Walter Prescott Webb (April 3, 1888–March 8, 1963) was a 20th century U.S. ^ b. English is the de facto language of American government and the sole language spoken at home by 80% of Americans age five and older. Spanish is the second most commonly spoken language historian and author noted for his groundbreaking historical work on the American West The Western United States, commonly referred to as the American West or simply "the West," traditionally refers to the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. Because the U.S. expanded westward after its founding, the meaning of the West has evolved over time. Prior to about 1800, the crest of the Appalachian. As president of the Texas State Historical Association The Texas State Historical Association or abbreviated TSHA, is a non-profit educational organization, dedicated to documenting the rich and unique history of Texas. It was founded on March 2, 1897. As of November 2008, TSHA moved from Austin to the University of North Texas in Denton. The current executive director is J. Kent Calder, he launched the project that produced the Handbook of Texas The Handbook of Texas is a comprehensive encyclopedia of Texas geography, history, and historical persons published by the Texas State Historical Association . The original Handbook was the brainchild of TSHA President Walter Prescott Webb of The University of Texas history department. It was published as a two-volume set in 1952, with a. He is also noted for his early criticism of the water usage patterns in the region.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Ideas 2.1 Water 3 See also 4 Further reading 4.1 Primary sources 5 References 6 External links 6.1 notes

Biography

Webb was born near Carthage Carthage is a city in Panola County, Texas, United States. The population was 6,664 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Panola County, and is situated in East Texas near the Louisiana state line in rural Rural areas are large and isolated areas of an open country , often with low population density. The terms "countryside" and "rural areas" are not synonyms: a "countryside" refers to rural areas that are open. A forest, wetlands, etc. with a low population density is not a countryside Panola County, Texas Houston is the largest city in Texas and the fourth-largest in the United States, while San Antonio is the second largest in the state and seventh largest in the United States. Dallas–Fort Worth and Greater Houston are the fourth and sixth largest United States metropolitan areas, respectively. Other major cities include El Paso and Austin—the and was reared on his family farm. After graduating from Ranger High School in Ranger in Eastland County, he earned a teaching certificate and taught at several Texas schools. He eventually attended the University of Texas The University of Texas at Austin is a public research university located in Austin, Texas, United States, and is the flagship institution of The University of Texas System. The main campus is located approximately 0.25 miles (0.40 km) from the Texas State Capitol. Founded in 1883, the university has the fifth-largest single-campus enrollment in at Austin Austin is the capital of the U.S. state of Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 15th-largest in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in the nation from 2000 to 2006. According to the 2008 U.S. Census and graduated with a B.A. Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both. Bachelor of Arts degree programs generally last three to four years depending upon the country, academic institution, and specific majors or minors in 1915 at the age of twenty-seven. He worked as bookkeeper Bookkeeping is the recording of financial transactions. Transactions include sales, purchases, income, and payments by an individual or organization. Bookkeeping is usually performed by a bookkeeper. Bookkeeping should not be confused with accounting. The accounting process is usually performed by an accountant. The accountant creates reports from in San Marcos San Marcos is a city in the U.S. state of Texas, and is the seat of Hays County. Located within the Austin–Round Rock–San Marcos metropolitan area, the city is located on the Interstate 35 corridor—between Austin and San Antonio. Founded on the banks of the San Marcos River, the area is considered to be among the oldest continuously and optometrist's Optometry is a health care profession concerned with eyes and related structures, as well as vision, visual systems, and vision information processing in humans assistant in San Antonio San Antonio is the second-largest city in the state of Texas and the seventh-largest city in the United States with a population of 1.3 million. The city is the seat of Bexar County. Located in the American Southwest and the northern part of South Texas, San Antonio is the center of Tejano culture and Texas tourism.[citation needed] The city is, then in 1918 he was invited to join the history History is the study of the human past. Scholars who write about history are called historians. It is a field of research which uses a narrative to examine and analyse the sequence of events, and it sometimes attempts to investigate objectively the patterns of cause and effect that determine events. Historians debate the nature of history and its faculty at the University of Texas. He wrote his Master of Arts A Master of Arts is a postgraduate academic master degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is typically studied for in English, Fine Arts, History, Nursing, Humanities, Geography, Philosophy, Social Sciences or Theology and can be either fully-taught, research-based, or a combination of the two's thesis on the Texas Rangers The Texas Ranger Division, commonly called the Texas Rangers, is a law enforcement agency with statewide jurisdiction based in Austin, the capital of Texas, in the United States. Over the years, the Texas Rangers have investigated crimes ranging from murder to political corruption, acted as riot police and as detectives, protected the Governor of in 1920 and was encouraged to pursue his Ph.D. Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated to PhD, Ph.D. or D.Phil. in English-speaking countries and Dr. Phil. or similar in other countries, for the Latin philosophiae doctor, meaning "teacher in philosophy", is an advanced academic degree awarded by universities. In most English-speaking countries, the PhD is the highest degree one can earn. After a year of study at the University of Chicago The University of Chicago is a private, coeducational research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890; William Rainey Harper became its first president in 1891 and the first classes were held in 1892, he returned to Austin Austin is the capital of the U.S. state of Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 15th-largest in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in the nation from 2000 to 2006. According to the 2008 U.S. Census where he began a historical work on the West. The result of this work was The Great Plains, published in 1931, hailed as great breakthrough in the interpretation of the history of the region, and declared the outstanding contribution to American history since World War I World War I was a military conflict that lasted from 1914 to 1918 and involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies and the Central Powers. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilized in one of the largest wars in history. More than 15 million people were by the Social Science Research Council The Social Science Research Council is a private, non-profit organization established in 1923 to advance research in the social sciences and related disciplines. It maintains a headquarters in Brooklyn Heights with a staff of approximately 70, and small regional offices on an as-needed basis in 1939. He was awarded his Ph.D. for his work on The Great Plains in 1932, the year after its publication.

