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Ferguson: Rocky Mountains helped shape American character from trappers to tourists
Summary
In a Missoula lecture, author Gary Ferguson traced how the Rocky Mountains influenced U.S. culture—shaping settlers, trappers, women, artists and the rise of national parks—and closed by asking whether younger generations still imagine nature the same way.
Gary Ferguson, the Kittredge distinguished visiting writer in environmental studies, told a Missoula audience that the Rocky Mountains have played a formative role in American culture from the early fur trade through twentieth‑century tourism.
Ferguson laid out historical examples—including Black trappers and cowboys, women who found social freedom on Western ranches, the Hudson River School of landscape painting and the artists who popularized scenes of Yellowstone—to argue that the Rockies supplied symbolic and practical models of freedom and equality for Americans. “Does it have the texture or dimension…
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