Range Wars

The militarization of the American West since World War II has often been told as a story of the “atomic West,” which is understandable, considering the archipelago of nuclear installations spanning the region. Ryan H. Edgington's Range Wars broadens that perspective by examining environmental conflicts over the nonnuclear militarized landscape of the White Sands Missile Range in south-central New Mexico. His scope is wide and his research in scientific, legal, military, and other sources is deep. In chapter 1, “Seeds of Discontent,” he points out that ranchers had shaped the landscape for generations. Overgrazing had replaced grasslands with desert shrubs. In 1942, as the War Department devised plans for a bombing and gunnery range, Congress amended the 1934 Taylor Grazing Act to allow compensated cancellation of grazing leases on federal land needed for defense purposes. While some ranchers accepted the government's terms, others balked, and the terms of the take-over remained a source of contention for decades. Chapter 5, “Range Wars,” traces legal and extralegal skirmishes lasting into the 1990s

Archaeology · CONTEST · Geography · Government (linguistics · Grazing · Militarization · Missile · Overgrazing · Political science · Politics · Range (aeronautics · American Environmental and Regional History · Archaeological Research and Protection · Archaeology and Natural History · Ecology · Engineering · History · Law