Americas Natural Landscapes PDF

. America’s Natural ~ Landscapes by Peirce Lewis Before we present you the matters of fact, it is fi...

. America’s Natural ~ Landscapes by Peirce Lewis Before we present you the matters of fact, it is fit to offer to your view the Stage whereon they were acted, for as Geography with- out History seemeth a carkasse without motion, so History without Geography wandereth as a Vagrant without a certaine habitation. — John Smith The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles (London, 1624) ‘The Geographic Dimension in American History ~ One of the great themes of American history emerges from the story of Americans confronting and coming to terms with a huge wild country. Quite unlike the Old World, where people had occu- pied the land for as long as history could recall, and where adjustment to environment came so gradually as to be almost imperceptible, Ameri- cans’ encounter with their land was abrupt and often violent, consum- ing much of the nation’s energies, and powerfully gripping its collective imagination. It has been said that America is a nation with an abun- dance of geography but a shortage of history, and there is some truth in the United States. both statements. It took less than four hundred years to subdue more than three million square miles of territory; in fact, Americans occupied the bulk of their national domain within the last century and a half. Even today much of the United States remains only semipopulated and semitamed. It is no wonder that the struggle to conquer America’s phys- ical geography looms so large in the nation’s memory. Just as Americans have reshaped the face of their land, the people themselves have been Map 1. Erwin Raisz. Landforms shaped and reshaped by constant intimate encounters with that land. Copyright 1934y Ewin Rets Most of the time the settlers of America lacked any kind of detailed geographic knowledge, but their expectations were usually optimistic. Except for Africans who were brought to the country as slaves, most migrants came to America of their own free will, hoping for a better life than they had previously known. Quite naturally they were predisposed to think well of the new land, even when they knew little about it. More often than not, their expectations were met—and met handsomely. Very often American history has been a tale based on geographic superla- tives. AMERICA'S NATURAL LANDSCAPES/43  Landform Regions of the United States Even at the most general level the country was geographically fortu- nate. Two large oceans insulated the United States from political threats in Europe and Asia, and for most of the nation’s history those oceanic buffers spared America the need to maintain expensive and potentially mischievous military machines. The vast expanse of national territory contained a wealth of environments, which allowed the nation to be- come self-sufficient in agriculture and most basic minerals. And a mag- nificent system of natural waterways hooked this territory together, so that travel was cheap both for goods and people—making possible a degree of mobility (both geographic and social) unknown in most parts of the world. Over the course of time the American land yielded a geographic bounty whose reputation spread around the globe, and helped provoke a flood of migrants that shows no sign of diminishing even today. To be sure, the reports of that bounty were often overblown, especially by land speculators and travel agents with financial interests in promoting mi- gration, and more than a few people have been enticed to America through promises of paradise on earth and cities with streets paved with gold. In spite of overstatements, however, the geographic truth was Map 2. Landform Regions of the United States. (Modified from a map by Nevin M. still formidable. Long before the accounts had been totalled, America Fenneman and Douglas W. Johnson, Phsyiographic Divisions of the UL.S., 1946.) was known to be a very rich land. Like so many things in human history, America’s geographic good (compare maps 2 and 3). In any particular place or region, the landscape fortune seems more obvious in retrospect than it did during the actual is a composite of these two patterns, but they are best understood if course of events. Settlement of the American land was often a painful they are first seen separately. process, for territory was usually settled before it was well known. (“The land was ours before we were the land’s,” Robert Frost re- Patterns of Landforms: The Main Framework marked.) Few of the settlers possessed accurate maps of the land they America’s geologic and topographic framework is built around a huge would occupy, and most of them had no systematic knowledge at all of interior lowland that has yielded some of America’s greatest agricultural the natural processes that shaped the country that would become their and mineral wealth, contains a large bulk of its population, and is the home. America’s physical geography had to be learned by trial and er- heart of what politicians like to call “middle America.” The region is ror, from the hard experience of innumerable settlers who discovered drained by the Mississippi River and its great tributaries, one of the particular necessary facts as they went along, and left grand patterns for largest navigable river systems in the world. The Mississippi is not their descendants to reveal. But we can see those patterns today, and a merely a useful river; it also serves as a potent geographic symbol—the knowledge of them sheds considerable light on the way the nation’s his- traditional dividing line in America between “East” and “West.” This tory unfolded. 8reat lowland rises toward the north, where it butts sharply against the The natural landscape of the United States has two fundamental di- Wilderness bulwark of the Canadian Shield. To the south, the lowland mensions, like landscapes anywhere in the world. One dimension re- Opens almost imperceptibly to a broad coastal plain that fringes the Gulf sults from geologic processes in the crust of the earth, which determine of Mexico. To east and west, the land rises gradually and then abruptly the main patterns of landforms, drainage, and minerals, and influence to mountain ranges that flank the lowland to either side and separate it the fertility of soils to a considerable degree. The other dimension is de- from the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. termined by meteorological processes in the atmosphere, which dictate The mountain ranges, however, differ substantially from each other. the nature of weather and climate, and in large measure the geographic The Appalachians on the east stretch almost unbroken from Alabama to distribution of vegetation and soils. While geology and meteorology are the Canadian border and beyond. They are much-eroded old mountains not entirely independent of each other, both produce patterns on a map (the highest elevation is less than seven thousand feet) and are set back that differ so greatly that they constitute two separate geographies from the Atlantic by a broad belt of coastal lowland. While this coastal 44/PEIRCE LEWIS AMERICA'S NATURAL LANDSCAPES/48  region contains no very remarkable scenery nor much in the way of min- the world, the character of the shoreline and the plain itself is deter- eral wealth, it was here that the American nation was planted and took mined by elementary geologic facts: that the region is underlain by root in the seventeenth century. The original thirteen colonies were all young sedimentary rocks, recently deposited by the ocean and by the located in this narrow belt, and almost half of America’s history has streams flowing directly into the ocean—mostly uncemented sand, been played out here. It was not until the Revolution (1775-81) that sig- gravel, silt, and marl. The surface slopes very gently beneath the sea, nificant numbers of American settlers began to spill westward across where it forms the Continental Shelf, a region which is merely the sub- the Appalachians into the interior lowlands. marine equivalent of the Coastal Plain. (Thus, the fabulously rich oil and To the west of the interior basin lies the mighty system of mountains fields of east Texas and south Louisiana extend offshore into the that Spanish explorers named the “Cordillera”—a collective term for all Gulf of Mexico, differing in location, but geologically identical.) the high rough country of the western third of the United States. The The combination of weak bedrock materials and gentle surface slope Cordillera is part of a global mountain system that encircles the Pacific has produced a kind of physical geography that