Four Symbolic Boundaries of The American West

What are the boundaries of the "American West"? This seemingly mundane, even passe spatial concern maintains its relevance through our continuing theoretical interest in regions, borders, and boundaries (Ayers and others 1996; Linklater 2008; Diener and Hagen 2012; Shelly 2013). While most scholarship on the West is rightly focused elsewhere, the delineation of the boundaries of the region--spatially and thematically--should not be dismissed. The location and meaning of the West is far from being "settled geography." Land-tenure collisions began during Ice Age migrations and grew louder as each actor entered the stage. During this process, the natural landscape was transformed into contested homelands, territories, states, countries, and empires. The West became a birthplace, a destination, a crossroads, a geopolitical prize, and finally, property (Cronin, Miles, and Gitlin 1992; Wright 1993). As a result, it is not a place of sequent occupance but cumulative occupance, since nearly all the groups who arrived here remain here in some iteration of themselves. "Westerners" were and are Native Americans, Mexicans, Chicanos, Hispanos, Tejanos, Latinos, Mormons, Asians, African-Americans, "Anglos" (Northern Europeans), and an array of other people negotiating nested identities. This diversity is cultural wealth, but it prevents Westerners from embracing of a single, unifying land-tenure story. Is the West a place or a process? A myth or true terrain? Where are the boundaries and whose place is it? In 1947, John Gunther distilled one of the first structural definitions of the West: Indian nations, prominence of government land, the U.S.-Mexico border, transience, and abundant natural resources (Gunther 1947). Patricia Nelson Limerick insisted we remember the West's unbroken history of conquest, racism, sexism, and rigged deals (Limerick 1987). For amenity migrants, the West remains a pristine ideal forged by a mythology that has not cooled. Despite economic downturns, people still come to live in the idea of the West; an imaginaire written in disappearing ink. William Wyckoff and Lary Dilsaver called the central attraction "The Mountainous West"; a spectacular subregion defined by barriers, islands of moisture, zones of concentrated resources, government control, and the land's mystique as a restorative sanctuary (Wyckoff and Dilsaver 1995). Harried newcomers quickly learn that the actual West is a place of intense land-tenure conflicts, argued history, economic struggle, and grave uncertainty about the future (Westphall 1983; Deloria Jr. and Lytle 1984; Sutton 1985; Wilkinson 1992). Through it all, boom and bust cycles sicken the landscape like a patient with malaria or manic depression. As we wrestle with these subjects, Donald Worster urges us to be clear-eyed, demythologized, and critical; to reject outdated Turnerian notions of "the Frontier," and embrace the continuity between historic processes and modern drivers of social and landscape change (Worster 1985). The literature on the West is leviathan and intensely discussed. So much has been written because so much is at stake. My objectives here are more modest and applied: 1) to offer a set of boundaries of the American West; 2) more importantly, to assign a symbolic meaning to each of the four cardinal directions; and 3) to explore how these descriptors may guide geographers in teaching about the West, investigating its riddles, and grasping the region's thematic connections to the larger world. MAPS, BOUNDARIES, AND REGIONS Maps are iconography (Monmonier 1996). A useful map ably serves a clear purpose. A successful map inspires us to explore the reality within its boundaries and compare this to the world outside the neat line. James Shortridge's book, The Middle West: Its Meaning in American Culture, is a masterful example of how exploring the origins, ethos, cultural landscapes, and meaning of mapped regions can be of enduring geographic utility (Shortridge 1989). …