Making Place Matter:
William Cronon's "Kennecott Journey" (1992)

[Image at right: A View of Kennecott from the North, 1980s, from The University of Alaska at Fairbanks Archives, Alaska Historical Society]
Purpose: to examine the connection between locality and history by reading a historian's evocation of place in an essay.

Source: William Cronon's "Kennecott Journey: The Paths Out of Town," from Under an Open Sky: Rethinking America's Western Past, eds. William Cronon, George Miles, and Jay Gitlin (New York: W.W. Norton, 1992).

Method: examine the inner structures of an historian's essay; read for storytelling methodology.

Although all historical events take place in a specific place, few historians have examined the relationship between the places where historical events take place and the events themselves. Even fewer historians have also thought about the way in which historians' understanding of that place have affected the histories that they write about it.
William Cronon, an environmental historian who teaches at the University of Wisconsin, is one of the most thoughtful historians writing today. It should not be surprising that his essay about Kennecott, Alaska, is at the same time a literary tour of a place and a deep investigation of the process of memory and its reconstructions. In his essay, he experiments with historical narrative and storytelling, bringing the reader along with him as he journies to Kennecott.
Read Cronon's essay, paying close attention to the way he tells his story. Then think about how his way of telling the story has shaped your understanding of the historical events which take place in the landscape he describes. What can be learned from locality? What are the tools one needs to learn about it?

Questions to Think About:

1) Outline the journey to Kennecott. What is the direction that the journey takes? In what time-direction does it move? What is "unearthed" as Cronon progresses through his story?

2)What are the events which took place in Kennecott?

3)Why should someone living, say, in Staten Island be interested in the place or its history? How does Cronon's manner of telling the story make the reader interested, and make the reader care?

4) Compare Cronon to more traditional historical writing. What are the differences you detect? Make a list of these differences, with examples from the text. What do these differences indicate about Cronon's storytelling?

5) What does Cronon have to say about the impoact of the Kennecott copper mine on the Native American population and the environment?

6) What connection does Cronon make between "nature" and "history" in the essay? What does he mean when he concludes nature and history "have met and turned, and turned again"?

Further resources and readings:

William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (Hill & Wang, 1983).

Jeffrey K. Stine and Joel A. Tarr, "At the Intersection of Histories: Technology and the Environment," Technology and Culture 39:4 (1998): 601-640.

Prepared by Professor Catherine Lavender for courses in The Department of History, The College of Staten Island of The City University of New York, Fall Semester 2001. Send email to lavender@postbox.csi.cuny.edu
Last modified: Sunday 26 August 2001.