An Anchor in the Mesa Top: Reexamining Who Settled the West

Author(s): Jeremy C Brunette

Year: 2018

Summary

The popular narrative of the settling of the western United States during the homestead era revolves around the idea of rugged individuals dispersing across the landscape, and making "improvements" that developed into settlements. As this poster will illustrate, this narrative does not apply to all who homesteaded the west. In the early twentieth century an individual with an intellectual disability purchased a homestead on the Parajito Plateau in Northern New Mexico. During World War II this individual’s property was purchased by the Federal Government to support the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. This individual was displaced, and some of the homestead structures were used to support the Manhattan Project. This poster will represent initial investigations into the story of a disabled person’s experience in homesteading. 

Cite this Record

An Anchor in the Mesa Top: Reexamining Who Settled the West. Jeremy C Brunette. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, New Orleans, Louisiana. 2018 ( tDAR id: 441684)

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Keywords

Temporal Keywords
Early 20th Century

Spatial Coverage

min long: -129.199; min lat: 24.495 ; max long: -66.973; max lat: 49.359 ;

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 1091