"Owens Valley is a land between, a place tucked behind high
mountains, arid yet soaked in water history, draped in desert
vegetation yet remembered for its verdant farms, sparsely dotted
with towns -- some no more than dreams on a map. It exists between
stories, between vitality and decline, between granite mountains."
-- from the Introduction
A unique landscape history, A Land Between explores the central
idea of how people's preconceptions and perceptions of a place --
in this case, Owens Valley -- influence their interventions on the
land. Rebecca Fish Ewan draws on primary sources, oral histories,
and conversations, offering a story that reaches beyond the
oft-told tale of water wars with Los Angeles. Ewan's gentle and
poetic essays, illustrated with historical images and her own
photographs of the region, provide a complex, multifaceted
perspective on the land, the history, and the people of Owens
Valley.
Beginning with the land itself, the book's introduction
describes the physical setting of Owens Valley and examines first
impressions of the land -- including accounts from Numu myth,
observations by nineteenth-century settlers, and excerpts from the
author's journal of her own travels on horseback from the valley
into the Sierra Nevada. The first essay explores the valley's
natural history, focusing on the water, mountains, and plants to
show a connection between the ecology of place and human use. The
second essay chronicles the major periods of human occupation,
beginning with the Numu (also referred to as Owens Valley Paiute in
many sources) and ending in 1913, when the Department of Water and
Power first diverted Owens River into the Los Angeles aqueduct. The
thirdessay considers the valley after the diversion of water, from
1913 to the present -- including its use as a World War II Japanese
internment camp and as a scenic locale for movies, especially
westerns.
Owens Valley is renowned for its unique topography and its
striking contrasts in elevation -- rising from the below-sea-level
depths of Death Valley to the 14,496-foot peak of Mt. Whitney. To
search for the natural and cultural history embedded in Owens
Valley, the author hiked to the top of that mountain, traveled on
horseback across the meadows of the Kern Plateau, ventured on every
forgotten dirt road in the valley that her truck could negotiate,
and rambled on foot over the ancient stones of the Alabama Hills. A
Land Between tells the stories of the people who have lived in the
valley and uncovers the marks they have left on the land.
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