Customer Reviews

Pushed Off the Mountain Sold Down the River: Wyoming's Search for Its Soul

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This book gives a lot of useful background and information about Wyoming; however it is presented from the point of view of a leftist academic.

If you are a leftist, or a mainstream Keynsian, or of a similar ilk, then you will find nothing to argue with in this book. If you are more conservative or libertarian, or follow the Austrian or Chicago schools of economics, you will be grateful for the background information while irritated at the sometimes absurd interpretation Western puts on things. For example, he constantly snipes at the ideal of independence that he says Wyomingites generally have. Only a collectivist would look at independence as a vice.

Also, there are some errors here and there, such as the comparison of states using a measure that is not a per-capita one, or a really strange idea of what the U.S. Constitution's Commerce Clause is about.

One gets the overall impression that Western secretly thinks, "If only Wyoming were more like California," that deep down he doesn't really like Wyoming very much (exemplified by his absurd irritation about the Wyoming Stub-on-Steamboat license plates). Well, Wyoming is not California, and never could be, because it does not have the productive soil or great seaports or huge population or substantial wartime-built economy and technology or the great Congressional clout. The Wyoming economy is the way it is because of the physical situation of the state, not because of character "defects" in the people such as too much independence (in fact the citizenry, not the scenery, is the best thing about this state, if you ask this newcomer). Wyoming has its own set of vices and virtues, lucky breaks and unfortunate realities, just like any other state does. People should live in the states that suit them, not try to make them into something they are not and can never be (and shouldn't be).

Read it for the backgrounder aspect, and even for some of the critiques of the good-old-boy network; but if you are like me you will be scribbling irritated notes in the margins through the book.

While this popular economic history will most appeal to readers with an interest in Wyoming, it raises the broader question of how our interpretation of the past influences current policy decisions.
Sam Western, a regular contributor to The Economist and other publications, seeks answers to the question of why Wyoming remains our least populous state -- with a populations that is rapidly aging as young adults leave the state to look for work elsewhere.
One of the chief culprits, he concludes, is Wyoming's manufacture of a false history around cowboy mythology. While the bucking horse is one of Wyoming's most identifiable symbols (it's on every Wyoming license plate), Western notes that Wyoming's key early settlers were, in fact, wealthy merchants who, from the beginning, had an uphill battle attracting immigrants to the state's high plains and mountains. (Western relates that President Grant for a time considered divying up the Wyoming Territory among other neighboring states.)

The famed Wyoming "cattle barons" tended to be seasonal residents and otherwise sbsentee landlords from New York or Europe. Far from being a wild western town along the lines of Dodge City, Cheyenne was a genteel community with an opera house that featured Sarah Bernhardt and America's first electric street lights.
When the cattle boom burst in 1888, Wyoming was left destitute, without the sizable population of yeoman farmers and small businessmen that broadened the economic base of other states.
Wyoming, Western writes, was left to the mercy of out-of-state corporations drawn to exploit the state's natural resources with minimal interest in developing the state in any other meaningful way.
Anxious to take advantage of the growing business of tourism at the turn of the last century, Wyoming's leaders decided to give visitors what they wanted -- rodeos and wild west shows. The locals were urged to wear cowboy attire to add to the atmosphere.
The problem with this otherwise innocent fun, Western argues, is that the state began to believe the myth that the state was built by ranching (an actual small player in the state's economy throughout the majority of its history) and that Wyoming and its people embodied the mythic traits of the cowboy, most especially self-reliance. (One is reminded of John Ford's maxim in "The Man Who Shot Libery Valance" -- "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.")
This has led to the bizarre duality in Wyoming where the ranching industry is so venerated that it is a massively over-subsidized industry, while the state rejects assistance to other more promising business interests on the grounds that it is counter to Wyoming's value of rugged independence.
This is a slim volume (about 100 pages) and a brisk read, but it is very strong on substance. It is very accessible with the right mix of facts and revealing personal stories and anecdotes. It asks insightful questions that, hopefully, Wyoming citizens will want to have addressed by their leaders.
Disclaimer: I was interviewed by the author in his preparations for the book. Even with some advance notice of his intentions, I still found many surprises that challenged my conception of Wyoming history.