has caused settlers of Basin; it is geologically young, and contains great geologic and topo- the Coastal Plain a good deal of trouble from earliest days. The problems graphic variety. Quite unlike the east, the western United States has were evident even before Europeans had set foot on American soil. Off- almost no coastal plain, and the mountains along the Pacific coast drop shore the water is shallow—an easy place to drill for oil in recent time, abruptly and often spectacularly into the sea. This western country is but a dangerous place for sailors, especially in bad weather. To make both complicated and varied, containing some of the highest mountains matters worse, the action of waves has carved the malleable shoreline in North America, but also a vast expanse of intermontane basins, pla- into a profusion of barrier islands, spits, and offshore shoals, all of teaus, and isolated ranges. Taken together, America’s mountainous West which shift unpredictably under the attack of Atlantic storms. Much of is a peculiar and portentous place—a land of impressive scenery, consid- the coast is fronted with wide sandy beaches, popular spots for Ameri- erable environmental variety, and great mineral wealth. It is hardly sur- ca’s urban population to besport itself on hot summer weekends, but a prising that much of this western country was settled by adventurous bad place if one was a sailor in colonial times approaching the shore in folk in search of quick riches, or freedom from the conventions and tra- search of a sheltered deep-water anchorage. ditions of the crowded, long-settled East. Its picturesque scenery and In a few places there are gaps in the coastal barrier, and these gaps history have caused many Americans to see the West as a wild eccentric are as important as they are rare. As it commonly does, geologic history kind of place—a view reinforced by novelists, artists, newspaper writers, helps explain present-day physical geography. During glacial times a and filmmakers who have painted the American West in bright uncom- large volume of ocean water was locked up in continental ice sheets, and plicated colors. sea level consequently dropped—perhaps as much as two hundred feet. In sum, geographers recognize four first-order topographic regions of Rivers flowing to the sea quickly accommodated themselves to the new the United States. From east to west (in the order that Europeans found sea level and cut deep wide valleys into the sandy material of the them) they are (1) the Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plain, (2) the Appala- Coastal Plain. Then, when the glaciers melted and sea level rose again, chians and their foothills, (3) the Interior Lowlands, and 4) the Cordil- those valleys were flooded to form large ragged bays, some of which lera, which includes both the main mountain ranges and a variety of reached deeply inland. The convoluted shores of Chesapeake Bay, actu- intermontane valleys, basins, and plateaus. ally the drowned mouth of the Susquehanna River, created the famous Each of these large regions, however, contains a good deal of internal “Tidewater”” country of Maryland and Virginia, one of the earliest con- variety. Centrations of population in colonial America. In the same way, the The Coastal Plain. European settlers first set foot in the territory that 8reat indentation of Delaware Bay gave ocean ships direct access to fer- would become the United States and found a plain, facing the Atlantic, tile agricultural country in southeastern Pennsylvania, and the city of which in general outline seemed very similar to the Europe they had Philadelphia grew up naturally at the point farthest inland on that bay. left. The settlers quickly learned, however, that America’s Atlantic plain In fact, from New York southward all of the nation’s big coastal towns was unlike Europe’s, and that it was far from homogeneous. Were necessarily located at or inside one of those rare breaks in the bar- South and west of the mouth of the Hudson River, now the site of Tier bars; it was simply not possible to bring ocean ships ashore any- New York City, stretches a widening band of Coastal Plain, which ex- Where else. Baltimore, Charleston, Savannah, and Jacksonville are tends unbroken to the Mexican border at the Rio Grande. As the use of among the most obvious examples—and the scarcity of such breaks i helps explain why much of the American South is largely lacking in big capital letters suggests, the Coastal Plain is more than simply a lowland i that happens to lie next to the sea. Like such regions in other parts of Coastal cities. | 46/PEIRCE LEWIS AMERICA'S NATURAL LANDSCAPES/47  Coastal Plain soils have also played an important role in American The oldest and most complicated rocks occur closest to the ocean, history, for they nourished the plantation agriculture that made slavery ~ where they have produced the two eastern belts of f thethe Appalachians— Apj profitable in the American South. Those soils were among the best in _ the Piedmont and the Blue Ridge. (This was the main axis of Appala- colonial North America, partly because they were easy to work, partly chian mountai n-build ing activity and therefore the place whe}'e rocks n by fairly non- because they contained large volumes of forest humus. Once the forests are most intensively deformed.) The Piedmont is underlai were cut, however, that humus was not renewed, and the fragile soils resistent crystalline rocks, which have been womn down to a gently ro}l- were exposed to erosion. During the heyday of cotton and tobacco culti- ing plain. From Pennsylvania southward into the Carolina s and Georgx_a, vation of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, profits were so large this Piedmont plain is covered with deep layers of weathered material North of New that planters paid little attention to soil conservation. Decades of abuse that have yielded the best soils in eastern North America. ruined the soil over much of the Coastal Plain. Some of the nation’s York City, however, this weathere d layer was scrubbed anc_i removed by richest agricultural land during colonial and early national times is now , which then withdrew , strewing the surface with boulders, gone, so impoverished that it has been abandoned as farmland and al- sand, and gravel. This is lowland New England, which colonial settle_rs lowed to revert to scrub or pine forest. It was from exactly such country farmed and cursed and promptly abandoned as soon as more fertile over the last century that poor blacks and whites migrated, leaving their country opened up for migrants to the West. worn-out plots to go north in search of a better life. Glaciation affected more than just soils. The engrmous weight of the Today the Coastal Plain does not seem a very remarkable place, with ice sheet gradually depressed the entire surface of New England, so that its low relief and cover of scrubby pine forests, but it was the stage-set the lowest elevations were drowned below the sea. Although the land is for major events in the history of the American confrontation with physi- once more rising, it still is much lower than it was. Thus New England cal environment. It was the place where Americans first ventured into has no Coastal Plain, and the ocean beats directly against the ancient large-scale commercial agriculture—and made huge profits by doing so. Appalachian rocks to form a convoluted picturesque coastline, abun- The Coastal Plain was also the place where Americans first learned the dantly provided with deep water and sheltered anchorages. l.f New En- bad habit of plundering fragile environments for immediate profit and glanders found agriculture difficult, there were few problems in going to then, when the land was exhausted, throwing it away and moving on to sea—as fishermen, whalers, and as commercial traders. Thus, glaciation repeat the process. That precedent would be repeated many times in the helps explain New England’s rich maritime tradition, in sharp contrast process of settling the American continent. It was not until the twentieth with the unglaciated South, with its productive farmland but formidable century—when it finally became obvious that the supply of land was not shoreline. It also explains why nearly all the farms in New England have infinite—that there were serious efforts to break those exploitative habits been abandoned and most of the land covered with woods. in the United States. Further west, Appalachian crystalline rocks are much more resistant The Appalachian Mountains. Like the Coastal Plain, the Appalachian to erosion, a circumstance that yields the highest and most rugged Mountain system has played a role in American history that is far out of country in the eastern United States. South of the glacial boundafy in proportion to its area. This is not because the Appalachians are high or northern Pennsylvania, this belt of mountains is called the Blue Ridge, spectacular, but rather because they helped steer American development country that few settlers even tried to farm and that was generally in early periods, when many national habits were still being made. shunned by westerly-trekking migrants. A handful of early Anglo-Saxon Geologically the Appalachians are the oldest system of important settlers penetrated some of the isolated valleys, and their descendantls mountains in the United States. For millions of years there has been no have remained there in poverty-stricken isolation, preserving a rich vari- major geologic deformation of Appalachian rocks. As a result, the pre- ety of old folk cultures that are only now beginning to break down_un— sent mountains are fairly low and represent the worn-down skeleton of a der the onslaught of modem technology and the curiosity of tourists. much higher mountain system of ancient time. Thus Appalachian topog- New England’s geologic version of the Blue Ridge are the White Moun- raphy is entirely the result of erosion, and it follows that internal differ- tains of New Hampshire, whose ice-scrubbed crags have attracted tour- ences in Appalachian topography faithfully mirror the differences in un- ists since eighteenth century Bostonians first visited the region and be- derlying geologic structure. gan to proclaim its scenic virtues. ) A glance at any good map of American landforms (see map 1) reveals Farther west from the Blue Ridge/White Mountain belt the intensity of that the Appalachians are not a single homogeneous range but rather geologic deformation drops off rapidly. The original sedimgmary.rocks four parallel belts, each differing in geology—and therefore in topogra- were subjected only to moderate pressure during the main period of phy as well (compare map 2). Appalachian mountain-building so that they were “folded”—much as a 48/PEIRCE LEWIS AMERICA'S NATURAL LANDSCAPES/49 rug is crumpled into folds if it slides across a slippery floor and collides ~ found the silver and gold that the Spanish discovered in such abundance with a piece of furniture. These folded sedimentary rocks vary greatly in Mexico and Peru. The difference between Anglo-America and His- in resistance to erosion. While the whole region has been reduced to an panic America is partly a difference between Aztec gold and Appala- elevation that rarely exceeds three-thousand feet, the alternation of weak chian coal. Gold yielded riches beyond the dreams of Croesus—but ulti- and resistant rocks has been eroded into a series of long linear ridges mately produced very little. Coal was dirty and unglamorous, but it and valleys, which from aloft look as if some monstrous rake had been fueled an economic revolution that helped convert the United States pulled the length of the Appalachians, all the way from Alabama to from a modest agrarian society into the greatest industrial power on northem Vermont. In this “Ridge-and-Valley”” terrain, none of the ridges earth. are very high, but since they were arrayed at right angles to the main The Interior Lowlands and Their Upland Fringes. Andrew Jackson direction of westward migration, they posed a major barrier to travel, supposedly remarked that America begins at the Appalachians, by especially before the building of railroads and superhighways. Wherever which he meant that it was only west of the mountains in the great possible, migration routes followed the long valleys, and the occasional interior lowlands that Americans could break loose from the European “‘water-gaps” that cut through the ridges thus came to play important links of the Atlantic seaboard and become truly independent. Although roles in funneling migrants through a very few places. one can argue whether or not the interior lowland forms the cultural The westermost belt of the Appalachians is called the Appalachian core of the country, there is no argument that it forms the continent’s Plateau, actually a transition zone between the mountains and the in- physical core. terior lowland. The Plateau was formed by thick layers of sedimentary Geologically this huge region rests on a low and much-eroded plat- rocks that were uplifted during the late episodes of Appalachian moun- form of very old and very resistant crystalline rocks, undisturbed by ma- tainbuilding, but were otherwise undeformed. Subsequently, long peri- jor geologic events for over a billion years. Over most of the central ods of erosion have etched this tableland into an intricate system of United States that ancient platform is buried in deep blankets of sedi- knobs and low mountains, none very high, very difficult to farm and a mentary rocks, but the older basement rocks rise to the surface and crop serious barrier to transportation. out along the nation’s northern borders, there to form significant up- Altogether, the Appalachians do not seem very impressive, especially lands—the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York, and the Superi- compared to the mountains of the American West. But they influenced or Uplands of northern Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. These two American history in two crucial ways—through their topography, and regions, however, are merely southerly peninsulas of the Canadian through their minerals. Shield, a forbidding expanse of ice-scoured wilderness that stretches Appalachian topography was hard to cross, especially by horse or north to the Arctic Ocean. In Canada, where the Shield makes up about wagon. Early travelers either circumvented the ridges entirely, or fol- a third of the national territory, it is an ubiquitous brooding presence, lowed one of two well-defined routes across them. One of those routes described by one Canadian prime minister as “the single most impor- led through Pennsylvania from the Atlantic at Philadelphia to the head tant fact in Canadian history.” It is the permanent northem frontier of of the Ohio River at Pittsburgh, and it helped convert two medium- major settlement both in Canada and wherever it appears in the United sized eighteenth century towns into booming nineteenth century cities. States. Both the Adirondacks and Superior Uplands are very sparsely The second route was easier and even more important, connecting the Populated, and most of the inhabitants depend on seasonal tourism, for- Atlantic at New York with the east end of the upper Great Lakes at estry, or mining—all fairly undependable sources of income. The re- Buffalo. The Erie Canal came this way, wedged in a narrow trough be- gion’s minerals, however, are legendary. One of America’s first large- tween the Appalachian Plateau and the Adirondacks. It was the subject scale ventures into metal mining began in the 1840s in the copper coun- of endless legend—a triumph of engineering and the main artery that try of Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula, and the iron mines of Minneso- connected the interior of America with the Atlantic Ocean. Only the fa’s Mesabi Range were literally fabulous, providing America with about Mississippi River was its equal in fact or in myth. | four-fifths of all the iron she has ever used. From the mid-nineteenth Minerals were just as important, for the Appalachians contain some of century onward, it was the combination of Minnesota iron and Pennsyl- the world’s largest deposits of coal. Anthracite for making steam and ‘é:nnia coal that built the foundations of the American industrial revolu- heating houses came from eastern Pennsylvania, and bituminous, used for coking and steel-making, is found in a great geologic basin that From the edge of the Shield southward to the Coastal Plain, those stretches from Pittsburgh to Birmingham, Alabama. It is ironic that ancient crystalline rocks are buried by sediments; as a result, the land- America’s early settlers thought themselves unlucky because they never Scape is totally different. This enormous lowland region, which stretches SO/PEIRCE LEWIS AMERICA'S NATURAL LANDSCAPES/SA all the way from the Rockies to the Appalachians, contains some of contain very good farmland; otherwise, most of the territory is hard- America’s richest territory. scrabble hill country, with thin sandy soil and scanty mineral wealth. At the center of this national heartland is the so-called Central Low- West of the Central Lowland lie the Great Plains. For as long as Amer- land, itself a sizeable expanse. Visitors often complain that its landscape icans have known the Plains, the region has loomed large in the national is dull, for elevations rarely exceed two thousand feet, and much of the imagination, for they symbolize the beginning of the West: a vast intrac- land is farmed. There is considerable variety, however, largely due to table land that thrusts its bulk across the path of all cross-country travel- recent glaciation. The ice advanced southward roughly to a line de- ers—five hundred miles wide, and spanning the entire distance from scribed by the Ohio and Missouri rivers, and the valleys of both rivers the 49th parallel to the Rio Grande. were carved by meltwater that ran along the edge of the ice. North of The Plains are often described as flat; in fact, their surface slopes up- the glacial margin the advance and readvance of ice over the last million ward toward the west, in testimony to their geologic origin. The Plains years has left an intricate mosaic of landforms and surface materials, so were formed as a huge apron of alluvial debris—gravel, sand, and silt that soil quality and topography can vary radically within short dis- eroded from the western mountains and swept eastward by streams tances. The ice wiped out preglacial drainage patterns, and left behind a flowing toward the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. The eastward slope chaos of lakes and stream channels—some abandoned, some still extant. is simply the original gradient of those streams. These alluvial deposits The Great Lakes are only the biggest of a very large assortment. Thus, have been reworked by the wind over large areas so that loess and sand whatever else the glaciers did, they left behind a system of cheap water dunes are common features. As elsewhere, loess makes fertile soil, transportation in the central part of the United States. Any nation would but—since most of the area is quite dry—overgrazing and careless plow- have been lucky to have either of those two magnificent waterway sys- ing have exposed much of the land to wind erosion, especially in tems—the Great Lakes or the Mississippi River system. But America had drought years. both, and as it turned out, they were easily connected by canals follow- In the whole lowland expanse between the Appalachians and the ing the course of abandoned glacial drainage channels—which were in Rockies, mineral resources derive mainly from fossil fuels, as is usually turn reinforced by railroads and highways built alongside the old canals. true in regions of sedimentary rocks. Large deposits of high-quality Glaciers were friendly to Americans in another way. As the ice with- coking coal occur in structural basins in the Midwest, and lignite is ex- drew, meltwaters spread huge deposits of finely ground rock materials tensively strip-mined in the northern Great Plains. While oil and gas. across the land in front of the ice; some of that fine material was picked have been found in some quantity in almost every part of the interior up by the wind and redeposited in the form of loess, or windborne silt. lowlands, the midcontinent fields of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas are The loess extended in a wide belt from Nebraska to Ohio, and from the biggest, satisfying an important part of America’s demand for energy. Minnesota to Mississippi, covering glacial and nonglacial country alike, The Western Cordillera and Its Intermontane Basins. Just as the east- sometimes to great depths. This blanket of loess did two things to em and central United States are mostly lowland, much of the west is middle America: it smoothed the preglacial surface to the point where mountainous, and even where elevations are not high, the country is parts of the American heartland seem almost mathematically flat—bor- commonly rugged and often picturesque. Unlike the Appalachian ing to travelers, but delightful to farmers. And the loess produced soils Mountains of the east, however, this great western mountain system— of astonishing fertility. If Mesabi iron and Appalachian coal were the the Cordillera—is not a continuous chain, but a rather sprawling assem- foundations of America’s industrial wealth, America’s agricultural abun- blage of ranges separated by large plateaus, basins, and trenches. The dance springs from Midwestern loess. As if the American midland were geology varies greatly from place to place, and so, consequently, does not rich enough, its wealth is linked together by that superb inland wa- the topography. terway system, also carved by glacial meltwater. When Americans total In its grand geographic outline the Cordillera is framed by two high their geographic balance sheets, they have reason to be grateful to the mountain systems along its eastern and western borders. On the east are gods of melting glaciers. the Rockies, on the west the Coast Ranges and Sierra-Cascade Moun- In shape the Central Lowland resembles a great open saucer, rising tains. Together, they contain some of the highest and most spectacular gradually toward its fringes. Southward and eastward, the sedimentary country in the United States. Paradoxically, the Cordillera offered less of rocks are warped upward to form low plateaus, separated by the bulk of an obstacle to transcontinental travel than did the much lower Appala- the Mississippi River Valley: the Ozarks of Missouri to the west, and chians. For example, the Rockies are almost three miles high, and seen the Interior Low Plateaus of Kentucky and Tennessee to the east. In both from the neighborhood of Denver, they are an awesome spectacle, rising of these regions, only the Kentucky Bluegrass and the Nashville Basin from the Great Plains like a mighty rampart. But the Rockies are broken 52/PEIRCE LEWIS AMERICA'S NATURAL LANDSCAPES/S3 into several discrete units, and the gaps between them are so large that America’s winter vegetables. In Washington the same trench was gla- a traveler by way of the Union Pacific Railroad in Wyoming or the South- ciated and depressed by the weight of glacial ice, thus producing Puget ern Pacific in New Mexico can cross the country without ever seeing the Sound Rocky Mountains. Although the Cordillera’s Pacific coast is scenically handsome, there The western ranges of the Cordillera are bigger and more complicated, are only four gaps that offer easy connections between the ocean and arranged in echelon parallel to the seacoast. Along the Pacific, the low the continental interior. Those gaps are consequently important, the but almost unbroken Coast Ranges rise abruptly from the ocean so that focus of vital transportation lines and the site of the West Coast’s big- the California and Oregon coasts have a deserved reputation for rugged gest cities. The Los Angeles basin is one such place—one of the rare beauty. The loftiest mountains of the west, however, are set back from bits of lowland on the Pacific Coast. In northern California, the main the coast: the Sierra Nevada of California, and the Cascade Mountains of break is the Golden Gate, leading by way of San Francisco Bay into the Oregon and Washington. The two ranges form an almost unbroken line Central Valley. Farther north the Columbia River cuts through the of high mountains from southern California behind Los Angeles to the coast ranges, connecting the ocean with Portland and the Wilamette Canadian border near Vancouver. The Sierra and Cascades differ greatly, Valley. And along the Canadian border the Strait of Juan de Fuca links however. The Sierra Nevada are a great fault block, tilted upward on the the ocean to Puget Sound and the metropolitan corridor that stretches east, where they confront the Nevada desert with a wall of granite al- from Olympia and Tacoma, past Seattle and across the Canadian bor- most fifteen thousand feet high. At higher elevations the Sierra granites der to Vancouver. have been severely scoured by ice, producing scenery that Americans Much of the Cordilleran region, however, is by no means mountain- have admired ardently since the mid-nineteenth century. The Yosemite ous. Between the Rockies and the Sierra-Cascade line lies a very large Valley, for example, has been turned into one of America’s most popular area that early explorers named “The Great Basin”—a name that can national parks, and various attempts to exploit its scenery for commercial still be found on some archaic maps. That basin, in fact, contains three (and even industrial) purposes have produced stormy political battles— sizeable regions, each with its own peculiar topography and thus its major landmarks in American environmental history. The Cascades, by own special geographic personality. contrast, have a tamer kind of scenery and history. They consist mainly The largest is the so-called “Basin-and-Range” region, covering all of of dark basalt that poured out in great flat seas of lava—then, after they Nevada and a considerable territory in adjacent states. Rocks of the cooled, warped upward to elevations that rarely exceed seven thousand earth’s crust have been faulted into blocks, commonly a few miles feet. That rather subdued range, however, is studded with a row of high across and several dozen miles long—then tumbled, eroded, and and handsome volcanoes, capped with snow, and some of them danger- partly buried in erosional debris. These eroded blocks now form long ously active. linear mountain ranges, mostly aligned north-south, and isolated from Pent between the Coastal Ranges and the Sierra-Cascade line is a dis- adjacent blocks by broad basins filled with sand, gravel, and dried salt. continuous but very deep trench—part of a global furrow that appears in On a map they resemble nothing else in North America, and Dutton, various locations along the eastern Pacific from the Vale of Chile to the the pioneer geologist, remarked that a map of the Basin-and-Range Gulf of Alaksa. These troughs are not large in area, but they have looked for all the world like “an army of caterpillars crawling north- played inordinately important parts in western history, for they contain ward from Mexico.” some of the richest farmland and some of the largest concentrations of Over the northern part of the Great Basin recent lava flows have population in the western states. The Wilamette Valley of Oregon is part buried most of eastern Washington and Oregon, as well as the valley of the trench, a flat-floored temperate place whose reputation as a sort of of the Snake River in southern Idaho, to form the region known as the agricultural New Jerusalem provoked the “Oregon Fever” of the 1840s, Columbia Basin. Where the lava is still new and uneroded—as in and the first large-scale settlement of the West Coast by Americans. Ca- southern Idaho—the terrain is fairly level, although the largest rivers lifornia’s version is the Central Valley, where the trench is filled with like the Snake and Columbia have cut deep canyons into the blackish- debris carried down from the Sierra Nevada by the tributaries of the Sac- brown basalt. ramento and San Joaquin Rivers— and today, the largest and richest The southern margin of the basin is the Colorado Plateau, remark- piece of commercial farmland in the entire West. The Imperial Valley of able if only because it stands as an island of tranquility in a sea of extreme southern California is yet another part of the trench, where the 8eologic activity. Throughout the Colorado Plateau deep layers of delta of the Colorado River has dammed the Gulf of California and cre- Nearly flat-lying sedimentary rocks have been uplifted and subse- ated an exotic bit of land below sea level that produces a large part of Quently eroded by the Colorado River and its tributaries. While the S4/PEIRCE LEWIS AMERICA'S NATURAL LANDSCAPES/SS geologic history is unremarkable, the scenery is not. Since the region Bioclimatic Regions of the United States has been uplifted more than a mile in some areas, rivers have cut awe- some canyons into the sedimentary rocks, and the whole plateau is intricately carved into isolated mesas and buttes, typically with flat tops and cliff-like margins. The rocks are commonly very colorful— reds, yellows, oranges, browns, and even occasionally greens and blues. In an arid climate like the American Southwest, these gaudy shapes and colors are fully exposed to view, and most Americans would agree that the canyon lands of the Colorado Plateau contain some of the most picturesque physical landscape in the entire country. (The Grand Canyon of Arizona is merely the biggest and most famous example.) A considerable part of the region has been set aside in na- tional parks, monuments, and similar public preserves. A wide variety of minerals has been found throughout the Cordille- ran region—not an unusual circumstance in a large area with such a tumultuous geologic history. Those minerals have played a dominant role in much of the Cordillera’s human history. Much of the region, Miles after all, is sparsely populated, and settlement is precarious, so that in 0 100 30 500 RS many places mineral discoveries were responsible for drawing the bulk 200 S0 K0 of the population from outside, especially in early times. Thus gold Kilometers from the Sierra Nevada caused the mass stampede of 1849 that brought California enough people in one year to allow it to qualify for Map 3. Bioclimatic Regions of the United States. (Generalized in part from maps by statehood in 1850. Gold rushes and silver rushes produced the first C. Warren Thornthwaite, 1948, and A. W. Kiichler, 1949.) major migration of Americans to both Colorado and Nevada, and baser minerals like copper and lead have influenced the economy and The Humid East. The first Europeans in British North America politics of places as far apart as Arizona and Idaho. Only the Columbia landed in a region that today’s climatologists call “the humid East,” a Basin with its blankets of barren lava is lacking in major mineral region that includes almost half of the present-day United States (see wealth. But despite the romance of gold and silver mining, the Cordil- map 3). Throughout the whole region drought is a rare occurrence— lera’s main mineral wealth comes from fossil fuels—oil and natural gas and in that way eastern America closely resembles northwestern in California, and extensive deposits of coal in the Colorado Plateau Europe. and the intermontane basins of the Rockies. But temperatures were different, and significantly so. The climate of northwestern Europe is strongly influenced by westerly winds that Climate And Its Consequences bring mild moist air from over the Atlantic. Summers are warm but European settlers arriving on the western shores of the Atlantic rarely very hot and winters are cool but seldom extremely cold. Euro- found a climatic and biotic environment that was a mixture of familiar peans expected America to be much the same, and some enthusiasts and unfamiliar elements. As settlement spread inland, however— suggested that it would probably be even better. After all, they said, across the Appalachians, across the Mississippi, and onward across America faced the Atlantic, just like Europe. Perhaps it might even be the plains toward the mountains and the Pacific—it became increas- a bit warmer. Was not New York at the same latitude as Spain—and ingly and painfully clear that the European climatic experience would London to the north of everything in America? not be a very satisfactory guide for survival in America. That was espe- The truth, alas, was quite different. American weather comes from cially true in the subtropical South and the arid West, regions that pro- the west, just as in Europe. America’s western air comes not from the vided unexpected opportunities but also posed obstacles for which ocean, however, but from the continental interior—extremely cold in there were no obvious analogies in the Old World. In many ways, Eu- the winter, ovenlike in the summer. Later on climatologists would give ropeans learned to become Americans in the process of learning to technical names to that difference between European and American cope with this variety of unfamiliar climates and vegetations. climate. Europe, with its mild oceanic temperatures, would be said to S6/PEIRCE LEWIS AMERICA'S NATURAL LANDSCAPES/S7 have a “marine west coast” climate; Americans would eventually en- jca to make new lives for themselves in this region. Many failed, but counter similar conditions in their own Pacific Northwest, a region enough succeeded so that the flood of migration continued long after that strongly resembles Britain and western France. The climate of the best land had all been taken. eastern and central America, with its great seasonal extremes of tem- still farther southward one crosses an invisible but crucial line, the perature, would be called “continental.” northemn boundary of America’s most distinctive region. Ecologists call The settlers also discovered major differences in climate within the it a “humid subtropical forest” region because of its short cool winters humid East—and those differences were also dictated by temperature. and long hot sunmers. To historians, human geographers, and most Eventually they came to recognize four major climatic subregions that Americans, however, this is simply “the South.” And it was climate stretch westward from the Atlantic in broad swaths (see map 3). Cli- that made the South distinctively Southern. matically, those regions differ in the length of growing season and in The crucial facts of Southern climate are hot humid summers and a the intensity of winter cold. The consequences were crucially impor- long growing season: everywhere within the South the frost-free pe- tant, for they dictated differences in natural vegetation, in the kinds of riod exceeds 180 days—long enough for a variety of valuable subtropi- crops that could be grown, and ultimately in the whole way of life. cal crops to be grown, such as indigo, rice, and cotton. During most of The northernmost zone, adjacent to the Canadian border, is a region _ the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the American South sup- of northemn forest that stretches from Maine across northemn New En- plied Europe with subtropical agricultural products it could get no- gland and the upper Great Lakes. The growing season is very short, where else. But it was cotton in the nineteenth century that imprinted the winters long and fiercely cold. For farmers it has always been mis- the South with its peculiar and distinctive personality. Until the early erable country—and without a rural population base there has been twentieth century the South had a virtual monopoly on the world cot- little reason for a network of roads and towns to develop. Most of the ton trade. Since most of the world’s inexpensive cloth was made of region is now covered with second-growth coniferous woods since the cotton, the demand was enormous—and so were profits. That fact had original forest was cut for lumber in the late nineteenth century to far-reaching consequences. Those who owned cotton land grew rich build houses for the nation’s booming industrial and commercial cities. and formed a small self-appointed aristocracy dedicated to maintaining Today most of the population depends for a scant living on mining or the status quo—economically, politically, and socially. The whole sys- forestry, and increasingly on recreation. Most of it remains poor coun- tem rested on slavery, for until the invention of mechanical cultivators try and sparsely populated and pickers, cotton remained a very labor-intensive crop. African Southward the tflnperanu'e moderates, with far-reaching impact on slaves were imported and bred in such numbers that blacks far out- human settlement. With a longer growing season, milder winters, and numbered whites in much of the cotton-growing South. hot summers,. Europeans discovered an environment that would pres- Furthermore, the semi-feudal plantation system that accompanied ently make America famous as a land of plenty. It was a regionof cotton-growing tended to discourage the growth of cities and towns so “midlatitude mixed forest”—needleleaf and broadleaf trees, many of that the South remained an overwhelmingly rural region. Correspond- them valuable for buildings and for cabinetwork. Settlers discovered to ingly, the existence of a large slave-labor force discouraged the immi- their delight that they could grow most of the crops they had known gration of free white labor that had begun to arrive in large numbers in in the Old World and a variety of New World crops as well. Because the North, and the white Southem population remained largely An- American summers were considerably hotter and longer than in Eu- glo-Saxon in ethnic ancestry. Throughout, the profits from cotton were rope, American crops often yielded more bountifully. Especially in co- so alluring that cotton was grown wherever it would grow, and in lonial and early national times, when land was still cheap and plenti- many places where it should not have grown. As long as “cotton was ful, it was the kind of place where a farmer, if he worked hard and , " erosion control and crop rotation were virtually unknown, and was reasonably lucky, could make a comfortable life for his family— much excellent farmland was irretrievably ruined. Cotton remained and might even make himself rich. It was here, in America’s rural king, however, only as long as the American South had a monopoly North, that European peasants turned themselves first into yeoman on cotton growing, and that monopoly came to an end in the early farmers, and eventually into American agribusinessmen. It was they twentieth century, the result of new competition from Indian and who cut off the original forest, not so much for lumber, but to make Egyptian cotton and an infestation by the boll weevil. Much of the new farmland—and to make their fortunes. It was here that America South went bankrupt—a rural area with impoverished soil and impov- first developed its reputation abroad as a kind of agricultural New Je- erished people. Beginning around World War I many of those poor rusalem. Over two centuries millions of Europeans migrated to Amer- People, most of them black, began moving to northem cities to find 58/PEIRCE LEWIS AMERICA'S NATURAL LANDSCAPES/S9 work in what became one of the largest internal migrations in Ameri- like the Salt River valley of Arizona—are the seats of major cities. can history. Meantime most of the old cotton country reverted to pin- ix was counted by the 1980 census as the ninth largest city in ey woods, although more recently some of the land has been turned the United States.) But life depends on water, and outside the oases into pasture to support a considerable cattle industry. Despite new ur- the desert is almost empty. Vegetation, of course, is sparse, ranging banization and new migration into the South, the region remains the from nothing at all (a rare circumstance mainly confined to sand dunes poorest in the nation. and salt pans) to a scattered cover of gnarled scrub and short-lived The southernmost climatic region of the humid east is the only gen- annuals that spring into flamboyant bloom after the infrequent rains. uinely tropical part of the United States aside from Hawaii. In a small As for soil, in much of the desert it is virtually nonexistent, since wind part of coastal south Florida freezing temperatures are almost un- erosion tends to remove fine materials from the surface, leaving be- known. But the land is low and swampy and remote from the nation’s hind a veneer of broken rock that geologists call “desert pavement.” main centers of population. It was not until the twentieth century that Even under the best of circumstances, it is a hostile place. significant numbers of Americans moved into the area. The two pri- The Humid-Arid Transition. Paradoxically, it was not the true desert mary economic activities stem directly from climatic circumstances: a that posed the greatest difficulty for American settlers. The desert, af- flourishing winter tourist industry, and a very intensive form of spe- ter all, offered a clear uncompromising choice: with irrigation the land cialized agriculture that supplies most of the United States with the could be made to bloom luxuriantly; without irrigation it was uninhab- bulk of its winter vegetables. itable. The Arid West. From earliest times Europeans and Americans knew The challenge was more subtle in the great zone of transition be- that the western part of America was dry—a very different sort of tween the humid East and the arid West. In the beginning it all place from the well-watered shores of the Atlantic. The Spanish, who seemed very obvious: as one moved out from the green East, across had come north from Mexico to explore the American southwest, were the Midwest into the Great Plains, the country became gradually drier. well acquainted with arid climates and knew the techniques of coping The settlers were prepared for that. All along, the vegetation had ad- with such places. Americans from the humid East had no such knowl- vertised that gradual change, as the eastern forest opened up and gave edge, however, and for a long time their map showed a great blank way to the tall-grass prairies of the Midwest. (In Illinois and Indiana void with the sinister label “Great American Desert.” From time to much of the prairie was man-made, the result of Indian bumings, so time that label covered a good share of the western United States, re- that American migrants concluded incorrectly that there was no rela- flecting an imperfect knowledge of westemn geography, but also the tionship between vegetation and rainfall.) It was fine farmland—some belief that civilized humans could not be expected to settle such terri- of the nation’s best—with deep black prairie soils formed of humus tory. As it tumed out, of course, that bleak generalization was un- and loess. Farmers adjusted to this new environment by abandoning true—as today’s booming population of the Southwest clearly demon- their traditional mixture of crops and dairy cows and going over to strates. But the first American settlers of the West headed directly for grains. Wheat was the favorite, and it seemed a reasonable choice. the humid fringes of the Pacific coast, crossing the drylands much as a Wheat, after all, is a grass—just like the native vegetation. What the mariner might sail across a stormy sea: one crossed it because one had settlers did not understand was a simple but deadly law of climatol- to, but there was little thought of permanent settlement. That would ogy: as total rainfall decreases, the reliability of rainfall also decreases. only come later as Americans began to understand the dynamics of In practical terms, settlers had moved into a region where the climate dry lands, to gather the special technology that would allow settle- is defined by its erratic rainfall—where years of surplus rainfall rou- ment to occur, and above all to learn that there were important re- tinely give way to years of rainfall deficit. gional differences within the arid west. Most of the west was dry, to The native grasses, of course, had adapted nicely to these routine be sure, but it was not all the same. fluctuations. In dry years, they simply stayed brown and dormant, The Desert. The dry core of the arid west is a belt of desert that lies storing moisture in their roots. In moist years, the grass tumed green in the rainshadow of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade ranges and and luxuriant. If the farmers had been all-wise and all-logical, the land stretches north from the Sonoran Desert of Mexico across Arizona, would have been left in grass. It had been fine grazing land for native New Mexico, and Nevada into southern Oregon. Rainfall is both buffalo, and it could have been used the same way for domestic cattle. scarce and undependable, and the only important human settlement It was not cattlemen, however, but farmers who came from the humid occurs in irrigated oases. Most of the oases—conspicuously the Impe- east to settle this transition zone in the mid-nineteenth century. Over- rial Valley of California—support significant agriculture, and a few— whelmingly they preferred to grow wheat, a much more profitable 60/PEIRCE LEWIS AMERICA'S NATURAL LANDSCAPES/61 venture than cattle raising. In moist years, of course, the land pro- with much success. For the first time problems of the semi-arid West duced bumper crops. But in dry years the seeded wheat refused to attracted wide public attention, stimulated in part by government pub- germinate, or else the young plants sprouted and then withered in the licity but in large part by John Steinbeck’s epic tragedy, The Grapes of scorching summer heat of this continental interior. Unlike the native Wrath, that told the story of an Oklahoma family that had fled to Cali- prairie, whose soil was protected by a dense veneer of turf, plowing fornia in the face of drought and poverty. exposed the dessicated soil to the wind, and it blew away in dust Much of the abandoned land ultimately reverted to the federal gov- storms that darkened the midday sky. Inexperienced pioneer farmers emment, today the largest landowner in most of the American West, borrowed money in moist years to invest in new land and machinery, - and it has been government policy to lease land only to those who but in the lean dry years they lacked money to pay off the loans. practice conservation in farming and ranching. Sometimes the policy Thousands went bankrupt in the decades that followed initial settle- has worked; often it has not. In most western states the hottest politi- ment. cal debates are chronically waged between those who want to relax More recently, things have gotten better. A good deal of research government regulations on the use of federal land and those who has gone into inventing techniques for conserving soil moisture by re- want to extend and tighten restrictions. It seems doubtful if the ques- ducing evaporation from plowed land. These techniques now allow tion will be settled soon, especially in the semi-arid parts of the West most of the land to be planted to wheat and other small grains, but where Americans are still in the process of learning the limits of their much less intensively than in earlier days. own environment. The Semi-arid West. Further west, in the semi-arid region of short The Humid Pacific Coast. The only substantial humid region in the grass where farms ended and cattle ranches began, the situation was western United States is wedged into a narrow strip between the Pacif- even more precarious. In years when rains were plentiful, the steppe ic coast and the Sierra-Cascade ridge line, extending south from British grasses grew “stirrup-high,” tempting cattlemen to enlarge their herds Columbia through western Washington and Oregon into central Cali- and to expand pastureland into marginal areas. When the drought ar- fornia. Seen from the east, that distant edge of the continent has long rived, inevitably but unpredictably, the larger herds starved and died. appeared as a kind of oasis, a land so favored that Americans were Continental temperature extremes added to the woes. Blazing summer willing to make a thousand-mile trek across the continent in order to heat dried up what little moisture was available, and in winter arctic occupy and settle it. It was only much later that they returned to un- temperatures combined with howling blizzards to make life miserable dertake settlement of the arid interior. at best, deadly at worst. The humid West, however, differs radically from its eastern counter- There were periods of plentiful rainfall when the grass was high and part—and not merely in size. Unlike the East, with its continental ex- green, and land speculators persuaded eastern farmers that western tremes of summer and winter temperature, West Coast temperatures Kansas could be plowed and planted just like Ohio. It was a deadly are moderated all year long by westerly winds from the ocean so that trap. Most of those farmers stayed long enough to watch their land the entire littoral from Canada to Mexico enjoys cool summers and blow away during the next year’s drought. It was not until much later _mild winters, a fact much touted by chambers of commerce from Seat- that the weather bureau would wam farmers and ranchers that years tle to San Diego. Inland from the ocean, however, it is a different of ““average” rainfall were not average in regions of semi-arid climate. story, and only a short distance inland summers are routinely blister- Meantime farmers and ranchers had to learn climatic laws the hard ing. Wherever that hot interior can be irrigated, however, it can be way, over a series of years that alternated between feast and famine. luxuriantly productive, and the Central Valley of California and the In the process, a good deal of land was ruined, and a good many lives Wilamette Valley of Oregon contain some of the America’s most valu- were ruined too. able farmland. Starting as early as the 1870s the American government sought ways West Coast rainfall patterns also differ from those in the East, and to learn how dryland environments worked and then to persuade those differences impart a special personality to the Pacific Coast cli- farmers and ranchers (not to mention salesmen and politicians) to mates. In the humid East rainfall is taken for granted since most places moderate their demands on the land—to leave land in grass instead of get plenty of rain at all times of the year. That is not true in the West, plowing it, reducing the size of herds to avoid overgrazing. But it was where rainfall differs significantly from place to place and from season only in the 1930s, when a series of ruinous drought years turned the to season. western Great Plains into a Dust Bowl and provoked a desperate mass To begin with, rainfall diminishes gradually from north to south. migration from the region, that conservation programs began to meet Thus western Washington and Oregon receive enough rain to support 62/PEIRCE LEWIS AMERICA'S NATURAL LANDSCAPES/63  forests of tall, straight, fast-growing evergreens—the spruce and fir The Mountain Climates. Perhaps the commonest fefature of Ameri- that produce the bulk of America’s lumber. By contrast, central Cali- ca’s western climates, however, is the enormous variation to be found fornia is noticeably drier, with low gnarled trees and open grasslands within very short distances. Mountainous terrain causes most of the that are well adapted to drought. By the time one reaches southern variety since both temperature and rainfall are strongly affected by ele- California, the climate is technically defined as semi-arid, and true de- vation and the direction in which slopes are face({i The.west side of sert lies