confer, give you very solid, trustworthy findings. In our world today, its pretty different from that. Because, in fact, scientists can determine quite a few things, but what to do with those findings, thats where citizens and Public Officials have to choose and decide. As our friend who sometimes joins us in the Rocky Mountain national thing but has gone on vacation, cant come tomorrow, our pal jeff mitten always says we can say, scientists can find out how many elk there are, in Rocky Mountain National Park, what theyre eating, do a lot to learn about the elk, but they cannot say how many elk should there be. That is a values choice and thats where the scientists have to hand off the baton. Its important to say, because people do begin to panic at these moments, there are five heritages. Were halfway. Were not halfway through the lecture. Were halfway through the last part of the lecture. Okay. Good. So this is a tough one, because i dont really know how we could this has vast ramifications and theyre hard to trace, hard to track, because the progressive era coincides with the nadir of american Race Relations. Jim crow, segregation, installed after reconstruction ended. Mexicanamericans, many nomexican signs around the southwest. The lowest population of indian people. The Supreme Court decisions that have exerted power, complete federal authority over indian tribes. Its chinese exclusion. Alien land laws that keep japaneseamerican, japanese people japanese immigrants, not japanese americans born in the United States, but japanese immigrant citizens not of the u. S. From owning land. Anyway, you can go through quite a list of things that are not progressive. As we would use the word, but would be hard to count as progress. So thats the era of Theodore Roosevelt. Its not an impressive person really. He did have booker t. Washington come to the white house. He did make some efforts, but he clearly was a person who thought white women should be having more babies, because they would otherwise out reproduced by the darker people. So its a tough aspect of this era. And theres some Border Crossing in these issues of public lands. I dont know if its heartening or striking, but there are places to put our attention that the africanamerican soldiers in the army were sometimes sent, yellowstone was managed and operated by the army before the National Park service was created. Black soldiers were there. Nearly everyone who goes to yellowstone in early years, privileged white visitors, hunters and tourists, they often have black servants there. Thats interesting. They often referred to the cook. Thats an interesting place to be. So there is diversity in the story but certainly not in the decisionmaking directionsetting way. The park service of progressive era classic organization has tried, i think i may have mentioned this already, this is their project to make sure that the history of slavery gets properly attended to, not just in civil war focus parks but much more broadly. We imagine doing the same kind of prompt with tribes. We hope we can get that going. But that legacy is there. And the society of american foresters has the tiniest percentage of ethnic minorities. I dont know, as of a few years ago, it was somewhere in the 4 or 5 . It might be a little better now. They have a very Effective Program of going, when they have a convention, the foresters work with the public schools. Teachers to make sure there are kids of diverse backgrounds. The leg sasy of the progressive eras Race Relations in all of these matters its serious and difficult to pin down. But its there. Complicated heritage number four. The susceptibility for nostalgia. The progressive era was weve so covered this. This will take two seconds really. Such an era awash and nostalgia for the banished frontier. Theodore roosevelt and frederick Jackson Turner and all of these folks, the russells and remingtons and so on, very visible public culture manifestations of it, but its there as david tells us, with the story of frontier anxiety, a lot of policymakers and legislatures and decision makers. We look for that. Because it is, it is a judgment distorter. Theres nothing i dont want to say we really want to have the slash across it. But it does confuse judgment. It does set goals of a lost past that you dream of recreating, which well, good luck with that, but it may not have been that great a past anyway. So if you recreated it you might be very sad. Be careful what you wish for. As elliott west sometimes says about those things. And these guys are sufferers from a really severe form of nostalgia and are probably beyond treatment. This is the final point. Its not called the heritage, but it is sort of heritage number five. Its the last one. A point of reckoning with the word paradox coming into its own and this is a salute to michael cammen, a wonderful historian he would not like that, cornell university, and just a spectacular person and wonderful thinker about popular memory and also a person who served for years on the National Park Service Board and very creative and influential ways. Michael kammen who died a few years ago, he wrote a book called people of paradox. I miss him. Really wonderful person. So i sometimes would find myself picking up his book. Just to be in the company of his book. And it finally came in to me. I was reading the preface again, and i thought what a spectacular quotation Michael Kammen has given us here. I mean, really. I think they