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WORK TITLE: Wonderlandscape
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1964
WEBSITE: http://www.johnclaytonbooks.com/
CITY:
STATE: MT
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.johnclaytonbooks.com/about
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1964, in Greenfield, MA.
EDUCATION:Graduated from Williams College, 1985.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and ghostwriter. Industrial Economics, Cambridge, MA, research assistant, 1985-90; Gateway Software, Fromberg, MT, product support writer, 1992-94; Information Engineering, Inc., Denver, CO, technical writer, 1994-97; Rocky Mountain College, Billings, MT, adjunct faculty member, 1995; Taliant Software, technical writer, 1997-2005; Metia Group, independent writer, 2005-12; Montana State University, Billings, visiting writer in residence, 2016; Grey Towers Heritage Association, Milford, PA, visiting scholar, 2018. Independent writer, 1992—.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including Montana Quarterly and Big Sky Journal.
SIDELIGHTS
John Clayton is a freelance, technical, and business writer based in Montana. His essays and books focus on themes relating to the natural world. Born in western Massachusetts, Clayton attended Williams College and worked for several years in the Boston area before moving west in 1990. His experiences as a western transplant provide a personal perspective in his first book, Small Town Bound: Your Guide to Small-Town Living, from Determining If Life in the Slower Lane Is for You, to Choosing the Perfect Place to Set Roots, to Making Your Dreams Come True, which offers concrete advice on making the transition from the big city to a smaller town.
The Cowboy Girl
Clayton’s The Cowboy Girl: The Life of Carline Lockhart was welcomed as an informative and engaging biography of a woman who has received relatively little scholarly attention. Caroline Lockhart (1871-1962) was a journalist, author, and editor who from 1926 to 1950 owned a ranch in Dryhead, Montana; after her death, it was listed with the National Register of Historic Places as the Caroline Lockhart Ranch. Lockhart had grown up in the Midwest and was educated in Pennsylvania. After a stint as a reporter for the Boston Post, she moved with a boyfriend to Cody, Wyoming, in 1904, and began writing pseudonymous local color stories for the Philadelphia Press. She developed a reputation for sometimes embellishing the truth in order to create what she considered an authentic representation of western life. Cody residents became the models for several of Lockhart’s fictional characters; she attracted particular controversy for her harsh portrait of Francis Lane, a female physician, in the novel Lady Doc. Clayton writes that Lockhart and Lane had once been friends, but their relationship had ended after Lockhart published an article accusing the doctor of negligent care of immigrant workers in the area. A government investigation cleared Lane’s name and damaged Lockhart’s professional reputation. Nevertheless, Lockhart remained an active participant in the town’s social life: Cody’s annual rodeo, envisioned as an event that would preserve central elements of Old West culture, was her brainchild. Lockhart’s years on her Montana ranch were also fraught with controversy as she battled neighbors over issues such as cattle rustling and water rights. She returned to Cody in 1950 and lived there until her death at age ninety-one.
Reviewing The Cowboy Girl in the Oregon Historical Quarterly, Laura Woodworth-Ney said that Clayton “unfolds Lockhart’s life with little interpretation, though he draws conclusions from her actions and her words.” About Lockhart’s decision never to marry, for example, Clayton writes that she wanted to retain her independence and choose for herself “what she would work at, where she would live, and whom she could hate.” Lockhart often comes across in her own writings as difficult, nasty, and homophobic, said Woodworth-Ney, but she also took up the cause for immigrant workers’ rights, and she provided shelter and food for many in need. Observing that the book does not seek to resolve these contradictions about its subject, the reviewer described The Cowboy Girl as “an enjoyable and readable window” into Lockhart’s world. With similar enthusiasm, Booklist contributor Colleen Mondor praised the book as both a biography of a fascinating woman and an exploration of the mystique of the American West.
