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The Great Divide: The Rocky Mountains in the American Mind
A history of the people who made their lives on the Rocky Mountains includes coverage of such groups as the region's original Native American inhabitants, European explorers, escaped slaves, gold-rush miners, hippies from the 1960s, and modern-day adventure travelers. 15,000 first printing.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published August 16, 2004
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About the author
Gary Ferguson
90 books82 followersNature writer, 1956-
Award-winning author Gary Ferguson has written for a variety of national publications, including Vanity Fair and the Chicago Tribune, and is the author of twenty-six books on nature and science. His memoir, The Carry Home, which the Los Angeles Times called “gorgeous, with beauty on every page,” was awarded “Best Nature book of the Year” by the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute. Gary is the co-founder of Full Ecology, with his wife, social scientists Mary M. Clare.
Award-winning author Gary Ferguson has written for a variety of national publications, including Vanity Fair and the Chicago Tribune, and is the author of twenty-six books on nature and science. His memoir, The Carry Home, which the Los Angeles Times called “gorgeous, with beauty on every page,” was awarded “Best Nature book of the Year” by the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute. Gary is the co-founder of Full Ecology, with his wife, social scientists Mary M. Clare.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
January 30, 2017
A decent synthesis of the power of changing visions about the Rockies in the American imagination and culture. Its content is often fun and educational with its profiles of quirky mountain men and fur traders, fervent missionaries, visionary artists, polyglot immigrants lured by gold or silver, creative hucksters, and rapacious industry magnates. Ferguson uses a chapter organization that nicely allies phases over time with themes in human response to the Rockies and the West as motivator and field of dreams. A progression from desire and discovery to greed and exploitation. He makes what seem wise conclusions to tie up all his forays, but he loses stars for me by not filling in the dots well enough with an effective logical progression and documentation. For example, he refrains from talking much about the politics of Manifest Destiny or any details of the subjugation of the Indians.
A rich line of thought ties the U.S. character to its emergence as a nation on the edge of a continent with a vast frontier of the West. “The West” stood in for unconquered wilderness, and initially that was the Applalachians and Catskills. But ever since the Louisiana Purchase and Lewis and Clark’s expedition, the “West” has come in common conception to correspond to the Rocky Mountains and western parts of the Great Plains. Ferguson is murky on these distinctions, often eliding the concept of the West just with the Rockies. But he is clear on how the very urge of Americans to explore and live in the West for its mystery and opportunities for self-fulfillment led inexorably to its ending as tamed and harnessed. He shows how the tendency to hype and mythologize its iconic figures was there early on. As one example, explorer, mountain man, Indian fighter and guide Kit Carson was quickly adopted as a model hero for dime novels and acquired a publicity agent.
The frontier officially closed well before the end of the 19th century, when all surviving Indians were on reservations and settlements extended far and wide into its vastness. But the West of our imagination lingers on. His chapters from the 20th century chart the emergence of dude ranches and the tourist industry for their venues to expose easterners to a taste of manly ranch life and sense of wilderness. The Buffalo Wild West Show toured the great cities of the world for decades, and movies gave life to virtuous and mythic figures of the West. But the boom-and-bust-cycles and ecological devastation by mining, cattle, and timber industries took the shine out of our vision of the Rockies. Swinging our outlook back from total loss was the growth and solidification of the system of national parks and forests. In recent times, the back-to-the-land movement of youth in the 60s underwent a significant transformation in the 70’s when certain worn-out mining towns became a magnet for ex-hippies seeking to revive the American Dream married to the wholesome aspects of life in the Rockies. In one chapter, Ferguson describes how one such hippie refugee from the urban east ran for a won the position as mayor of Crested Butte in Colorado in 1972. Before then, the attitude of long term residents about the interlopers was to “get real or go away.” They got real.
I share here some of Ferguson’s conclusions which seem true, but which were not fleshed out enough with supporting details. For example here is a succinct summary on portrayals of Kit Carson:
Strong men like Kit Carson were presented as if they were the next best thing to Jesus Christ—out there drifting through the dark fields of the high country, resisting all temptations. Others saw the trapper as a full-blown heathen, his life a slap in the face of everything sacred.
