The Federal Landscape: An Economic History of the Twentieth-Century West (review)

The Federal Landscape: An Economic History of the Twentieth-Century West. By Gerald D. Nash. Tuscon: University of Arizona Press, 1999. Pp. xv+214. $40/$17.95.

For almost five decades Gerald Nash has been one of the leading historians of the American West. His research has ranged from nineteenth-century state administrative agencies to broader studies of the West's economy, society, and business modernization. In this book, Nash turns his attention to the federal government's role in shaping the region during the past century. "In short," he argues, "the federal government created a federal landscape in the West" (p. x). While this thesis is hardly new, The Federal Landscape presents the most concise statement to date on the government's desire and ability to transform the West.

The nineteenth-century West, according to Nash, was a resource colony for the industrializing East. Individual enterprise reigned while the federal government sponsored railroads and land distribution, but basically the bonds of colonialism kept the region's development in check. Much recent scholarship challenges this Turnerian vision, particularly on issues of technological innovation, corporate growth, and the federal government's role in many areas of western life. Indeed, many historians now emphasize how much the western landscape was transformed during the late nineteenth century through a partnership of public and private endeavors--Indian conquest, topographical surveys, land policy, and government support for extractive activities. There is little doubt that the federal presence in the West became far more instrumental in the twentieth century, but the significant shift was the measure of federal landscaping rather than the nature of it.

Nash begins his book with the gradual emergence of the West's "federal landscape" prior to World War II. The decades before the Great Depression witnessed a variety of internal improvements (from the Panama Canal to better roads and harbors), the creation of national parks, and the Bureau of Reclamation's support for irrigation. This federal presence rapidly increased during the 1930s. Nash argues that President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes planned to "end the colonialism under which westerners (and southerners) had chafed for many decades" (p. 21). New Deal programs, particularly those involving water, dams, agriculture, and grazing land, left an indelible impact on the western landscape and economy. These pivotal years are covered in a few short pages, with little analysis of the ways technology, culture, and landscape engineering played off one another during the Great Depression.

The Second World War provided the important turning point, and Nash quickly articulates what many historians call the "Nash Thesis." In short, the federal government invested sixty billion dollars in the West (half of it in California) between 1940 and 1945, millions of Americans migrated West, and the foundation for the postwar military-industrial complex was laid. In "four short years" the West was transformed from a dependent colony to an industrial powerhouse (p. 51). The West emerged from the war as the nation's fastest growing region. Sunbelt cities arose through government support for housing and new air-conditioning technology, while national parks repackaged the West's natural landscape for a booming tourist trade.

Nash's most compelling chapter deals with the postwar military-industrial complex. He amasses an impressive amount of data on western military installations, federal contracts, scientific laboratories, and university-based research. The end product is the West's biggest business during the cold war years, a business stretching from Colorado Springs to San Diego. By the 1970s, however, cultural and economic forces challenged this massive federal landscape. The environmental movement changed the way many westerners viewed nature's engineers, while "angry" westerners resented the level of federal involvement in state affairs (price supports and subsidies aside).

This last point is particularly important. Westerners have always had a tortuous love-hate relationship with the federal government--they are rugged individualists for sure, but bring in the...