From 1939 to 1946 he served as president of the Texas State Historical Association. During his tenure as president, he launched a project to produce an encyclopedia An encyclopedia is a type of reference work, a compendium holding information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge of Texas, which was subsequently published in 1952 as the Handbook of Texas. The world wide web The World Wide Web, abbreviated as WWW and commonly known as the Web, is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a web browser, one can view web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them by using hyperlinks. Using concepts from earlier hypertext systems, British version of the work is a popular Internet reference tool on the state. In all, he wrote or edited more than twenty books. One of those works, The Texas Rangers includes information on the legendary Texas Ranger The Texas Ranger Division, commonly called the Texas Rangers, is a law enforcement agency with statewide jurisdiction based in Austin, the capital of Texas, in the United States. Over the years, the Texas Rangers have investigated crimes ranging from murder to political corruption, acted as riot police and as detectives, protected the Governor of Captain Bill McDonald.

Webb was killed in an automobile accident near Austin. He was interred in Texas State Cemetery on the proclamation of then Governor John B. Connally, Jr.

Ideas

Rundell (1963) has examined Webb's main books to see what inspired and prompted the writing of each, what the purpose and message of each seems to be, and Webb's emergent philosophy of history. The professional reception of these studies is also considered. The message of The Great Plains (1931) is contained in its subtitle, 'A Study in Institutions and Environment.' Its primary purpose was to present representative ideas about the region rather than to write its history. Webb utilized the same approach in The Great Frontier (Austin: U. of Texas Press, 1964) by attempting to put his subject in the context of Western civilization, calling the settled area of Europe 'the Metropolis' and the rest of the world 'the Great Frontier.' Webb's The Texas Rangers (Austin: U. of Texas Press, 1965) was a pungent and learned treatment of a frontier institution. The economic domination of the North, through the tariff, Civil War pensions, and patent monopolies, (over the South and West, which contained the largest share of natural resources) was the theme of Divided We Stand. Another volume, More Water for Texas (Austin: U. of Texas Press, 1954), popularized and vitalized a Federal study of what he regarded as the most serious problem of his state. Environment and his experiences within that environment explain Webb's analyses. He was interested in broad outlines rather than with the weight of documentation.

The Webb thesis focused on the fragility of the Western environment, pointing out the aridity of the territory and the dangers of an industrialized West. O'Har (2006) shows that in his classic interdisciplinary history of the post-Civil War West. Webb develops dominant characteristics of the Great Plains - treelessness, level terrain, and semiaridity - and examines effect on the lives of people from very different environments. To succeed, pioneers made radical readjustments in their way of life, eschewed traditions, and altered social institutions. Webb believed what set the Great Plains apart from other regions was its individualism, innovation, democracy, and lawlessness, themes he derived from the Frontier Thesis The Frontier Thesis is the conclusion put forth by Frederick Jackson Turner that the wellsprings of American exceptionalism created freedom, constantly named as civilization, "breaking the average bond of custom, offering new experiences, [and] calling out new institutions and activities." Turner first announced his thesis in a paper of Frederick Jackson Turner Frederick Jackson Turner was an American historian in the early 20th century. He is best known for The Significance of the Frontier in American History. His focus is said to have missed the emergence of a national empire and that he failed to acknowledge the roles played by women, Indians, and Mexicans.^[1]