Wonderlandscape
In Wonderlandscape: Yellowstone National Park and the Evolution of an American Cultural Icon, Clayton writes about the history and development of the country’s first national park. Established in 1872, Yellowstone National Park covers almost 3,500 miles, mostly in Wyoming but also in part of Montana and Idaho. From its creation, the park has drawn tourists eager to witness its distinctive geological features, which include geysers, hot springs, and the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. Early visitors, enthralled by the park’s majestic landscapes, described their encounters with this landscape as sublime; these rapt accounts helped to foster increased interest tourism to the park. Visitors also enjoyed stories about surprise encounters with the park’s grizzly bears. Yellowstone is also home to bison and, more recently, reintroduced wolves.
Living near Yellowstone for many years, Clayton has watched and pondered visitors’ responses to the park. In Wonderlandscape he writes that Yellowstone is best understood through these stories, more as a cultural entity than a physical one. Indeed, he argues that the park’s story is linked to the story of America itself. “The story of Yellowstone,” he writes, “is the story of a place gifted with natural wonders and cultural force, and with powerful yet ever-changing ways to harness those gifts for the greater good. It is, in other words, the story of America.”
Washington Post reviewer Dennis Drabelle considered Clayton’s approach to his subject “energetic and insightful.” Drabelle appreciated the author’s argument that the creation of Yellowstone National Park had much to do with a desire to create a national identity based, in large part, on the exceptional features of the western landscape. Clayton discusses the role played by Cornelius Hedges, a well-connected lawyer who in 1870 hatched the idea among his wealthy associates of creating a means of protecting the Yellowstone wilderness from private ownership; by artists such as Thomas Moran, whose paintings of Yellowstone gave Congress an idea of the awe-inspiring landscape they had been asked to preserve from commercial development; and by entrepreneurs such as architect Robert Reamer, whose innovative design for the Old Faithful Inn ushered in a new style that came to be called National Park Service Rustic. By the mid-twentieth century, when photographer Ansel Adams received a federal commission to photograph the park, Yellowstone had become a frequent tourist destination. The photographer objected to this development, sensing that the park had become merely a vacation playground, and in his photographs he emphasized what he considered Yellowstone’s spiritual essence. He also argued that the park’s value lay in its wilderness, meant to be experienced without modern comforts and conveniences. An opposite view arose in the 1960s, when “The Yogi Bear Show,” about a cartoon bear living in a park called Jellystone, sparked a huge increase in tourism and “secured [Yellowstone] for the masses.”
Pointing out that Wonderlandscape does not do justice to the park’s extraordinary features, particularly the Old Faithful geyser, Drabelle nevertheless admired the author’s acknowledgment that there is more to Yellowstone than majestic scenery. In addition to its awe-inspiring peaks and geysers, write Clayton, Yellowstone also contains “vast quantities of empty backcountry, much of it monotonous lodgepole-pine forest,” no less important to the park’s ecology than its more picturesque attractions. The author ends the book with thoughts on the park’s possible future, which might include destruction if its subterranean supervolcano erupts. A writer for Kirkus Reviews described Wonderlandscape as a “thoughtful study of a celebrated natural wonder,” and in Booklist, contributor Dan Kaplan admired the way “Clayton enthusiastically tells the foundational stories of the magnificent park.” “While not exhaustive,” stated Sean Reichard in an online review for Yellowstone Insider, “Wonderlandscape is a great primer on Yellowstone history and a unique discussion of the park’s place in America.”
BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Clayton, John, The Cowboy Girl: The Life of Caroline Lockhart, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 2007.
Clayton, John, Wonderlandscape: Yellowstone National Park and the Evolution of an American Cultural Icon, Pegasus (New York, NY), 2017.
PERIODICALS
Booklist, April. 15, 2007, Colleen Mondor, review of The Cowboy Girl, p. 16; August 1, 2017, Dan Kaplan, review of Wonderlandscape, p. 19.
Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 2017, review of Wonderlandscape.
Oregon Historical Quarterly, spring 2008, Laura Woodworth-Ney, review of The Cowboy Girl, p. 159.
Publishers Weekly, May 22, 2017, review of Wonderlandscape, p. 86.
Washington Post, August 25, 2017, Dennis Drabelle, review of Wonderlandscape.
ONLINE
John Clayton Website, http://www.johnclaytonbooks.com (February 5, 2018).
