Like no other region of the United States, the West is dominated by its landscape. The natural setting is close
to the hearts of the people, and natural resources drive society intellectually and emotionally as well as economically.
It is a place ripe for conflict between those who wish to reap the natural wealth of the land and those who wish
to preserve the region in a pure and untrammeled state. Governing this volatile situation are what Charles F. Wilkinson
calls the "lords of yesterday" -- laws, policies, and ideas that arose out of nineteenth-century westward
expansion and still wield extraordinary influence. While the societal and historical contexts have changed, the
regulations governing mining, ranching, forestry, and water use for the most part have remained intact. These critical
issues are difficult to comprehend, and public awareness of them is astonishingly, and dangerously, low. In Crossing
the Next Meridian, Wilkinson explains to a general audience some of the core problems that face the American West,
both now and in the years to come. An expert on federal public lands, Native American issues, and the West's arcane
water laws, Wilkinson looks at the outmoded ideas that pervade land use and resource allocation. He argues that
significant reform of Western law is needed to combat environmental decline and heal splintered communities. Interweaving
legal history with examples of present-day consequences, both intended and unintended, Wilkinson traces the origins
and development of Western laws and regulations. He relates stories of Westerners who face these issues on a day-to-day
basis and discusses what can and should be done to bring government policies in line with the reality of twentieth-century
American life. His examination seeks a middle ground between those who champion unrestricted growth and those who
advocate complete preservation.
This book "focuses on the laws and practices that have evolved over the past century and a half in five
. . . areas: mining, timber, grazing, dams and other development along the rivers of the Pacific Northwest, and
the storage and diversion of water . . . {in} the rest of the West." (Christ Sci Monit) Index.