Throughout the history of the United States, the concepts of land and the West have fired the American imagination and fuelled controversy. The essays in this book deal with complex, troublesome, and interrelated questions regarding land: who owns it? who has access to it? what happens when private rights infringe upon the public good, or when one ethnic group is pitted against another?, or when there is a conflict between economic and environmental values? many of these questions have deep historical roots. They all have special significance in the modern American West, where natural resources are still abundant and large areas of land are federally owned.