Yellowstone Insider, https://yellowstoneinsider.com/ (August 7, 2017), Sean Reichard, review of Wonderlandscape.
About John Clayton
John Clayton is an independent author, journalist, essayist, and ghostwriter based in Montana. His book Wonderlandscape: Yellowstone National Park and the Evolution of an American Cultural Icon was published in hardcover in August 2017.
John's articles appear regularly in the Montana Quarterly, Big Sky Journal, and dozens of other publications. An earlier book, Stories from Montana's Enduring Frontier, collected John's essays on Montana history. A major previous work, The Cowboy Girl, is a biography of the Montana/Wyoming novelist, journalist, and homesteader Caroline Lockhart. John's first book, Small Town Bound, was featured in Time and Harper's magazines and on the Today and Oprah Winfrey shows.
John's work for the business world includes ghostwritten e-books, articles, white papers, and case studies for several leading high-tech companies and consultancies. John enjoys bringing his engaging, informal style and fascination with narrative structure to the communication needs of business executives.
John has contributed to several other books, including a photographic history of Red Lodge, Montana. He has taught at Montana State University-Billings and Rocky Mountain College, and served on the advisory board for the Montana Center for the Book. He speaks about Yellowstone, Caroline Lockhart, the ghost metropolis of Mossmain, writing, and the West at libraries, conferences, and other events. He maintains a very-occasional blog at https://johnclaytonbooks.blogspot.com/.
In his spare time John enjoys basketball, hiking, telemark skiing, home-brewing, and of course reading. John was born in Greenfield, Massachusetts, in 1964. He graduated from Williams College, and lived in the Boston area for several years before moving west in 1990. He lives in a small town in central Montana.
(Photo by Ted Kim)
Book World: Projecting our own desires onto Yellowstone's landscape
Dennis Drabelle
The Washington Post. (Aug. 25, 2017): News:
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Listen
Full Text:
Byline: Dennis Drabelle
Wonderlandscape: Yellowstone National Park and the Evolution of an American Cultural Icon
By John Clayton
Pegasus. 285 pp. $27.95
---
As Ken Burns put it in the subtitle of his 2009 documentary on the national parks, they are "America's best idea." In "Wonderlandscape," an energetic and insightful new book on Yellowstone, journalist John Clayton shows that, at least as applied to America's first national park, the "best idea" has been an evolving one.
Several men claimed to have hatched the notion of designating federal land in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho as a national park. The semiofficial credit - the nod given by Yellowstone's influential superintendent Horace Albright at the park's 50th birthday party in 1922 - went to attorney Cornelius Hedges. In 1870, Hedges took part in a fireside conversation in which several other well-heeled sightseers discussed filing legal claims to the canyons and geysers they had been exploring. As reported by a witness, Hedges argued that "there ought to be no private ownership of any portion of that region, but that the whole of it ought to be set apart as a great National Park." He may have had in mind the counterexample of Niagara Falls, its environs already reduced to an international eyesore by commercial greed.
Clayton calls this anecdote "the national parks' creation myth." Today many historians believe that "Hedges was merely articulating a commonly held view, a previously expressed impulse, to somehow honor this magical land." Two years after Hedges' recommendation, at any rate, Yellowstone National Park was up and running.
Advancing his insight that "the story of Yellowstone is the story of what America (BEGIN ITAL)wants(END ITAL) from Yellowstone," Clayton identifies boosting the national ego as a powerful early desire. Scenic marvels such as Yellowstone set the United States apart from gently picturesque Europe. "America is special," the reasoning went, "because of its wondrous landscapes."
Artists and architects gravitated to Yellowstone with something more personal in mind: challenges and fame. A year before the park's establishment, a painter named Thomas Moran had come into his own there. His watercolors, shipped back to Washington and enlisted in the cause, gave lawmakers a sense of the incomparable scenery they were being asked to save from spoliation by private enterprise. (Moran's eventual masterpiece in oil, "The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone," graces the "Wonderlandscape" cover.)
