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Why does the West - both in the United States and Canada - differ from the East? Scholars have put forward two fundamentally different and contradictory explanations: the West as the displaced, archaic, frontier East; and the West as a subculture developed indigenously in response to the demands of a dry, rugged physical environment. In this groundbreaking volume, Terry Jordan and his co-authors look to the log folk buildings of the Mountain West, from New Mexico to Alaska, to explain what makes the West "the West". Arguing that artifacts such as dwellings, barns, and fences can, if correctly interpreted, reveal much about the origins and character of the regional culture, they set forth not only the first comprehensive description and analysis of Western folk architecture but also a systematic explanation of the culture of the West.

Authoritative and lucidly written, The Human Mosaic spans the full breadth of traditional human geography while incorporating the best of recent insights from cultural studies. Its distinctive thematic approach (chapters are organized around the themes of culture region, cultural diffusion, cultural ecology, cultural integration, and cultural landscape) lends coherence to a thoroughly updated text that portrays the cultural geography of the world today.

A look at the development of open-range cattle ranching which dominated the Great Plains and proliferated in Texas during the end of the nineteenth century.

The reinterpretation of how ranching evolved in the New World is broad, including discussions of grazing and foraging and their relation to vegetation and climate - that is, cultural ecology - cultural diffusion, and local innovation. Above all, Jordan emphasizes place and region, illustrating the great variety of ranching practices.

Viewed through the prism of cultural geography, this material forms the basis of a remarkable portrait of a people wresting a living from the land in one of the coldest and most isolated spots on Earth."--BOOK JACKET.