This little book deserves a much wider readership than it will probably receive. The author, a former correspondent for The Economist magazine, gives an incisive thumbnail of why the American state of Wyoming remains backward, economically, socially and culturally.
People who only know Wyoming through visits to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks may not realize what a struggle it is for most people who live here - and more importantly, why so many people who try to live here eventually give up. If you have spent even a few hours in Wyoming and been captivated by it, I beg you to read this book!
Somewhat ironically, the present culture in Wyoming resembles life in Stalinist Russia more than a little sometimes, so, mixing historical-era images a bit, perhaps we might consider this book the first "samizdat" salvo from Equality State dissidents.
If this book goes to a second printing, there are a number of typos that will need fixing, but isn't a rough quality part of the samizdat mystique?

Sam Western's book addresses the ecomomic stagnation and the loss of the young people that have constantly plagued Wyoming. He traces the origins of myths that have influenced the development or lack of development in the state from the area's territorial days to the present. He uses facts and figures, but he also uses anecdotal information and profiles of important people. His style reads well. He is concise. Western says that he wanted to write something that was the size of "Elements of Style" by Strunk and White. He has succeeded in packing a lot of information into a small space, while at the same time keeping it interesting. He has made decisions to leave out some information that might have been helpful because of his goal. I have used this book in college composition classes at a Wyoming Community College and have found that students respond well and that it provides great material for discussion.

I live in Wyoming and I had to read this book for my American Government class. Not only is it extremely boring, but all the guy does is trash Wyoming and its people. His entire book relies on the point that the Wyoming people maintin a "cowboy" state of mind and think that big business and money are evil. Though many wear cowboy boots around here, nobody thinks they are still a genuine "cowboy". He also, for some reason, suggests that the solution to our problems is to build another University (appearently so that we'll have twice as many graduates leaving the state). Good job on that one Sam Western. Next time take the time to learn [...]a state.

In conclusion, go ahead and read this book if you want to know some out-of-state whiner's opinion on something he has no idea about.

Samuel Western, in identifying the myths of Wyoming's past, has laid out excellent ideas for how to change the future of the state. While many residents of Wyoming might feel that the small population is one of the greatest benefits of living in the state, the fact of the matter is, Wyoming suffers greatly not only from brain drain, but also from youth drain as well.

The ideas that Western presents are excellent ideas that would enable the state to develop appopriately while preserving its rich wilderness and public lands. In order for these ideas to take a foothold in the state, it is critical that people reeducate themselves and that the teachers of Wyoming history accept that we have some deep rooted myths that are now accepted as facts. Until this occurs, the ideas the Western presents, while excellent, will remain in this book, rather than in the actual development of the state.

This book, by an economics reporter who has transplanted his family to Laramie, has a misleading title. It's not really about Wyoming's soul but about its poor economic performance, lasting well over a century. Western argues that this poor performance reflects bad state policy, which is certainly reasonable enough. He also maintains that this policy reflects Wyoming's belief in several "myths" about the state, especially the virtues of agriculture and ranching.

Western makes his case with a breezy summary of Wyoming economic and political history, with some critical comparisons to Montana and some other states that are more successful. Wyoming's political institutions give ranchers an incentive to maintain their "property rights" to *public* lands and water, for example. Its myths encourage politicians to believe that the state will grow if it can just extract more resources, and if the federal government will get out of its way. This reflects a colonial way of thinking, according to Western: a state grows wealthy because of the skills of its people, not by performing low-wage work extracting resources that get shipped to the outside world.

The book makes a decent case, though it's repetitive - - Western uses some statistical soundbites over and over again. He also has an annoying habit of presenting some aggregate number for Wyoming and then comparing it to Mississippi or California or some other state. Given the huge differences in population, a comparison of per capita figures would certainly be much more illuminating.

Western's solution to Wyoming's problems is almost purely voluntaristic: Wyoming needs to reject its myths. This seems an unrealistic political strategy to me, since you need to address the institutions that keep ranchers and the extractive industries in power. The elements of an alternative political coalition are there: an economic base in tourism in Jackson, Lander, and Dubois; a mythology that draws from outfitters (and dude ranches); and a potential high-tech sector at the northern end of Colorado's Front Range and into the University of Wyoming at Laramie. This alternative coalition could then try to tilt the political balance in swing towns such as Cody, Pinedale, or maybe even Thermopolis.