Some artists portrayed lie in the West in scenes of dramatic action, such as Remington with his signature sculptures. By contrast, others convey a different image which captures in an elegant but abstract passage:
At the same time landscape artists of the Rockies were keeping alive the idea of wild nature as a source of beauty, community, and mystery. They continued to also think of such places as equalizers, level playing fields where privilege meant nothing—where democracy seemed to have an especially good chance of flowering. Beyond that, to many of these same artists the western wilds were considered an outstanding source of physical and mental challenge—a place to lessen the “softening” influences of civilization, to shore up the toughness and resourcefulness in which Americans took such enormous pride. …
Images of beauty and melancholy, with a dose of danger and hardship. Such was the artistic mix that became entrenched in the late nineteenth century, and would persist for the next hundred years. It was thanks in great part to American landscape artists that the Rockies were thus destined to evolve not simply as a unique place on the continent but also as a collection of things hoped for and lost. The province of dreams.
He makes a fruitful connection between seeing Indians as lower heathens and the justification for eradicating their culture, and a link between their primitive nature and justification with Social Darwinism as justification of their subjugation. Again he provides few details to make his inferences sink in:
.. to be able to write off the destruction of the Native Americans as a natural way of things, to dismiss growing poverty and disease in urban regions as a failure of motivation presented a grand piece pseudoscience to have in your pocket. Such men were hardly ignorant of the fact that America had pinned much of its worldview, from religion to patriotism, on the dynamics of nature. What would be better than nature herself endorsing the idea that those in control were meant to be there?
I love books that succeed in making a grand synthesis of cultural, historical, and ecological trends. In the end, it is Ferguson’s skill as a travel journalist that contributes to my valuing of this book in that regard. As he has no academic background in history (or economics, ecology, or science), it may be beyond his reach to achieve a compelling and overarching synthesis of ideas about the impact of the Rockies for shaping the American mind. Personally, I got much more understanding about the West in our history from Hampton Sides’ wonderful biography about Kit Carson, Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West . I also got more pleasure from Simon Winchester’s sweeping account of explorers, engineers, and industrialists who were most responsible for unifying the nation by surmounting the Rockies, The Men Who United the States: America's Explorers, Inventors, Eccentrics and Mavericks, and the Creation of One Nation, Indivisible. For an even more inspiring and synthetic portrayal of the Colorado Rockies at the turn of the 20th century, I was blown away with the convergence of adventurers, engineers, miners, anarchists, and outlaws that Pynchon put to life in his Against the Day.
A rich line of thought ties the U.S. character to its emergence as a nation on the edge of a continent with a vast frontier of the West. “The West” stood in for unconquered wilderness, and initially that was the Applalachians and Catskills. But ever since the Louisiana Purchase and Lewis and Clark’s expedition, the “West” has come in common conception to correspond to the Rocky Mountains and western parts of the Great Plains. Ferguson is murky on these distinctions, often eliding the concept of the West just with the Rockies. But he is clear on how the very urge of Americans to explore and live in the West for its mystery and opportunities for self-fulfillment led inexorably to its ending as tamed and harnessed. He shows how the tendency to hype and mythologize its iconic figures was there early on. As one example, explorer, mountain man, Indian fighter and guide Kit Carson was quickly adopted as a model hero for dime novels and acquired a publicity agent.
The frontier officially closed well before the end of the 19th century, when all surviving Indians were on reservations and settlements extended far and wide into its vastness. But the West of our imagination lingers on. His chapters from the 20th century chart the emergence of dude ranches and the tourist industry for their venues to expose easterners to a taste of manly ranch life and sense of wilderness. The Buffalo Wild West Show toured the great cities of the world for decades, and movies gave life to virtuous and mythic figures of the West. But the boom-and-bust-cycles and ecological devastation by mining, cattle, and timber industries took the shine out of our vision of the Rockies. Swinging our outlook back from total loss was the growth and solidification of the system of national parks and forests. In recent times, the back-to-the-land movement of youth in the 60s underwent a significant transformation in the 70’s when certain worn-out mining towns became a magnet for ex-hippies seeking to revive the American Dream married to the wholesome aspects of life in the Rockies. In one chapter, Ferguson describes how one such hippie refugee from the urban east ran for a won the position as mayor of Crested Butte in Colorado in 1972. Before then, the attitude of long term residents about the interlopers was to “get real or go away.” They got real.