were referring to a quotation you that wish to what i wouldnt give, oh, my lord, and i put the definitions there in case anybody needs to be reminded, in case anybody didnt know what scum was. Its not something you want on your mind. Paradox. Two things that seem impossible, actually true and possible. That, for the paradox of progressivism. Well go through some last items here on these paradoxcle progressives who certainly had an unusual level of confidence in themselves. But confidence, i think i got this in my years in the ivy league in harvard. Confidence can be the thinnest veneer over something that really looks more like doubt, puzzlement, so not that Theodore Roosevelt did doubt or puzzlement. So i will back off from that. But what were they . Gifford pinchot and Theodore Roosevelt. Were they utilitarians . Nature lovers . Were they hybrids beyond characterization . And millers book you got a few chapters from that, you can see how complicated pinchot was. He was not just a how many board feet do we have here. He was really a person who loved being in natural environments, whose children grew up with grew up with that. His grandchildren have that quality. Had the great privilege of speaking at the Pinchot Institute in washington. It was a bit scary, a big, solemn group. I come in, there are two people in the front row wearing nametags, nothing scary about that, but it said pinchot. And peter pinchot. Theyre wonderful people. No reason to be scared of them. I was scared of them. So anyway, but they are mixed. And to cast, there was some value, i guess in the clarity you thought you would get if you put john muir over here and Gifford Pinchot over there and you had mr. Utilitarian and mr. Preservationist and you had them separate. I guess people dream of that kind of clarity. But you have to work really hard to maintain it. Because theyll fight you on it. Those two guys will fight you about what are they doing . Loving nature, as they do. If theyre supposed to be purely utilitarians. On the other side, john muirs occupational paradox. This is a tiny writing that says im not totally certain that muir thought he was a progressive or anybody else did, but he has to be in this lecture making my point about paradox, progressive and paradox. And hes so doing his part for me with the paradox part. So hes in there. What a great thing to contemplate. John muirs occupational paradox. And what a way to escape from the preoccupation with purity that can often immobilize us. What did john muir do for a living . He did eventually end up writing and getting some income from that. But before that and during that, what did he do for a living . [ inaudible ] he did do some manual labor kinds of things when he first got to california. Weve had a theme where we talk about how smart military officers are to marry wives who write well . Well, marrying spouses can be a very interesting and valuable thing to do if youre going to make your living in ways that may or may not be steady and productive. So hes a stayathome dad . No. What an interesting experience for the children that would have been. If he had been their dad in that sense. He married into a family in california that had orchards. So he was, in fact, quite an admired horticulturalist. So that is a paradox, because these are the trees, if you say john muir tree, thats the trees you think of. And these are the kinds of trees he spent his work life with. Which is great. Thats not i mean, thats not, ooh thats kind of disillusioning. He was remarkable. Hed climb onto these trees and hang on in windstorms. He wouldnt climb onto these trees in windstorms. But those, thats a different things. So those are the most tamed, bullied, domesticated of trees, and he worked well with them. So that seems to me a very helpful thing that john muir did for us to remind ourselves of that. And then maybe scale down the fixation on purity, of untouched pristine nature, that reading some of his works will get us all stirred up in that direction. But that should be in our picture as well. And then the founder of the National Park service, Steven Mather, who was the first director of the National Park service, a wellconnected person, a very effective advocate for the parks. Somebody to really conjure with, well, i guess to say to yourself, what would have happened with the National Park service if Steven Mather werent in the picture. He was really effective. Its hard, im not going to say oh, it would never have happened, but he certainly was a very forceful presence in the creation of the park service. How did he get to be such a wellconnected, wellsetup person . Borax miner. He was a miner of the material called borax, used in cleaning. That is not him, you understand. Thats a so, he made his fortune in borax mining, and that positioned him to go into a very effective form of advocacy for the park. This is not a very consequential paradox, but i love it, because it does irritate foresters very much that pinchot was an opponent of alcohol. Foresters. People who work for the Forest Service, and people who work in private lands forestry, they are not opponents of alcohol. So to remind them that their admired founder, and many think about pinchot. Admire him. You go to a Forest Service meeting you might find a pinchot impersonator. Theyre very common. Youre laughing now. Okay. Actually one time i was at one of those things theres Gifford Pinchot a retired Forest Service guy sitting on a stump, brought a