In a bravura chapter on the park's architecture, Clayton focuses on Old Faithful Inn, designed by Robert Reamer. "Although multistory lobbies are quite common today," the author observes, the inn's "was a huge innovation in 1903: a space so tall and airy that it seemed to be both indoors and outdoors at the same time." So admired was Reamer's design that it fathered a new style, known as National Park Service Rustic.
Seven decades after Moran's visit, during World War II, another visual artist, the photographer Ansel Adams, arrived with a commission from the federal government - and a private agenda. Yellowstone, Adams believed, was being sold to the public as a pleasure ground, whereas to him it was more like a church. Leaving humans out of his shots, "he believed that the spiritual validity of wild, beautiful places arose in part from our simplicity of experience in them. That usually meant sacrificing comforts and undergoing difficulties." If this sounds elitist, the pendulum swung the other way a generation later, with the broadcast of the 1960s animated TV series "The Yogi Bear Show." Fans of the program flocked to Yellowstone to see the inspiration for Yogi's Jellystone. The cartoon bruin, Clayton writes, "secured [Yellowstone] for the masses."
By then the masses tended to live in suburbia; accordingly, the Park Service had embarked on Mission 66, a system-wide "infrastructure upgrade" to make its holdings more car-friendly. At Yellowstone, this entailed the razing of an old hotel and its replacement by "motel-style accommodations in an uninspiring location about a mile away." "The change," Clayton dryly notes, "was poorly received."
Old Faithful and other thermal features are the park's signature attractions, but Clayton fails to do them justice. After reminding us that the park contains "nearly one-quarter of all the geysers in the world," he says little about what spawned them. Geologists, too, have wanted something from Yellowstone - scientific understanding - and Clayton would have done well to tag along with one of them as he investigated the park's innards.
On the other hand, I like the author's frankness. Yellowstone, he admits, is not an illimitable cornucopia of wild splendor. "Although [the park] unfolds vast quantities of empty backcountry, much of it is monotonous lodgepole-pine forest." If you're looking for "a steady stream of awe-inspiring solitude," he adds, you might try Glacier National Park instead.
Clayton closes his book with a discussion of what might eventually happen to Yellowstone: an eruption of the supervolcano beneath it, a blowup that might conceivably unleash 8,000 times the fury of Mount St. Helens in 1980. The growing concern about such a cataclysm, the author suggests, reflects today's "zombie apocalypse" mentality. In fairness to the zombies, it should be noted that, in June, tremors felt in Montana suggested that the supervolcano might be waking up from its long nap. In any event, supervolcanic fears nicely round out Clayton's thesis that throughout its history, Yellowstone has long been both a showcase of natural extravagance and a cultural construct.
---
Drabelle, a former contributing editor of The Washington Book World, writes frequently on environmental issues.
Wonderlandscape: Yellowstone National
Park and the Evolution of an American
Cultural Icon
Dan Kaplan
Booklist.
113.22 (Aug. 1, 2017): p19.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
Wonderlandscape: Yellowstone National Park and the Evolution of an American Cultural Icon. By John
Clayton. Aug. 2017.298p. illus. Pegasus, $27.95 (97816817745721.978.7.
Clayton (Stories from Montana's Enduring Frontier, 2013) illuminates the history and development of
Yellowstone, America's first and still largest national park. A place so geologically different from what most
Americans were familiar with that in the 1870s, when it was first documented, it was viewed as divinely
inspired and sublime. Early tourists were eager to experience cowboy life and test their mettle in the
wilderness. Tour guides brought visitors by stagecoach to the same attractions that still enthrall visitors,
including the Old Faithful geyser and the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. Tales of encounters with grizzlies
added excitement as family vacationing in the park steadily increased. A half-century later, Yogi Bear
became synonymous with the park as Yellowstone pioneered self-guided tours, roadside information kiosks,
and the rustic building style adopted by nearly all national parks. Conservation, then a new science, changed
society's understanding of habitats and interactions between humans and animals. Clayton enthusiastically
tells the foundational stories of the magnificent park, which continues to capture the imagination of
millions, and explains Yellowstone's impact on how we manage our natural resources. --Dan Kaplan
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Kaplan, Dan. "Wonderlandscape: Yellowstone National Park and the Evolution of an American Cultural
Icon." Booklist, 1 Aug. 2017, p. 19. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A501718727/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=ce9f7e2b.
