In the United States, the federal government owns more than a quarter of the nation-s landscape-nearly 640 million acres; or more than a million square miles, which, if consolidated, would make it the tenth largest nation on earth. Primarily managed by four federal agencies-the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Park Service--American public lands have been central to developing the American economy, state, and identity. The history of these lands intersects with critical components of the American past-namely nature, politics, and economics. From the beginning, the ideal of -public- has been the subject of controversy, from visions of homesteaders realizing the ideal of the Jacksonian republic to western ranchers who use the open range to promote a free enterprise system, to wilderness activists who see these lands as wild places, free from human encumbrance. Environmental historian Adam Sowards synthesizes publi
