US History: Changes in the Land

The Whitworth students will be studying America’s development and its impact on the environment.

Description:

“In the late 1970s, a young graduate history student wrote a paper that in 1980 became an award-winning book. It is slim volume, but it makes a singularly important point – every human being who has walked on our land has changed it. Some of those changes have made important advances for humankind. Our everyday lives are easier now than they were in 1650, or even 1950. Yet, many of those changes are now causing fires in the west, floods in our cities, hurricanes at our coasts, and heat waves and blizzards everywhere. American history is our story. Through every moment of this story, no matter who we are, we moved on our land, drank our water, breathed our air, and as we did that day-to-day, hour-to-hour, we changed all three. In this course, we will travel through American History together from its beginnings to the mid-twentieth century through the lens of our impact on our environment as we changed, transforming our country, and how those changes affected our land, water, air, and our bodies.”