Accessed 27 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A501718727
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Clayton, John: WONDERLANDSCAPE
Kirkus Reviews.
(June 15, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Clayton, John WONDERLANDSCAPE Pegasus (Adult Nonfiction) $27.95 8, 8 ISBN: 978-1-68177-457-2
A sensitive portrait of the iconic national park in terms of the American people's place in it.American
history and culture converged in the creation and preservation of Yellowstone National Park, as Montana
journalist Clayton (Stories from Montana's Enduring Frontier: Exploring an Untamed Legacy, 2013, etc.)
delineates in his fine survey. The author proceeds chronologically in his exploration of the many layers of
Yellowstone's significance, from its geological magnificence to its function as a romantic symbol of
American self-image and illustration of the dire urgency for ecological attention. Clayton chronicles the
stories of people who have been profoundly moved by the natural site and how their sagas dovetail with a
larger cultural picture, beginning with the first intentional American expedition (the author sets aside Native
American life for another study) by "upper-class explorers" in 1870-1871, which included painter Thomas
Moran, who "intended to transform the nature he witnessed into art, into a piece of culture for others to
consume," and "scientist-bureaucrat" Ferdinand Hayden. As the concept of a romantic Western landscape
merged with the sense of America's Manifest Destiny, Yellowstone grew in political stature and importance,
as did its need for preservation by the 1880s (although Clayton reminds us that the National Park Service
was not founded until 1916). Other significant personages in the development of the park as a cultural
touchstone (and not just a sanctuary for wild animals) included architect Robert Reamer, who designed and
built the eclectic Old Faithful Inn in 1903-1904; National Park leaders Horace Albright and Hermon Carey
Bumpus, who advocated for roads and museums to make the park more accessible and "teachable"; twin
brothers Frank and John Craighead, who conducted groundbreaking experiments with electronic trackers on
grizzlies and other animals; and the valiant firefighters and ecologists who helped the park return to health
after devastating fires in 1988. A thoughtful study of a celebrated natural wonder that has come to truly
"embod[y] American ideals."
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Clayton, John: WONDERLANDSCAPE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 June 2017. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A495427525/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=af9abde9.
Accessed 27 Jan. 2018.
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Wonderlandscape: Yellowstone National
Park and the Evolution of an American
Cultural Icon
Publishers Weekly.
264.21 (May 22, 2017): p86.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Wonderlandscape: Yellowstone National Park and the Evolution of an American Cultural Icon
John Clayton. Pegasus, $27.99 (298p) ISBN 978-1-68177-457-2
Journalist and Montana native Clayton (Stories from Montana's Enduring Frontier) reconsiders the history
of Yellowstone National Park through its social functions, sharing a collection of stories that contextualize
the development of core American ideals through "nature that has been made culture." He brings forth
much about how our national identity has shaped our relationship with land, wildlife, and our understanding
of the balance between accessibility and conservation. Each of the book's 11 chapters highlights a different
key point in the development of Yellowstone as a uniquely American icon. For example, chapter three,
"Informal," talks about the 1904 building of the Old Faithful Inn, a huge luxury accommodation with a logcabin
aesthetic that established the idea of rustic glamour for Americans. "Patriotic," the fifth chapter,
discusses the idea of Yellowstone as a "museum of democratic equality" in the 1920s. Chapter 10,
"Threatened," shows how ecological science clashed with media representations of patriotic and frontier
traditions and the popular understanding of them in the management of Yellowstone's 1988 wildfires.
Clayton succeeds in presenting Yellowstone as a core American institution that shares an intimate
relationship with Americans as a cultural concept and that acts as a mirror through which Americans have
redefined themselves across generations. Illus. Agent: Laura Wood, Fine Print. (Aug.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Wonderlandscape: Yellowstone National Park and the Evolution of an American Cultural Icon." Publishers
Weekly, 22 May 2017, p. 86. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A494099098/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=adee4b7d. Accessed 27 Jan. 2018.
