Exit near Colorado Wyoming border, a fault line of urban sprawl south, rural ranching north
Urban versus Rural
Part 1-Notes from a conversation – in words and image – between Jack Williams and myself. Williams is Emeritus Professor of Landscape Architecture and former Chair, School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture , Auburn University, former Professor of Architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and author of East 40 degrees: An interpretive Atlas and Easy On Easy Off .
Jon, landscape architect and former mountain guide served the State of Wyoming as director of planning for Platte County and the Town of Wheatland, is a former graduate student of Williams. He has spent most of his life in the American West.
Jack’s word’s: So my question is – are the two poles, rural community versus high density urban, mutually exclusive – or is that a cultural construct that is embedded in American society since Thomas Jefferson? Can the two co-exist in this country or are the fault lines too deep? Ask around your table in the local watering hole, what do the citizens of Wyoming think of New York. Tell them you know this old guy that wants to understand their world view – can community be found outside of small rural places?
Western Sky’s Diner, Wheatland Wyoming
Jon’s response: Jack I looked up Wyoming’s constitution while drinking coffee before going in to work this morning at “Western Skies.” Note the temperature here was 10 below. After looking up the term “mutually exclusive” – unable for both to be true at the same time– I started taking a few notes on bar napkins.
By the way Western Skies is a gathering place where ranchers meet to discuss among other things sealing the border (state border). If there is a difference in “rural community v. high density urban” I started here.
A little background first, “Wyomin” is a description of landscape, traced back to the Delaware word “Maugh-wav-wa-mu”; meaning large plains and mountains with valleys alternating in waves.
Wyomingnites, or if one uses Justice Scalia’s term Wyomans, derive identity, even in the state’s name, from the experience of landscape, not an inherited place. Presumably in “New“ York, to get to see the original “York” you must go elsewhere. These guys take pride in this.
In one of our friend Michael Robinson’s readings J.B. Jackson said, landscape was a mirror to man representing the social order of the day. In Learning about Landscapes he describes a spatial order,
the city rich and splendid, surrounded by dependent towns and castles and estates stood as the central symbol of authority [1].
I quote Jackson because his observations of the European landscape as a soldier in World War II may be key to understanding your fault line. If Jackson is right the divide is in the physical landscape and mirrored in the culture of men. The two “poles” I would posit are differences in the cultural landscape.
I am going into work to deal with a planning emergency, a preacher wanting to have church in a bar and variance needed. The old ranchers I spoke with at Western skies are going to meet me after work at a local bar named “Ben's Bar” to help answer your questions.
Platte county line (a cattle guard) heading west
At our “local watering hole” Ben’s Bar in Guernsey, I learned Wyoming was formed with a different attitude than that of the founding fathers. Bartender Matilda believes the beginning of the “fault line” you describe is a identity tied to the land and most importantly, it – the land drives culture. You have to get your head into the mind of a pioneer woman she says. This is interesting because maybe the “fault line” you describe is what the landscape has produced. For example, one mirrored a European order that defines boundaries of wealth, priviledge and rank by the resultant form. In contrast the County Judge explained the only reason we are here (Wheatland) is because the wind in winter blows the snow off the ground and allows grazing. Buffalo grazed here in winter which was a food source for the Cheyenne and later pioneers. This connection few places have, not a navigable waterway or pre-existing Indian village dictating settlement, but a stretch of ground where the geography was just right so wind kept snow blown off in winter. Author Annie Proulx describes these as the Wyoming Breaks in her novel Close Range.
A series of ridges near Glendo that wind in winter keeps bare from snow
Ben’s Bar in Guernsey
Bartender Matilda
Matilda pointed to the state seal as further evidence of you fault line (see below). A rancher and miner, stand beneath a beautiful woman elevated above them.
Nutcutter Bob (Bob works on the side treating and castrating local cattle herds). explained “New” York and other former colonies, some recaptured by force in the south he pointed out with a wink, continue to struggle with civil rights, Wyoming is known as the “equality state.” We gave women the right to vote and hold office as a territory in 1869 and strictly enforce equal rights among races and religion.
The territory of Wyoming had the following in it's Constitution as early as 1869.
As a territory in women in Wyoming had the right to own property and vote as opposed to a Puritan tradition of New England which only allowed them to vote in 1920
Since equality in the enjoyment of natural and civil rights is only made sure through political equality, the laws of this state affecting the political rights and privileges of its citizens shall be without distinction of race, color, sex, or any circumstance or condition whatsoever other than individual incompetency, or unworthiness duly ascertained by a court of competent jurisdiction.
- Wyoming State Constitution
One of the ranchers has a question. “Why is it that the rest of the nation is so far behind Wyoming? “Where this fellow lives, they voted for women to have the right to vote in 1920? “They must not like women,” another one said. Then a group discussion (with shots of whiskey) evolved where the consensus was Wyoming had cold winters and in the 1870s-80s, when most ranches were established, the Cheyenne, Sioux, and a few Blackfeet north of Douglas would kill you. Matilda said men from back east are scared of women with guns.
A cowboy knew the worth of a good woman, so we gave them whatever the hell they wanted when they wanted it. They all toasted to that and said, “AMEN!” In other words, fear of being scalped and killed instilled the right for women to own property and vote as opposed to a Puritan tradition of New England.
The moment I started thinking the Wyomans were cowboy philosophers, one of them said, “It could be the alligators in the sewers.” Then another recalled how he once spent the night in New York flying to Europe and noticed you couldn't tell women from men. He said he told his wife they didn't have enough men because there were women who looked like men on the streets asking for dates.
If your right about a cultural fault line, Jefferson had a different cultural construct in mind maybe it was not about low versus high density, perhaps it was the strength/fertility of the land they were settling (European agricultural traditions) and the role this played in ideas about government. The whole concept of the yeoman farmer. Consider the idea of how the land settled being the cause – could it not be that in Wyoming and many western states the influence of the land itself upon those settling it is the determinant of the the two poles? Is it possible the definition of freedom and equality in men’s minds are tied to the experience of a majestic landscape and a huge western sky more than we can imagine?
Read Jefferson’s letter to Madison December of 1787 [2].
And say, finally, whether peace is best preserved by giving energy to the government, or information to the people. This last is the most certain, and the most legitimate engine of government. Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is in their interest to preserve space and order, and they will preserve them....They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of liberty.
We value information as a rural population differently and how it informs how we think about goverment accordingly. People describe the least populated state in the nation – Wyoming as self-reliant but I beg to differ. I would say they are a very reliant people. Now we are getting at the fault line as you describe it. Ranchers have to be reliant on neighbors, depending on one another as much as themselves in harsh winters and droughts with no hay. The men at the coffee table and feed store are not just gossiping and harrasing the waitress. If one listens closely, it is an ongoing workshop and mentoring process about preserving community and beef production. Regardless of their differences they get along and need each other. The America you are in is not like this. Maybe it was temporarily after World War II when Jackson observed it but not now. The vast physical landscape of Wyoming is the common thread connecting people here not laws or Jefferson's theories of government.
I will keep asking about what they think of New York. So far I have not found anyone that has even been there except the old rancher describing women looking for dates. Several ask where the hell is the “old york” and what did they do to it.
Au fait, personne ne parle français ici !