Tickpickers and Bonehunters: The Newborn West as Scientific Laboratory

The Western History Lecture Series presents Elliott West, renowned American historian and author. Professor West's lecture, "Tickpickers and Bonehunters: The Newborn West as Scientific Laboratory," will be held on Thursday, April 10, 2025. This event is co-hosted by the Bill Lane Center for the American West and the Stanford Department of History.

The second half of the 19th century, when the United States acquired the American West, dispossessed its Native peoples, and integrated it into the nation, also witnessed many of the most extraordinary advances in the history of modern science. Many of those achievements came from work in the emerging West, which was arguably the most active laboratory on earth in scientific investigation.  This talk will look at some of that work that explored questions as basic as where we come from, why we die, and why the wind blows.   

 Elliott West is Alumni Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Arkansas.  A specialist in the history of the American West and of Indian peoples, he is the author of nine books.  Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion (2023) received the Bancroft Prize and was a finalist for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize.  In 2027-18 he was the Harmsworth Visiting Professor of American History at the University of Oxford.