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Clayton, John. The Cowboy Girl: The Life
of Caroline Lockhart
Colleen Mondor
Booklist.
103.16 (Apr. 15, 2007): p16+.
COPYRIGHT 2007 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
Clayton, John. The Cowboy Girl: The Life of Caroline Lockhart. May 2007. 352p. Univ. of Nebraska,
$21.95 (0-8032-5990-5). 813.
Clayton not only offers a thorough assessment of the life of a fascinating and underrated woman novelist
but also delves deeply into the appeal of the American West. Caroline Lockhart was a contemporary of
famous journalist Nellie Bly but left the East Coast behind for cowboy adventures in Wyoming and
Colorado. Clayton draws liberally on Lockhart's scrapbooks, diaries, and published articles to tell the story
of a woman defiantly ahead of her time and determined to preserve the frontier. It is puzzling that Lockhart
is not well known because her western novels were highly acclaimed when published and deservedly
compared to The Virginian and Riders of the Purple Sage. As an early feminist and a woman who earned
friends, enemies, and lovers with near abandon, she is the sort of American literary figure who would seem
to invite any number of scholarly and popular studies. Luckily for her, Clayton knew a good story when he
found it and has given Lockhart the absorbing biographical treatment her remarkable life deserves.--Colleen
Mondor
YA/S: This is a first-rate source for teens looking for bios on famous American women or western writers.
CM.
Mondor, Colleen
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Mondor, Colleen. "Clayton, John. The Cowboy Girl: The Life of Caroline Lockhart." Booklist, 15 Apr.
2007, p. 16+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A162832585/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=fa952ed0. Accessed 27 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A162832585
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The Cowboy Girl: The Life Of Caroline
Lockhart
Laura Woodworth-Ney
Oregon Historical Quarterly.
109.1 (Spring 2008): p159.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Oregon Historical Society
http://www.ohs.org/homepage.html
Full Text:
THE COWBOY GIRL: THE LIFE OF CAROLINE LOCKHART
by John Clayton
University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 2007. Photographs, notes, bibliography, index. 321 pages. $21.95
paper.
John Clayton's lively account of Caroline Lockhart is a welcome biography that will be of interest to
western historians, women's historians, literary scholars, and general readers. Little has been written about
Lockhart, a journalist and novelist who wrote extensively about her surroundings and whose life in Cody,
Wyoming, is memorialized with a substantial collection of written records, including ledgers and diaries,
housed at the American Heritage Center in Laramie.
Lockhart was born on February 25, 1871, to Sarah and Joe Lockhart. The Lockharts, like many other
Midwestern farm families during the post-Civil War years, invested in land, and moved from town to
country and back and from Illinois to Kansas and back. Lockhart spent her childhood in Illinois and Kansas
until her mother died at the age of forty. Alone with several young children and preoccupied with his
extensive ranching and land enterprises, Joe Lockhart sent "Caddie" to wealthy relatives in Pennsylvania,
where she attended an upscale school for young women, the Moravian Seminary. When she completed
school, Lockhart found that her choices reflected neither the world of the social elite on the East Coast nor
that of the impoverished frontier, where women returned home from school to teach school or take in
mending to assist their struggling families. Instead, she tried elocution and drama in Boston, ultimately
failing at both before becoming what was known as a "female stunt" reporter for the Boston Post. Female
stunt reporters became regulars in East Coast papers during the late-nineteenth century; but their writing
rarely moved off of the stunt pages, and they were not allowed in the newsroom.
In 1904, Lockhart followed a boyfriend to Cody, Wyoming. Cody's boardwalks and false-fronted main
street suited Lockhart's fascination with what she perceived as the disappearing frontier West. Writing under
the pen name "Suzette," Lockhart wrote local color stories of the West for the Philadelphia Press. As
Suzette, she did not hesitate to bend the truth for the sake of the story; the authentic feel of the stories was
more important to her than whether they were entirely non-fiction. Local residents did not always appreciate
the way they were portrayed in Lockhart's stories or later in her novels, which included Me, Smith (1911);
The Lady Shepherdess; and Lady Doc (1912). She did not "ridicule everybody," Clayton writes, only
"cowards and blowhards in positions of power" (p. 67).
