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The New West is part Ted Kosinski, and part Ted Turner. It is rich land barons and poor farm workers. It is desert oases like Las Vegas and Phoenix, and pristine grandeur like the Grand Tetons and the Grand Canyon. It is too many people in the cities, and too little water for the population. It is a state of mind, and a state of being. The New West is not about the land; it is about who owns the land, and how much they can get out of it. The West is not dying, and while Egan cannot abide much of what is happening in the modern West, from the damming of rivers to the overpopulation...
Today, many people believe the West is on a collision course with destiny because of overuse, excess, and just plain stubbornness. Egan still has hope, but he does agree, "subduing the wild is the one sure way to kill the West" (Egan 247). The West is still wild, and that is not revisionist thinking, it is simply the truth about such a diverse and ever-changing area.
References
Egan, Timothy. Lasso the Wind: Away to the New West. New York: Knopf, 1998.
The 1900 Storm of Galveston Galveston was one of the most promising cities in the state of Texas. With a population of around 37,000 people it was one of the richest cities in the U.S.A. It was one of the most conveniently located cities among the Gulf Coast. Galveston boasted of an excellent seaport. The city's good fortunes gave birth to a lot of millionaires. Most of their revenue came from
"The Great Storm reigns today as the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history. Between 10,000 and 12,000 people died during the storm...the added toll on commercial structures created a monetary loss of $30 million, about $700 million in today's dollars" (Smith 2003). A more recent powerful tropical system that affected the Texas coast was that of Hurricane Carla. Carla illustrated how storms are particularly damaging to the low-lying areas of