ABOUT THIS BOOK

The hidden stories of the public lands that unite us

While the National Park Service is widely known, far fewer Americans are familiar with the Bureau of Land Management’s vast National Conservation Lands—thirty-seven million acres spanning eleven western states and Alaska. Lonesome Landscapes is the first comprehensive history of this system from public domain lands to the designation of national monuments and conservation areas in the twenty-first century.

Drawing from archives, interviews, and field reporting, Gulliford reveals the unsung heroes who safeguarded these lands, from pioneering rangers to grassroots advocates in Native American and Hispanic communities. With vivid stories of explorers, cowboys, hermits, and even an alligator named Clem, this book blends scholarship with storytelling. Lonesome Landscapes is both a definitive history and a call to keep America’s wild places in public hands—an essential read for anyone passionate about the West.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Andrew Gulliford is professor of history at Fort Lewis College. His books include Boomtown Blues: Colorado Oil Shale, Sacred Objects and Sacred Places: Preserving Tribal Traditions, The Woolly West: Colorado’s Hidden History of Sheepscapes, and Bears Ears: Landscape of Refuge and Resistance.

REVIEWS

“For too many years, America's National Conservation Lands system—a patchwork of 37 million acres of canyons, mountains, and rangelands scattered across a dozen western states and Alaska—has wrongly been written off as so barren and unworthy that it was fit only for jackrabbits and snakes. To redress this injustice, Andrew Gulliford has produced a magnificent tribute to the parts of America that nobody else wanted: geography that is singular not only because it is filled with hidden wonders and breathtaking solitude, but also because it stands as common ground at the heart of our national commonwealth whose preservation upholds the common good. A timely and long overdue homage to the hidden gems presided over by the Bureau of Land Management, Lonesome Landscapes is a treatise as alluring, as monumental, and as richly layered as the places it so rightly honors.”—Kevin Fedarko, author of A Walk in the Park

“Gulliford does an outstanding job shining a light on the overlooked National Conservation Lands System by tying them into the broader story of the American West, public lands management, and those who have helped shaped all three.”—Michael Childers, Colorado State University

“A valuable contribution to the literature of American public land conservation history and policy. Gulliford succeeds admirably in bringing this substantial but greatly overlooked portion of the American landscape into vivid focus.”—Curt Meine, Aldo Leopold Foundation and Center for Humans & Nature

TABLE OF CONTENTS