stump, ironic, but hes sitting on a stump and im sitting next to the table of the current chief forester, dale bosworth, and im thinking this is psychodelic is the only word you can think of. Five feet away Gifford Pinchot and 11 feet away is the current forester. If you tell an audience of Forest Service that he was an advocate of abstinence in alcohol, its hard on them. And also, the Forest Service is understandably often characterized as an extremely masculineshaped institution. He, he had wellconnected parents. They played a big part in founding the Yale Forestry School. He recruited the young man from the Yale Forestry School and other sources. But its quite a male scene. And then he left the Forest Service in 1910, and he got married. After that he, cornelia, his wife, his first marriage, was a very active force for womens rights. So chief forester pinchot is a totally interesting character. Chief forester pinchot no longer chief forester, who becomes governor and under the influence of cornelia is very forceful, he frightens conventional holders of male power, because he is so, so he is just, he wont stay in a stereotype either. He keeps moving through life, which is a great blessing to us. So that is the great part of the paradox here is that, Pay Attention to the progressives, and you are invited to surrender simple oppositions and give up imagined forms of purity. Ive been talking so much about land and the progressives. The riddle of reclamation. The bureau of reclamation, a very significant power in reshaping the west. Probably a good percentage of you have read mark risners cadillac desert. And scene that power of reclamation there. It was originally created in 1902, but its part of the u. S. Geological survey, called the Reclamation Service which is not anything worth taking up time to get the names straight. Any way, reclamation is the building of dams and diversion of streams to reclaim land that would not be useful, to reclaim it for agriculture with that. Its perfectly legitimate to be scratching ones head, thinking why is dam building considered to be in the package with conservation . Why would you isnt conservation about not disrupting rivers with big pieces of concrete . Why is, whats reclamation doing that are . Does anyone the gentleman in the back, would i care . No. Oh, yeah. Im thinking about the general sustainability in general. If theyre thinking we need to provide for the people who are here, and we dont want them wreaking havoc and doing whatever they want, similar to maybe well, were not going to clear cut a forest. We want to still use some of that. Right. It certainly has that component of utility that progressive era conservation has and it has a very literal meaning that youre conserving the water. If you dont build the dam, the water goes down the river and into the sea. Thats waste. That is waste. Conservation is the opposite of waste. So build that dam. Obstruct the river. Hold the water. Dont let the water just waste itself. Water is very irresponsible, if you dont keep control of it. It will just go wasting its resource there. At that point, did the signs exist where they understand the disruptions to fish and theres very little evidence that was on anybodys mind. And it wasnt even John Wesley Powells mind either. The environmentalist. Its not far away. As a recognition, if you, if you know whats coming. You think, oh, wait just a few years. But no, they didnt get that. In your, yeah. Going after what patty said, how could they not have that recognition when the person downstream, suddenly, i dont have any water. Oh, thats this is unfortunate, given our timing here, because there are forms of claiming water in the west that if you are downstream you might well have a junior right or you might really have no right at all. And upstream dam would be based on claims to water that may overrule your claim, so you could be quite dewatered and the existing legal structure would make that seem right, whether you would figure it was right or not. Thats a really, but whether you would care about the, the aquatic life, you might be prepared. Theres a very stupid quotation that mark twain never said but hes always quoted, so when you hear it you must say he never said it. Whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over. So you might be in a very tense relationship with your downstream neighbor. They with not areas where settlement was very significant, because it was hard to do that. So i think that was probably one of the blessings for getting that going. In your reading packet is an amazing document from Frederick Newell. Who is the well the first head of the of reclamation. Frederick thats not him. What are you doing there . Theres an interesting person who was a crusader for irrigation and federal sponsorship of that and he is very explicitly sa guy saying the frontier is closed and we have to do something, give a new sense of opportunity. Hes in here because his book is a really good if you want to see what that anxiety about the end of the frontier means to a person who is recommending a federal program, hes your guy. And theres some of the early dams in the Reclamation Service. Rio grande river dam, elephant butte, and the Theodore Roosevelt dam, the salt river in arizona, one of the major ones. I think this is one that sam was saying he cant help but find that beautiful. Which means he will have to not live in boulder. Because thats not even though we benefit from dams in boulder