Western's analysis also makes almost no mention of the Arapaho and Shoshone of the Wind River Indian Reservation. These people are even more steeped in poverty than their white neighbors, yet they hardly buy into Euro-American mythology. The reservation has some ranchers but also has strong tourism potential; it tried a few years ago to gain control of the instream flow of the Wind River for ecological, tourism and fishing purposes but ultimately lost a Wyoming Supreme Court case (that was, incidentally, shockingly open in its racism). The tribes, too, should be part of an alternative strategy for Wyoming.

While this popular economic history will most appeal to readers with an interest in Wyoming, it raises the broader question of how our interpretation of the past influences current policy decisions.
Sam Western, a regular contributor to The Economist and other publications, seeks answers to the question of why Wyoming remains our least populous state -- with a populations that is rapidly aging as young adults leave the state to look for work elsewhere.
One of the chief culprits, he concludes, is Wyoming's manufacture of a false history around cowboy mythology. While the bucking horse is one of Wyoming's most identifiable symbols (it's on every Wyoming license plate), Western notes that Wyoming's key early settlers were, in fact, wealthy merchants who, from the beginning, had an uphill battle attracting immigrants to the state's high plains and mountains. (Western relates that President Grant for a time considered divying up the Wyoming Territory among other neighboring states.)

The famed Wyoming "cattle barons" tended to be seasonal residents and otherwise absentee landlords from New York or Europe. Far from being a wild western town along the lines of Dodge City, Cheyenne was a genteel community with an opera house that featured Sarah Bernhardt and America's first electric street lights.
When the cattle boom burst in 1888, Wyoming was left destitute, without the sizable population of yeoman farmers and small businessmen that broadened the economic base of other states.
Wyoming, Western writes, was left to the mercy of out-of-state corporations drawn to exploit the state's natural resources with minimal interest in developing the state in any other meaningful way.
Anxious to take advantage of the growing business of tourism at the turn of the last century, Wyoming's leaders decided to give visitors what they wanted -- rodeos and wild west shows. The locals were urged to wear cowboy attire to add to the atmosphere.
The problem with this otherwise innocent fun, Western argues, is that the state began to believe the myth that the state was built by ranching (an actual small player in the state's economy throughout the majority of its history) and that Wyoming and its people embodied the mythic traits of the cowboy, most especially self-reliance. (One is reminded of John Ford's maxim in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" -- "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.")
This has led to the bizarre duality in Wyoming where the ranching industry is so venerated that it is a massively over-subsidized industry, while the state rejects assistance to other more promising business interests on the grounds that it is counter to Wyoming's value of rugged independence.
This is a slim volume (about 100 pages) and a brisk read, but it is very strong on substance. It is very accessible with the right mix of facts and revealing personal stories and anecdotes. It asks insightful questions that, hopefully, Wyoming citizens will want to have addressed by their leaders.
Disclaimer: I was interviewed by the author in his preparations for the book. Even with some advance notice of his intentions, I still found many surprises that challenged my conception of Wyoming history.

Sam Western's book shows an outstanding command of the facts and figures and keeps a clear eye on the line of his thesis. He wittily and yet sympathetically dispels many of the historical myths that keep this state the benighted economic backwater that it is, while it remains one of the physically and socially most inviting places on earth to live. With enviable literary skill, he diagnoses what ails Wyoming today, and in a telling allusion to Ireland, he describes the condition of what is effectively the United State's last colonial possession. This is an ultimately romantic book and vision, though soldily grounded in the way things are. Let's hope the Ireland comparison may play out in the future, though, and perhaps the Equality State may one day be thought of as the Sagebrush Tiger.

My class At Sheridan Comm. College was assigned his book to read. It is a different look into the growth of Wyoming. He gives several examples of the crises and images that Wyoming has substained over the years. I would say that if you enjoy finding out how states have come to be or how they overcame situtions of ecomonic growth and false images this would be a good reading material. There are a few typing errors and he tends to use big words. I would advise having a dictionary near by, but overall the material flows from one chapter to the next very easily. Thanks for the extra reading material. Enjoy!