I share here some of Ferguson’s conclusions which seem true, but which were not fleshed out enough with supporting details. For example here is a succinct summary on portrayals of Kit Carson:
Strong men like Kit Carson were presented as if they were the next best thing to Jesus Christ—out there drifting through the dark fields of the high country, resisting all temptations. Others saw the trapper as a full-blown heathen, his life a slap in the face of everything sacred.
Some artists portrayed lie in the West in scenes of dramatic action, such as Remington with his signature sculptures. By contrast, others convey a different image which captures in an elegant but abstract passage:
At the same time landscape artists of the Rockies were keeping alive the idea of wild nature as a source of beauty, community, and mystery. They continued to also think of such places as equalizers, level playing fields where privilege meant nothing—where democracy seemed to have an especially good chance of flowering. Beyond that, to many of these same artists the western wilds were considered an outstanding source of physical and mental challenge—a place to lessen the “softening” influences of civilization, to shore up the toughness and resourcefulness in which Americans took such enormous pride. …
Images of beauty and melancholy, with a dose of danger and hardship. Such was the artistic mix that became entrenched in the late nineteenth century, and would persist for the next hundred years. It was thanks in great part to American landscape artists that the Rockies were thus destined to evolve not simply as a unique place on the continent but also as a collection of things hoped for and lost. The province of dreams.
He makes a fruitful connection between seeing Indians as lower heathens and the justification for eradicating their culture, and a link between their primitive nature and justification with Social Darwinism as justification of their subjugation. Again he provides few details to make his inferences sink in:
.. to be able to write off the destruction of the Native Americans as a natural way of things, to dismiss growing poverty and disease in urban regions as a failure of motivation presented a grand piece pseudoscience to have in your pocket. Such men were hardly ignorant of the fact that America had pinned much of its worldview, from religion to patriotism, on the dynamics of nature. What would be better than nature herself endorsing the idea that those in control were meant to be there?
I love books that succeed in making a grand synthesis of cultural, historical, and ecological trends. In the end, it is Ferguson’s skill as a travel journalist that contributes to my valuing of this book in that regard. As he has no academic background in history (or economics, ecology, or science), it may be beyond his reach to achieve a compelling and overarching synthesis of ideas about the impact of the Rockies for shaping the American mind. Personally, I got much more understanding about the West in our history from Hampton Sides’ wonderful biography about Kit Carson, Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West . I also got more pleasure from Simon Winchester’s sweeping account of explorers, engineers, and industrialists who were most responsible for unifying the nation by surmounting the Rockies, The Men Who United the States: America's Explorers, Inventors, Eccentrics and Mavericks, and the Creation of One Nation, Indivisible. For an even more inspiring and synthetic portrayal of the Colorado Rockies at the turn of the 20th century, I was blown away with the convergence of adventurers, engineers, miners, anarchists, and outlaws that Pynchon put to life in his Against the Day.
February 22, 2016
This book starts off very slowly but picks up about half way through and getting to the second half is well worth the trouble. What I found most interesting is the way it presents a case that right from the start "THE WEST" in the European mind was a fantasy and that fantasy has run like a thread through the times of the early trappers to well-to-do adventurers to hippies (the dudes and the freaks as they are called here.) That underlying fantasy is one of reconnection to the wilderness and nature and escape from society, rigidity, and urbanization. This theme is of course deeply entrenched in American culture, literature, art, fantasy, etc. But it was very interesting to read a description of how it played out in the nature and ideals of the successive waves of visitors and immigrants to specifically the Rocky Mountains in Colorado through U.S. history--especially when it came to the specifics of history within my memory and lifetime. It was one of those books that both confirms one's vague impressions and gives voice and shape to private thoughts one has had but has not quite been able to confirm or formulate.
