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Burning Rock cut, near Green River Station. Sweetwater County, Wyoming, 1869
Every little bogus town
on the Union Pacific bears the scar
of an expert linear division...
Each side of the shining double knife
from Chicago to Frisco
to Denver, the Cheyenne cutoff
the Right of Way they called it
and still it runs that way
right through the heart
the Union Pacific rails run also to Portland.
Even through the heart of the blue beech
hard as it is.
Glimpse along the west bank of Green River between Green River Station and Burning Rock cut, showing to good advantage the wall-like and castellated forms on the opposite side of the river. Sweetwater County, Wyoming, 1869
Along the west bank of Green River between Green River Station and Burning Rock cut. Sweetwater County, Wyoming, 1869
Union Pacific line along the west bank of Green River between Green River Station and Burning Rock cut. Sweetwater County, Wyoming, 1869
Granite Cut, near Dale Creek Bridge, about 3 miles west of Sherman[, Wyoming]. The road has been drilled and blasted through a close, compact, and massive granite that is susceptible of a high polish, much like the Scottish syenite. Albany County, Wyoming, 1869
Tunnel No. 2, the longest on the road, 770 feet in length, cut through reddish and purplish indurated clays, of the Wasatch group of Miocene Tertiary. Summit County, Utah, 1869
Devils Gate Bridge. The most attractive feature of the canyon is the roar of the waters of the Weber as they roll over the immense masses of rock in its bed, with the rush and tumult of a mountain torrent. For 4 miles we are enclosed with nearly perpendicular walls of gneiss, 2,000 feet in height, forming the central portion of the Wasatch Mountains; the river rushing through it at right angles. The rocks are beautifully banded everywhere. There are also coarse aggregations of quartz and feldspar all along the sides of this channel; and high up on the steep mountain flanks are vast deposits of boulders and fine sand. Weber County, Utah, 1869
There would seem to loom only facts: that boulder, this mountain, these store fronts, his greed, her compassion, water, no water, prayer, arrogance, futility, loneliness, a swindle, an even break, the dandy charmer, the slothful soilbound fanatic, the dream and of course the inevitable dreamer. History has always seemed to me lying on the table, forgetful of age, or not present at all. And geography is not what's under your foot, that's simply the ground.
-- Edward Dorn: Idaho Out, 1965, Preface
The objects which exist together in the landscape exist in inter-relation. We assert that they constitute a reality as a whole that is not expressed by a consideration of the constituent parts separately, that area has form, structure and function, and hence position in a system, and that it is subject to development, change and completion. Without this view of areal reality and relation, there exist only special disciplines, not geography...
-- Carl O. Sauer, from The Morphology of Landscape, 1925
"Every little bogus town...": Edward Dorn: The Sundering U.P. Tracks (excerpt), from North Atlantic Turbine, 1967
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