Water

Webb was an esteemed historian when he wrote an article in the May 1957 edition of Harper's Harper's Magazine is a monthly, general-interest magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts. It is the second-oldest, continuously-published monthly magazine (Scientific American is the oldest) in the U.S.; current circulation is more than 220,000 issues. The current editor is Ellen Rosenbush, who replaced Roger Hodge in entitled "The American West, Perpetual Mirage". In the article, Webb criticized U.S. water policy in the West, stating that the region was "a semidesert with a desert heart", and that it was a national folly to continue to follow the current federal policy (managed through the United States Bureau of Reclamation The Bureau of Reclamation is an agency under the U.S. Department of the Interior and oversees water resource management, specifically as it applies to the oversight and/or operation of numerous water diversion, delivery, and storage and hydroelectric power generation projects it built throughout the western United States) of attempting to convert the region into productive cropland through irrigation Irrigation is an artificial application of water to the soil. It is used to assist in the growing of agricultural crops, maintenance of landscapes, and revegetation of disturbed soils in dry areas and during periods of inadequate rainfall. Additionally, irrigation also has a few other uses in crop production, which include protecting plants. Webb's criticism of federal policy was roundly rebuked at the time, but some contemporary critics of U.S. water policy regard him as prophetic in his views.

See also

• J. Frank Dobie James Frank Dobie was an American folklorist, writer, and newspaper columnist best known for many books depicting the richness and traditions of life in rural Texas during the days of the open range. As a public figure, he was known in his lifetime for his outspoken liberal views against Texas state politics, and for his long personal war against
• Eugene C. Barker Eugene Campbell Barker was a distinguished professor of Texas history at the University of Texas at Austin. He was the first living person to have a UT campus building, the Eugene C. Barker Texas History Center, named in his honor. The structure is part of the Center for American History and was relocated in 1971 to Sid Richardson Hall. Barker was
• Great Plains The Great Plains are the broad expanse of prairie, steppe and grassland which lie west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and Canada. This area covers parts of the U.S. states of Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming, and the Canadian
• Frederick Jackson Turner Frederick Jackson Turner was an American historian in the early 20th century. He is best known for The Significance of the Frontier in American History
• Frontier Thesis The Frontier Thesis is the conclusion put forth by Frederick Jackson Turner that the wellsprings of American exceptionalism created freedom, constantly named as civilization, "breaking the average bond of custom, offering new experiences, [and] calling out new institutions and activities." Turner first announced his thesis in a paper
• Ernest Wallace Ernest Wallace was an historian of Texas, the American West and the southern Great Plains, who was affiliated with Texas Tech University in Lubbock

Further reading

• Frantz, Joe B. "Remembering Walter Prescott Webb," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 1988 92(1): 16-30
• Gutmann, Myron P. and Christie Sample. "Land, Climate, and Settlement on the Texas Frontier," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 1995 99(2): 136-172. Updates the research of Walter Prescott Webb by exploring the dynamics of the rural Euro-American frontiers in Texas from 1820 to 1970, with special attention to the effects of climate, geography, available natural resources, and patterns of exploitation by settlers.
• Hart, Stephen S. "Geological Errors in Walter Prescott Webb'S 'The Great Plains'," Great Plains Research 1999 9(1): 137-143
• O'Har, George. "Where The Buffalo Roam: Walter Prescott Webb's 'The Great Plains'", Technology and Culture 2006 47(1): 156-163
• Reinhartz, Dennis and Maizlish, Stephen E., eds. Essays on Walter Prescott Webb and the Teaching of History (1985). 101 pp.
• Rundell, Walter, Jr. "Walter Prescott Webb: Product of Environment," Arizona and the West 1963 5(1): 4-28
• Winfrey, Dorman H. "Memories of J. Frank Dobie and Walter Prescott Webb: A Personal Reflection on Walter Prescott Webb and J. Frank Dobie," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 1988 92(1): 31-143,

Primary sources

• Webb, Walter Prescott. More Water for Texas (1954)
• Webb, Walter Prescott. The Great Plains: A Study in Institutions and Environment (1931)

References

• Reisner, Marc (1986). Cadillac Desert. ISBN The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering (SBN) code created by Gordon Foster, now Emeritus Professor of Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin, for the booksellers and stationers W.H. Smith and others in 1966 0-14-017824-4.