were not to consider them beautiful. Well speak sternly to you about that for a later time. Heres Frederick Newell. And this is where we will be actually coming to a conclusion here. In your packet is a very cool thing. From the 11th annual report of the office of the Reclamation Service, and it is Frederick Newell doing something that i never knew that a federal bureaucrat had done in this era or many others. Its called fallacies entertained. And its a list of things that they believed when they started the Reclamation Service, which turned out to be oops moments, and to see a federal bureaucrat just say, here is what we did not expect, we did not expect the problems of Water Quality that would erode concrete, just various things, sediments and evaporation, just not all those things are in his mind but they really forecast well, theyre very explicit. So that to me is one of the most amazing bureaucratic documents ever of a person in office saying what he said was, many different places the human element. The engineers did not perceive the problems of the human element, which is to say, they thought they would be benefiting settlers, giving them a new opportunity, the settlers were supposed to pay for the water and also pay an added sum to pay for the structure that brought them the water. The repayment plan never really came together, settlers were crabby, difficult land, if they were ever to make a profit they had to give a share of that. Frederick newell saying, oh, the human beings. They didnt train us for that. Thats a great document. And then the little its not a sermon, really, but my own personal, this is just me as maybe not even a fully responsible applied historian here, but with all of the complexity, with the dilemmas of Race Relations and so on, this is still where i land that progressive leaders and citizens responded to their, that progressive leaders responded to the many of our leaders and citizens are responding to our troubled times with blame and accusation, theres a lot we can learn from the progressives by simultaneously celebrating their legacies and thoughtfully with their human complexity and then in your packet is this great guy, tacoma man, this is where Horace Albright worked with the founding of the National Parks service, a lot of local people were very enthusiastic about mt. Rainier park being created. Theres a very brief passage, a man says to them, do you want to the fellow says to them, dont you think you might want to Pay Attention, this is a little bit about the ecosection. And he speaks to who race albright and he says, why these borders . Why would you put these borders, theyre straight, the park line, they dont reflect whats there on the land. So horace all bright and Steven Mathers say to this man, well, thats an interesting idea. And apparently they asked him to write it up and send it to them so they could learn more about it. And they never heard from him. Always in our company is tacoma man, and we may or may not know enough to think, dont let him get out of here before we get that idea and we really think about it. Tacoma man was around in 1915, and it took a while, and now everyone struggles with where are the borders of the ye yellowstone National Park and there was tacoma man, who was he was, turning on the lights. Anyway, theres tacoma man turning the lights on on this notion, is there something were not thinking about that we should think about . So i would like to salute tacoma man as a progressive, that we cant name but we know hes part of our legacy from the progressive era. Thank you. During this final week of the congressional summer recess, American History tv is in prime time with our original series lex churs in history. Tonight we take you into classrooms across the country for a look at the 1950s, join us beginning at 8 00 eastern here on cspan 3. This afternoon the Vice President is in Texas Surveying damage done by Hurricane Harvey and well bring you live cov coverage starting at 1 45 eastern. And then well bring you a briefing from government John Bell Edwards and that will be live on cspan. Cspan cities tour is in washington with our Comcast Cable partners as we explore that citys rich history and literary scene. Spokane, our early history, under all is the 4r57bd. Spokane was built basically from the money from the corelane money strike, and that led to the gold strike of 1883 and that led to a silver strike, it was one of the largest producing silver mines in the United States and a lot of the big buildings are built from the might have beeni i mining money. As local author james hunt talks about his book restless fires. Young john muirers walk to the gulf. John murer was one of the early thinkers, leaders, he was the protagonist for the National Parks system. American history tv features the story of expo 74, one of the first environmentally themed worlds fairs. Spokane at one time was one of the smallest cities ever to host a worlds fair. It was the first fair to use the environment as a theme and it followed close on 1972, was earth day, the very first earth day and there was a great consciousness around the world about the environmental earth day. And it became the exception of expo 74. Well also visit the childhood home of spokane native bing crosby. The cspan cities tour, working with our cable affiliates and visiting cities across the country. Up next on lectures in history, we take you to Emery University where professor patrick allat takes you to t