In Lady Doc, Lockhart blasted a fictionalized version of Cody's female doctor, Francis Lane, for providing
abortions, cheating patients, and maintaining romantic relationships with other women. As Clayton points
out, it is not clear if Lockhart intended for the book to be anti-homosexual, but Lockhart later wrote that
Lane's homosexuality was the partial cause of their friendship's disintegration. Lockhart and Lane had once
been friends and riding partners, but the friendship ended when Lockhart wrote an expose on Lane for
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providing negligent medical treatment to immigrant workers who were building a local Reclamation
Service dam on the Shoshone River. She gathered affidavits and petitions, prompting a government
investigation that ultimately absolved Lane and damaged Lockhart's reputation as a journalist. Still,
according to Clayton, Lockhart had "uncovered a vast conspiracy' (p. 81).
Despite the Lane troubles, Lockhart remained active in Cody's social life. The annual Cody Stampede rodeo
was born in Lockhart's living room. The event, Lockhart wrote, would recapture and maintain "some of that
old West that we love" (P.148). In 1919, Lockhart purchased a weekly newspaper in Cody, the Park County
Enterprise (later the Enterprise). In 1925, Lockhart purchased a ranch in Montana "on the Dryhead," under
the provisions of the Stock-Raising Homestead Act of 1916 (p. 206). She remained a controversial figure in
her new location, where feuds with neighbors over cattle rustling, water use, and fences nearly consumed
her. Lockhart returned to Cody in 1950, where she died twelve years later at the age of ninety-one.
Clayton unfolds Lockhart's life with little interpretation, though he draws conclusions from her actions and
her words. Lockhart never married, a choice Clayton attributes to a refusal to give "up her ability to choose
what she would work at, where she would live, and whom she would hate" (P.139). While Lockhart left a
multitude of written records, it is not clear if they are reliable accounts of her own life. Lockhart was a
complicated woman: on the one hand, she appears to be a judgmental, homophobic, difficult person who
could not get along with her neighbors and who enjoyed ridiculing them in public; on the other hand, she
turned her defense of immigrant workers into a crusade, and she took in many who had no food, no shelter,
and no friends. Moreover, the Cowboy Girl resisted the West's gender conventions while simultaneously
constructing new ones.
Cowboy Girl does not seek to solve the dilemma of Caroline Lockhart and the sources she left behind.
Rather, the book offers an enjoyable and readable window into the world of a woman we should all know
better.
LAURA WOODWORTH-NEY
Idaho State University
Woodworth-Ney, Laura
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Woodworth-Ney, Laura. "The Cowboy Girl: The Life Of Caroline Lockhart." Oregon Historical Quarterly,
Spring 2008, p. 159. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A177267570/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=58bcf83b. Accessed 27 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A177267570
By Sean Reichard
Most everyone who visits Yellowstone National Park probably has a story to tell about their time there, be it banal or profound.
Whatever your story, many visitors to Yellowstone take heart in the fact that their park story is one of many. Ideally, every visitor comes away with something to say about the park, even if it’s just one of those humorous (and usually wildly off-the-mark) 1-star reviews on Yelp or something.
Indeed, the number of Yellowstone stories (ranging from officials accounts to pieces of “historical value” to the numerous diaries and reminiscences that have accumulated over the years) is mind-boggling. As to why there are so many stories, you could spend a lifetime trying to figure it out.
Montana author hasn’t spent a lifetime thinking about, but he’s spent a good deal of time on the question, that time that has yielded a fine book about Yellowstone National Park: Wonderlandscape: Yellowstone National Park and the Evolution of an American Cultural Icon.
wonderscape
Clayton, a longtime resident of the region, bases his book on a (somewhat) surprising premise: that Yellowstone is first and foremost a cultural entity, not a natural one, better approached through the stories people tell and their registered experiences than through disciplines like geology, ecology, natural history, etc.