February 27, 2022
‘For most of our nation’s history, Americans defined themselves as historian Henry Smith wrote, by the “bond between American man and the American West.” Of all the sweeping, sun-blistered uplands tossed across this American West, few have sustained that relationship better, have been more full of both wonder and intrigue, than the 1,100-mile stretch of high country running from the pinyon-juniper foothills of Santa Fe north into Colorado and Wyoming through Montana, the Rocky Mountains.’
Powder Days and this book both talk about the history of the Rockies in similar ways and correctly call out the frontier and exploration impulse as erasing indigenous claims and rights to the land. I had just read Ferguson’s Seven Master Lessons of Nature and hoped for a different kind of history here; I also feel very spiritual about this landscape so unlike the New England smallness of my formative years, and am chasing the ghost of a great grandfather (great-great?) who came from Slovenia to Colorado in the gold rush times before returning, and I wonder how our line would have been different if he had not returned to Europe or if my grandfather did not have to escape a WWII Europe 50 years later.
I am chasing ghosts metaphorically, chasing in a way that frames my worship of the land that I was not born in and have no rights but love so deeply, and wanting to reconcile them. I was never meant to be here. I should/thought I would be in the lush forests of Western Washington State or on the beaches of Northern California. But something in me found me in the Rockies and the deserts of Utah so here I am. I didn’t find anything helpful in this book, at all, but it was a decent overview in less boring language than many history books, so worthwhile.
Powder Days and this book both talk about the history of the Rockies in similar ways and correctly call out the frontier and exploration impulse as erasing indigenous claims and rights to the land. I had just read Ferguson’s Seven Master Lessons of Nature and hoped for a different kind of history here; I also feel very spiritual about this landscape so unlike the New England smallness of my formative years, and am chasing the ghost of a great grandfather (great-great?) who came from Slovenia to Colorado in the gold rush times before returning, and I wonder how our line would have been different if he had not returned to Europe or if my grandfather did not have to escape a WWII Europe 50 years later.
I am chasing ghosts metaphorically, chasing in a way that frames my worship of the land that I was not born in and have no rights but love so deeply, and wanting to reconcile them. I was never meant to be here. I should/thought I would be in the lush forests of Western Washington State or on the beaches of Northern California. But something in me found me in the Rockies and the deserts of Utah so here I am. I didn’t find anything helpful in this book, at all, but it was a decent overview in less boring language than many history books, so worthwhile.
August 26, 2018
A short history of the Rocky Mountains, not in depth, more themes than details
March 31, 2025
Interesting ideas about how the Rocky Mountain West shaped America as a whole.
January 12, 2025
A book about the types of folks that made the Rocky Mountains their home in the 20th Century.
August 9, 2016
As much about philosophy as history, this unusual book was surprisingly easy to read. Its ongoing theme is the value of wilderness for personal rejuvenation. The book starts off discussing Europeans religious philosophy as it relates to nature, and how this legacy affected how the Rocky Mountains were thought of when Europeans settled here. It also touches on Native American spirituality and beliefs about nature. Don’t abandon the book, it does get easier to read once Ferguson has set this stage!
At this point, rather than launch into broad generalizations about Rocky Mountain history, the author gives an overview then focuses on the personal history of selected individuals. Many of these stories are held together by the theme of the individuals seeking refuge or freedom from society by frequenting remote areas, and everyday heroism that harsh circumstances call forth. Thus we have black men who become prosperous and well-respected fur trappers/traders where elsewhere in the US blacks are enslaved. We have Victorian women wearing pants and riding horses on dude ranches where their contemporaries sit properly in parlors and engage in little outdoor physical activity. Finally, we have hippies moving into rural towns as they embrace the “back to the land” philosophy. Some stories involve famous Americans such as Teddy Roosevelt and Buffalo Bill Cody. Others are taken from more obscure documentation.
The chapters on trapping and mining examine the philosophy and circumstances of individuals and debunk trapper and miner stereotypes. It is the history of humans, much different than books that I usually read that focus on the destruction of the land/ecosystems and analysis of what went wrong. As such, it was an interesting and easy read, though not entirely memorable.
