Land History Library
5 ways for a complete beginner to uncover living history
Each time I visit a new city, I look for the places that are easy to overlook. I look because I want to know about the place. But it’s more than that. I look for a place’s hidden history because, by visiting the place, I’ve become part of its story. Here are the top 5 ways that a complete beginner can uncover living history.
What is land history? My land story.
Land history is a squishy layer cake. From a twenty-first-century keyboard, I slice through layers of time. The Jewell County, Kansas land that I visited as a child was—and is—my grandparents’ farm. It was and is the United States’ undervalued taking from indigenous stewards and overpaid taking for a land-speculator’s gamble and miles-away homestead rolled into a reservoir-making land swap. It was and is and always will be Kanza homeland. In my land history, all of those pasts are present today.