Which is not to say Clayton doesn’t believe these things matter. Indeed, Clayton admits in the prologue he resisted this conclusion for a long time. Yellowstone’s natural integrity eminently matters, but it doesn’t hold as much weight in Clayton’s analysis.
In thinking of Yellowstone as more cultural than natural, he ties the development of the park to the development of America, something he argues can’t be said for other national parks:
In ways I hadn’t initially expected, the story thus matters not only to people visiting Yellowstone, or living nearby, but also to people who have only vaguely heard of it. The story of Yellowstone is the story of a place gifted with natural wonders and cultural force, and with powerful yet ever-changing ways to harness those gifts for the greater good. It is, in other words, the story of America. It’s a story Americans tell about ourselves, hear about ourselves, and come to see as a description of who and what we are.
Many of the stories Clayton treats are probably well-familiar to area residents and serial visitors: the 1871 Hayden Geological Survey, the so-called “Campfire Myth,” the resurgence of bison, Theodore Roosevelt’s 1903 visit, the seminal Craighead studies of grizzly bears and the 1988 fires, among other topics.
Granted, Clayton makes detours throughout the book, but they rarely stray from Yellowstone’s “wonderlandscape.” For instance, a discussion of Yogi Bear and Jellystone National Park (and its companion resort franchise, started in Wisconsin in the late 1960s) explicitly ties the cartoon’s shenanigans to a post-WWII Yellowstone, when the park was a primo destination for baby boomers and their parents. And any discussion of Progressive Era politics (featuring figures like Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot) inevitably circles back to the question of what it meant for Yellowstone.
Ansel Adams Jupiter Terrace 1941
Although tracing familiar territory, Wonderlandscape offers more than a few surprises. Who could have guessed, for instance, that famed photographer Ansel Adams felt sort of tepid about Yellowstone? Even going so far to write in a letter to photography critic Nancy Newhall, “Yellowstone is simply horrible. Millions of people, cars, bears, garbage.” This didn’t stop him from taking exquisite photos of the park, of course, like the one shown above. But ask Adams where to go in the area and he’d point you to Grand Teton National Park, celebrating the Tetons as, “a primal gesture of the earth beneath a greater sky.”
Perhaps the most interesting observation Clayton shares in Wonderlandscape is how, in the space of several decades, Yellowstone went from being heralded for its geologic wonders to being heralded as a wildlife haven—a profound change in lineaments, to be sure. As an example, look at this tidbit Clayton shares about the Hayden Survey:
With the excitement of all the wonders that [painter Thomas] Moran and the Hayden party experiences, we sometimes gloss over what they didn’t experience. An abundance of wild animals, for example. The party’s hunters continually returned to camp empty-handed, one member’s diary includes repeated entries such as “squirrel and partridge for dinner as José got no game.” [Photographer William Henry] Jackson later reported that nobody on the expedition even saw a bear the entire summer, which was an exaggeration, but not much of one.
Ecologists today are wary of using these anecdotes to say much about actual wildlife populations at the time: maybe this party was simply too large, noisy, unskilled, or unlucky to encounter many animals. But whether animals were absent or just hiding, the notion of abundant wildlife did not register with our heroes. The reasons for thinking of Yellowstone as special all centered on geology. But less than thirty years later, the situation would change. When the once-ubiquitous bison suddenly loomed on the edge of extinction, the nation looked again to Yellowstone—with a very different set of priorities.
For Clayton, such a shift is a feature, not a bug, of the Yellowstone experience—a feature he believes is still occurring and will continue to occur. As the values in and around Yellowstone changes, Yellowstone changes too—or rather, it doesn’t, since it contains so many facets and features, its landscape can accommodate change more readily. It’s like the old proverb: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
While not exhaustive, Wonderlandscape is a great primer on Yellowstone history and a unique discussion of the park’s place in America, in both physical and cultural geography.
About Sean Reichard
Sean Reichard is the editor of Yellowstone Insider and author of Yellowstone Insider For Families 2017.