The San Francisco Peaks rise to a height of over 12,000 feet on the Colorado Plateau of Northern Arizona. The remnants of an extinct volcano, the Peaks are sacred to thirteen Southwestern Indigenous nations; they are home to the Kachina spirits of the Hopi, and they mark the eastern boundary of Dinétah, the Navajo homeland. For residents of the city of Flagstaff, which lies just south of the Peaks, the mountains are a source of water, a symbol of the community, and a crucial part of the regional economy. In the summer, tourists from the hot deserts of central and southern Arizona are drawn to the Peaks for a respite from temperatures that routinely reach the triple digits. In the winter, the Arizona Snow Bowl ski area, located on the western slope of the Peaks, provides winter recreation that is crucial to the winter economy of Flagstaff. The intersection of Indigenous religion with Flagstaff’s tourist economy, as well as environmental concerns, has made the Peaks a flashpoint for community conflict numerous times over the last half century. This dissertation explores the Hart Prairie Controversy, a conflict over use of the Peaks that began in 1969 when landowner and developer, Bruce Leadbetter, proposed a ski village to be located at Hart Prairie, just 1,000 feet of elevation below the base of the Arizona Snow Bowl. Leadbetter’s plans for a commercial and residential development to support thousands of tourists and newcomers alarmed neighboring landowners, local environmentalists, and Northern Arizona’s tribal nations, especially members of the Hopi and Navajo tribes. For almost a decade, Indigenous and non-Indigenous actors formed a loose coalition, sometimes working together, sometimes with differing aims, to oppose the Snow Bowl Village proposal through appearances at public hearings, statements in the local media, and when necessary, legal action. This dissertation shows the Hart Prairie Controversy as an example of a time when a confluence of social movements and increased legal and political access, especially among American Indians, coalesced to preserve unique spiritual and ecological ground from development and desecration.

ABSTRACT



The Wesley Bolin Memorial Plaza is located across the street from the state capitol building in Phoenix, Arizona. Here, pieces of Arizona’s history are commemorated through monuments and memorials. Monuments and memorials reflect how people have conceived their collective identity, especially when those choices are made in public spaces. The markers in the Wesley Bolin Plaza reflect the changing identity of Arizonans, both locally and in connection to national identity. Over time, they have become crucial to shaping the landscape and the historical memory of the city, state, or country. Of note, the memorials on the Arizona State Capitol grounds are unique in how they are placed all together in a park directly across the street. In 1976, the Wesley Bolin Memorial Plaza emerged through a conversation with broader currents in the region’s and nation’s history. Over time, the plaza has become a sacred space because so many of its memorials include relics and artifacts, or list the names of those who have lost their lives in their service to Arizona. In these ways the plaza became a landscape of memory where visitors come to remember and honor those people and parts of Arizona history. The memorial plaza also influences Arizonans’ knowledge of history. It engenders a local as well as a national loyalty and identity in its citizens and visitors. By researching the history of several of the prominent monuments and memorials in the plaza, I discovered a rich history and an intriguing story behind each one that is built. Most monuments and memorials are commemorating complex events or people in history, yet have only short inscriptions on them. As a result, much of the historical narrative, complexities, and symbolism can be lost. My purpose is to tell the story of the plaza, these memorials, and their history; highlighting their significance to Arizonans and explaining how the monuments and memorials fit into the larger story of historical commemoration.

Herbert G. Klein was one of the important political figures of the mid to late 20th Century. Born in 1918, Klein’s career spanned 63 years. He retired as Editor-in-Chief of Copley Press, a company he worked for from the start of his career as a young journalist covering an up-and-coming Richard Nixon and was active in public affairs up to his death in 2009. Klein is best known as longtime advisor to Richard Nixon, and was with Nixon at peak moments in his career, including the Checkers Speech, as well as Nixon’s 1960 and 1962 campaigns. Upon Nixon’s election as President, Klein became the White House Director of Communications, a new position Klein was tasked with designing. For four years, Klein is known as one of Nixon’s chief advisors. But then, for reasons historians never have fully explored, he disappears from Nixon’s political landscape as well as from scholarly and public prominence.

The purpose of this dissertation is to establish Herbert G. Klein as a formative figure in the Richard Nixon White House, whose contributions to Nixon’s television strategies, their subsequent impact on the President’s actions and attitudes and eventual fall, have been largely overshadowed in the scholarly literature. The work draws from previously unexplored materials on Klein in the Nixon Library. The account is notable for the first examination of Klein’s only known oral history, lessening a gap in the existing literature on Nixon’s aides and his relationship with the media.

Books are constantly changing. For this project I looked at books and how they have changed over time. Starting with just before the Gutenberg Printing Press was invented and ending with the introduction of the Internet this project tracked those changes over time and looked at how they changed how people read, who read, and what this said about the people at the time. First, I looked at how books changed physically. At the time of the Gutenberg Printing Press vellum and parchment were being used for the pages of books and illuminated manuscripts made some volumes works of art. Now with the Internet greatly influencing books, that format is radically different. Different materials allowed for books to be made more cheaply and when this happened more people were able to afford them. I also looked at aspects of books like publishing and where the books were sold and how that made a difference in how and why people read. Through all of my research I kept a blog and this allowed me to be almost part of the history and research I was doing. This blog will eventually become an eBook. Books have not only shaped history and people but have been shaped by history. Books are a vital part of helping to spread information and while they will keep changing especially with the Internet, books will never disappear.

The constructing of visitor expectations and memory of historic sites is an important aspect of the heritage industry. This study examines the creation and change of dominant historical memories at four British palaces and ancestral homes. Through the close analysis of a variety of guidebooks beginning in the eighteenth century as well as other promotional materials such as websites and films, this study looks at which historical memories are emphasized for visitors and the reasons for these dominant memories. Place theorists such as Yi-Fu Tuan and Michel de Certeau as well as memory theorists such as Maurice Halbwachs, Pierre Nora, and Eric Hobsbawm have influenced the analysis of the project's sources. This inquiry focuses on four palaces: Hampton Court Palace outside London; Edinburgh Castle in the heart of Edinburgh, Scotland; Cardiff Castle in Cardiff, Wales; and Chatsworth House in Devonshire, England. The Victorians have played a large role in determining dominant memories at these sites through their interest in and focus on both the medieval period and objects in the home. Dominant memories discussed focus on the Tudors, medieval military importance, the myth and imagining of the Victorian medieval, the Regency period of Jane Austen, and elite family-home relationships. This study argues that the emphases on certain subjects allow us glimpses into the national spirit (past and present) of the peoples of Britain.