At this point, rather than launch into broad generalizations about Rocky Mountain history, the author gives an overview then focuses on the personal history of selected individuals. Many of these stories are held together by the theme of the individuals seeking refuge or freedom from society by frequenting remote areas, and everyday heroism that harsh circumstances call forth. Thus we have black men who become prosperous and well-respected fur trappers/traders where elsewhere in the US blacks are enslaved. We have Victorian women wearing pants and riding horses on dude ranches where their contemporaries sit properly in parlors and engage in little outdoor physical activity. Finally, we have hippies moving into rural towns as they embrace the “back to the land” philosophy. Some stories involve famous Americans such as Teddy Roosevelt and Buffalo Bill Cody. Others are taken from more obscure documentation.
The chapters on trapping and mining examine the philosophy and circumstances of individuals and debunk trapper and miner stereotypes. It is the history of humans, much different than books that I usually read that focus on the destruction of the land/ecosystems and analysis of what went wrong. As such, it was an interesting and easy read, though not entirely memorable.
February 18, 2010
This is a truly superb book. Alongside many intriguing personalities and anecdotes (such as his discussion of the idea of "miasma" in early medicine), Ferguson presents a cultural or philosophical historical of the idea of "the West" and specifically the Rocky Mountains to the American psyche. Cultural responses to the mountains range from seeing "the wilderness" as a place of exile and curse, to the mountains as a place to test and build one's mettle, to a locus of spiritual communion with oneself and one's broader place in the universe. Throughout, the Rocky mountains provided a kind of outlet from society, where folks could escape frantic capitalism, polluted cities, and derogating stereotypes for women, minorities, etc. He cites lots of sources, gives a good sense of changing cultural attitudes in early America, and draws some intriguing conclusions.
January 11, 2011
How does one write a biography of one of the largest mountain ranges? Ferguson, after waxing poetic a bit extensively about the relation of humankind and its spiritual and emotional ties to nature, leads us on a journey not of names, dates, battles, and geology, but a history of attitudes toward and experiences of Americans (and oftentimes Europeans) in the American West. He chronicles experiences of the archetypical and not-so-archetypical visitors and mainstays of the Rockies - the Native American, fur trapper, "black sheep," explorer, gold miner, criminal, cowboy, dude rancher, hippie, snowbird, wealthy recluse. It ends up being an enlightening social history of a terrain that has captured over time fears, imaginations, and hopes in the American mind.
November 17, 2011
This book had a few interesting notes that I had not heard about or learned in my first few years in Colorado. In general there was a lot less about Colorado than I expected and a lot more about Wyoming and Montana.
There were colorful insights into the history of the state... frontier days... and what drew Americans westward during the 1800's besides that yellow precious metal and the shiny grey one too.
It's a quick read however it could have been half as long and learned twice as much than I did.
If you know anything about the Rocky Mountain region this book is not for you. If you need a good primer on the area this might actually work for you.
There were colorful insights into the history of the state... frontier days... and what drew Americans westward during the 1800's besides that yellow precious metal and the shiny grey one too.
It's a quick read however it could have been half as long and learned twice as much than I did.
If you know anything about the Rocky Mountain region this book is not for you. If you need a good primer on the area this might actually work for you.
February 13, 2014
A wonderful read right after we had just finished watching the 1980s series "Centennial" about the history of a small Colorado town from the time of Indians until today. This book shares a changing perspective about the unique beauty and richness of the Rocky Mountains and the impact that society has had on it over the past 250 years. The ending makes me a bit nervous thinking that it will take a conscious effort on the part of people to keep the Rocky Mountains natural. I hope that 250 years from now they still will be wild.
July 8, 2014
While the book is written very well, it seems to cover humanistic issues that have impacted the Rocky Mountains over time. It often concentrates on issues that affected America, rather than the Rockies and you find out little about actual life in the Rockies. I see now that my version was given a much more misleading subtitle: A Biography of the Rocky Mountains. The previous subtitle was more accurate. I just found that the book seemed to miss the mark in what I was expecting.
December 2, 2010
Good stuff.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews