In On the Road Again, William Wyckoff explores Montana's changing physical and cultural landscape by pairing photographs taken by state highway engineers in the 1920s and 1930s with photographs taken at the same sites today. The older photographs, preserved in the archives of the Montana Historical Society, were intended to document the expenditure of federal highway funds. Because it is nearly impossible to photograph a road without also photographing the landscape through which that road passes, these images contain a wealth of information about the state's environment during the early decades of the twentieth century. To highlight landscape changes -- and continuities -- over more than eighty years, Wyckoff chose fifty-eight documented locations and traveled to each to photograph the exact same view. The pairs of old and new photos and accompanying interpretive essays presented here tell a vivid story of physical, cultural, and economic change.
Wyckoff has grouped his selections to cover a fairly even mix of views from the eastern and western parts of the state, including a wide assortment of land use settings and rural and urban landscapes. The photo pairs are organized in thirteen ?visual themes,? such as forested areas, open spaces, and sacred spaces, which parallel landscape change across the entire American West.
A close, thoughtful look at these photographs reveals how crops, fences, trees, and houses shape the everyday landscape, both in the first quarter of the twentieth century and in the present. The photographs offer an intimate view into Montana, into how Montana has changed in the past eighty years and how it may continue to change in the twenty-first century.
This is a book that will captivate readers who have, or hope to have, a tie to the Montana countryside, whether as resident or visitor. Regional and agricultural historians, geographers and geologists, and rural and urban planners will all find it fascinating.
Vorwort
Reveals the changing physical and cultural landscape of Montana and the American west by pairing photographs taken the 1920s and 1930s with photographs taken at the same sites today.
Autorentext
William Wyckoff is professor of geography at Montana State University, Bozeman.
Inhalt
Foreword: Revisited Roads to the Past by William Cronon
Preface and Acknowledgments
Journey Into Montana
--On the Road Again
--Montana Settlement
--Regional Landscape Elements
--Four Stories on the Landscape
Along Montana Highways
Boundaries
1. Forty-ninth Parallel
2. Into the Mountains
3. Continental Divide
4. Leaving Red Lodge
Rivers
5. Missouri River
6. Marias River Crossing
7. The Sound of Mountain Water
8. Stevensville Bridge
Railroads
9. Depot
10. Pacific Junction
11. T-Town
12. Landscape in Motion
Passageways
13. Approaching the Hellgate
14. Yankee Jim Canyon
15. Names on the Land
16. U.S. Highway
17. Billboard
Forested Lands
18. Pinus ponderosa
19. Tree Invasion
20. Islands of Moisture
21. Quartz Ranger Station
Open Spaces
22. Road to Ekalaka
23. The Jesse Place
24. Along the Yellowstone
25. Hilltop View
Sacred Places
26. Descent to Mission Valley
27. This House of Sky
28. A Prairie House
29. Deerfield Colony
30. Blue House at Trestle Ranch
Landmarks
31. Krug Mansion
32. Graves Hotel
33. Pompeys Pillar
34. Water Tower
Rural Legacy
35. Settlement at Sun River
36. Rural School
37. West of Dixon
38. Farmstead South of Choteau
Main Streets
39. Main Street in Roundup
40. Life on Merrill Avenue
41. Small-Town Landscape
42. Bypassed Town
43. Wibaux Flood
44. Coal Town
Urban Life
45. Butte
46. Landscapes of Labor
47. Zone in Transition
48. Polytechnic Drive
Suburbs
49. Judith Place Addition
50. Suburbarn Manhattan
51. Gallatin Valley
52. South of Missoula
Old West, New West
53. Sun Ranch
54. New Deal Bridge
55. Flathead Reservation
56. Polson Bridge
57. Bitterroot Valley
58. Road to Paradise
Destinations
Landscape in Place
Landscape in Time
Montana Journey
On the Road Again
Bibliographic Essay
Illustration Credits
Index