Range Wars: The Environmental Contest for White Sands Missile Range

Macalester College history professor Edgington takes a scholarly look at New Mexico’s White Sands Missile Range, examining “the methodological crossroads between environmental history, the history of the American West and U.S.–Mexico borderlands, and the history of science and technology.” He begins with the area’s history up until the first years of the missile range and concludes with the fight to introduce the endangered Mexican gray wolf. This discussion of the wolf is only one of two chapters that hew to the stated environmental theme, the other being a discussion of the similarly ill-considered introduction of the African oryx to White Sands. Other chapters dwell on the political and legal “range wars” between the military and ranchers who lost both private property and access to grazing on federal lands. While Edgington devotes a chapter to the first atomic tests, his discussion centers around the interest to create a memorial attraction at the site rather than any effect the fallout may have had on local flora and fauna. Edgington’s work will be of interest to select scholars of the specialized fields he addresses. (July)