The County as Ecosystem: Political Economy and Landscape History in Boulder, Colorado and Benzie, Michigan

Exit the small rural town of Benzonia, Michigan—founded in 1858 by the Reverend Charles Bailey—and you’ll see a curious thing: the sign bidding you to “come back again” abuts a second sign that simultaneously welcomes you to the equally small town of Beulah, founded 22 years later by the very same Reverend Charles Bailey. Small rural towns don’t often arrange themselves this way, and these two places tell a story of environmental disaster and landscape change, of human folly and seasonal cycles, of ill-adapted economies, and vicious political combat. They suggest an ecosystem and landscape analysis pitched at the level of the county—a political unit too often consigned to insignificance. Further west, in Colorado, (also in 1858) a group of miners set up shop at the mouth of what we today call Boulder Canyon. Eschewing the cardinal directions, they built the street grid of a new town by sighting on a volcanic dike rising to the northeast. The place became an extraction zone and dumping ground, housing a toxic mill, a poor farm, a prison, a reservoir, a mine—and it continues so today, the grimy working shadow of the outdoors, recreational city of Boulder. Here, too, is a story—eerily similar and yet quite different—of political and economic power, operating at the scale of the county, and taking shape in terms of ecology, environment, and landscape. This talk will suggest the larger lessons we might learn from viewing these two places in comparative and interdisciplinary terms.