not far beyond the city limits of Los Angeles and San Diego. the Cascades in Washington is covered with luxuriant rain forest; She West Coast rainfall, furthermore, is markedly seasonal. Winter is the east side, only a few miles away, is sagebrush de_sert. Slmllar_ly, basins rainiest time everywhere, and summers almost everywhere are bone in the Nevada desert are bone-dry and crusted with salt, while r?earby dry. In the moist northem end of the coastal strip—the part of Oregon mountain slopes are forested with pine and cedar, and the highest and Washington that climatologists call “marine West Coast”—the dry peaks rise above timberline into a zone of arctic mn@ra. Indeed, the season is short and of little consequence. Thus visitors to western highest mountains are capped with snow, most conspicuously the vol- Washington will remark about the “nice” summer weather with clear canoes of the Cascades and the rugged mountains of southern Alaska, blue skies, but will hardly notice a summer drought. Toward the where enormous snowfalls accumulate to produce large _and spectacu-. south, however, the summer dry season begins earlier and lasts lar alpine glaciers. Much of the mountainous W_esl contains such enor- longer, and from about San Francisco Bay to the Mexican border the mous variety within such small distance that it is broken into a mosaic drought lasts so long that much of California becomes a genuine de- of microclimatic regions. It is the despair of mapmakers, who throw sert in the summertime. up their hands and noncommittally designate the ruggedest parts of The regime of winter rain and summer drought is what climatolo- the West simply as “mountain climates” (see map 3). gists term a “Mediterranean climate”’—named after its analogue in Western Europe. Ecologists apply the same word to central California Retrospect: Geography and American History o vegetation—a scrubby woodland of scattered drought-resistant trees Any simple explanation of great historic events is likely to be wrong, interspersed with grassland. Plants necessarily do all of their growing or at least seriously misleading. That is certainly true when one tries to in the cool moist winters, and spring is the season of maturation, a explain the rise of America to world power. But no account of tha_t flowery time much beloved by tourists. In summer, however, grass portentous event can ever be complete unless it recognizes that Ameri- turns brown and growth stops. By autumn the whole landscape is sere ca’s economic and political strength rests on very solid geographic and dessicated, save in irrigated patches. Under natural conditions foundations. brushfires were part of the natural ecological cycle, and periodic burn- Geography alone cannot explain the American success story, _of ing kept brush down and grasslands open. In the hilly suburbs of course. If different groups of people had settled America—people with large California cities, fire is naturally discouraged, so that brushy un- different tools and ambitions and values and memories—the story dergrowth grows more luxuriantly than it did a century ago. Thus surely would have come out differently. when fires do get started—and it is impossible to prevent them all— But certain things seem obvious. America’s wealth of resources cer- they can be devastating, as wealthy Los Angeles suburbanites annu- tainly made the job of settling America easier than it would otherwise ally rediscover to their sorrow. have been, and the large variety of geographic environments guaran- Despite drought and fire Americans have found California’s Medi- teed that America would find both opportunities and challenges that terranean climatic zone a peculiarly alluring place. (Oregon and Wash- would be denied to people in less favored parts of the eaxtAhA If.the ington are held in similar esteem, although to a lesser degree.) Near country’s riches rewarded luck and hard work, its geographic variety the coast summers are cool and pleasant, and even the mild rainy win- rewarded those who were capable of adapting to new circumstances. ter is often not very rainy, except in the far north. The combination That same geography punished failure too—and ruthlessly. Thus if has attracted both tourists and permanent residents from less delicious American history is a catalog of human success, it is also a catalqg of climes in the North and East, a fact that helps explain why California shattered hopes. But the very size and diversity of American territory has recently become the most populous of the fifty American states. encouraged optimism: if one failed in one place, there were alyvays The unusual combination of wet winters and dry summers, moreover, other kinds of places where one might start anew. So it is no accident makes it possible to grow crops that will not mature anywhere else in that the greatest works of American literature—such novels as Mglry the country, with the result that California has the most lucrative agri- Dick and Huckleberry Finn—tell stories not so much of the confrontation cultural industry in America. of Man with Man, or even Man with God—but rather of the confronta- 64/PEIRCE LEWIS AMERICA'S NATURAL LANDSCAPES/65  tion is A. W. Kiichler’s authoritative “Natu- tion of Man with a rich and varied and powerful Nature. It is a story * published in E. G. Espenshade, ed., that underlies the whole American experience. FURTHER READING sponsored by the U.S. Forest Ser- to ex- Although there is a large scholarly literature on the separate aspects of , 1976). Bailey has written a succinct monograph American physical geography, there is no single definitive book on the sub- ject. The closest approximation is Charles B. Hunt's Natural Regions of the Unit- ed States and Canada (San Francisco, 1973). The first three chapters of J. Wreford Watson’s North America: Its Countries and Its Regions (New York, 1967) also serve as a useful summary. The individual topics of landforms, climate, and vegetation, however, have received much better treatment. The most recent authoritative treatment of American landforms is William Thornbury’s evenhanded and well-docu- mented Regional Geomorphology of the United States (New York, 1967). Older but still useful are Wallace W. Atwood, The Physiographic Provinces of North America (Boston, 1940) and Nevin Fenneman’s monumental two-volume Physiography of Western United States and Physiography of Eastern United States (New York, 1931 and 1938). Maps, of course, are indispensible in the study of landforms and their geo- logic foundations. The best and most elegant depiction of America’s natural landscape is Erwin Raisz’s cartographic tour de force, Map of the Landforms of the United States (Boston, 1957). (A simplified version of Raisz’s map is in- cluded as map 1 of this essay, but the magnificent original is available at a much larger scale and is exquisitely detailed.) The most comprehensive geo- logic maps are published by the U. S. Geologic Survey and summarized at reduced scale in The National Atlas of the United States. Two are really basic: The ic Map of the United States (Washington, D.C., 1974) and the Tectonic Map of the United States (Washington, D.C., 1962). The Geologic Survey also pub- lishes two other important maps of surface deposits associated with Pleisto- cene glaciation: Glacial Map of the U.S. East of the Rocky Mountains, and Pleisto- cene Eolian Deposits of the United States, Alaska, and Parts of Canada (Washington, D.C., 1959 and 1952). The subject of American climate has never been treated better than in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s classic Yearbook of Agriculture-1941, Climate and Man, a collection of authoritative essays on the nature, causes, and effects of climate in America, as well as monthly rainfall and temperature data for a fine network of U.S. weather stations. More recently, the U.S. Environmental Data Service (a branch of the Department of Commerce) has published an in- expensive but useful collection of climatic maps: Climatic Atlas of the United States (Washington, D.C., 1968). Overwhelmingly the most comprehensive col- lection of detailed climatic data for the United States is Frederick L. Wem- stedt’s North American Climatic Data (Lemont, Pa., 1984), a volume that con- tains a large variety of monthly statistics for 470 American weather stations. The regional geography of American vegetation is also the subject of a large literature. A fine readable summary is Henry A. Gleason and Arthur Cron- quist’s The Natural Geography of Plants (New York, 1964), which contains well- illustrated descriptions of America’s main plant communities. The best medi- 66/PEIRCE LEWIS AMERICA'S NATURAL LANDSCAPES/67