External links

• Walter Prescott Webb from the Handbook of Texas The Handbook of Texas is a comprehensive encyclopedia of Texas geography, history, and historical persons published by the Texas State Historical Association . The original Handbook was the brainchild of TSHA President Walter Prescott Webb of The University of Texas history department. It was published as a two-volume set in 1952, with a Online
• Walter Prescott Webb at the Open Directory Project The Open Directory Project , also known as Dmoz (from directory.mozilla.org, its original domain name), is a multilingual open content directory of World Wide Web links. It is owned by Netscape, but it is constructed and maintained by a community of volunteer editors

notes

1. ^ George O'Har, "Where The Buffalo Roam: Walter Prescott Webb's 'The Great Plains'", Technology and Culture 2006 47(1): 156-163

Presidents of the American Historical Association The American Historical Association is the oldest and largest society of historians and teachers of history in the United States. Founded in 1884, the association promotes historical studies, the teaching of history, and the preservation of and access to historical materials. It publishes The American Historical Review five times a year, with A White Andrew Dickson White was a U.S. diplomat, historian, and educator, best known as the co-founder of Cornell University · Bancroft George Bancroft was an American historian and statesman who was prominent in promoting secondary education both in his home state and at the national level. During his tenure as U.S. Secretary of the Navy, he established the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1845. Among his best-known writings is the magisterial series, History of the · Winsor Winsor was born in Boston, Massachusetts, son of Nathaniel Winsor III and Ann Thomas Howland Winsor (1809-1893). His father was a shipping merchant who had established the "Winsor Line," one of the first regular lines of clipperships between Boston and San Francisco. Shortly before his birth, his parents had recently moved to Boston from · Poole William Frederick Poole was an American bibliographer and librarian · CK Adams Charles Kendall Adams was an American educator and historian. He served as the second president of Cornell University from 1885 until 1892, and as president of the University of Wisconsin from 1892 until 1901 · Jay John Jay was an American lawyer and diplomat, son of William Jay and a grandson of Chief Justice John Jay. He was born in New York City, graduated at Columbia College in 1836, and was admitted to the bar three years later. He early became intensely interested in the antislavery movement, and while still in college (1834) was president of the New · Henry William Wirt Henry was a Virginia lawyer and politician, historian and writer, a biographer of Patrick Henry—his grandfather, and who served in both houses of the Virginia General Assembly, and was president of The Virginia Bar Association and the American Historical Association · Angell James Burrill Angell was an American educator, academic administrator, and diplomat. He is best known for being the longest-serving president of the University of Michigan (1871-1909). Under his leadership Michigan gained prominence as an elite public university. Today, he is often cited by Michigan administrators for providing the vision of · H Adams Henry Brooks Adams was an American journalist, historian, academic and novelist. He is best-known for his autobiographical book, The Education of Henry Adams. He was a member of the Adams political family · Hoar George Frisbie Hoar was a prominent United States politician and United States Senator from Massachusetts. Hoar was born in Concord, Massachusetts. He was a member of an extended family that was politically prominent in 18th and 19th century New England · Storrs · Schouler · Fisher · Rhodes · Eggleston · CF Adams · Mahan · Lea · Smith · McMaster · Baldwin · Jameson · G Adams · Hart · Turner · Sloane · Roosevelt · Dunning · McLaughlin · Stephens · Burr · Ford · Thayer · Channing · Jusserand · Haskins · Cheyney · Wilson · Andrews · Munro · Taylor · Breasted · Robinson · Greene · Becker · Bolton · Beard · Dodd · Rostovtzeff · McIlwain · Ford · Larson · Ferguson · Farrand · Thompson · Schlesinger · Neilson · Westermann · Hayes · Fay · Wertenbaker · Latourette · Read · Morison · Schuyler · Randall · Gottschalk · Curti · Thorndike · Perkins · Langer · Webb · Nevins · Bemis · Bridenbaugh · Brinton · Boyd · Lane · Nichols · Holborn · Fairbank · Woodward · Palmer · Potter · Cochran · L White · Hanke · Wright · Morris · Gibson · Bouwsma · Franklin · Pinkney · Bailyn · Craig · Curtin · Link · McNeill · Degler · Davis · Iriye · Harlan · Herlihy · Leuchtenburg · Wakeman · Tilly · Holt · Coatsworth · Bynum · Appleby · Miller · Darnton · Foner · Louis · Hunt · McPherson · Spence · Sheehan · Kerber · Weinstein · Spiegel

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