Faculty Image Dan Flores
Office: LA 255
Phone: (406) 243-4234
Email: dan.flores@mso.umt.edu

 

Current Position:

A.B. Hammond Professor of Western History

Description:

Dan Flores is a writer and professor who divides his time between the Bitterroot Valley of Montana and the Galisteo River Valley outside Santa Fe, New Mexico.  Born in Natchitoches, Louisiana, he has lived in the West for 30 years.  He holds the A. B. Hammond Chair in Western History at the University of Montana, in Missoula, where he specializes in the environmental and cultural history of the West.  He is the author of eight books, most recently Horizontal Yellow (1999), The Natural West (2001), and Southern Counterpart to Lewis & Clark (2002).  His work on the environment, art, and culture of the West also appears in magazines such as Texas Monthly, The Big Sky Journal, Southwest Art, and High Country News. His books and essays have been honored by the Western History Association, the Western Writers of America, the Denver Public Library, the Western Heritage Center/National Cowboy Museum, the Oklahoma Book Awards, the University of Oklahoma Press, the Montana Historical Society, and the Texas State Historical Association.  His next books, Visions of the Big Sky: Painting and Photography in the Northern Rocky Mountain West, and a 20th anniversary edition of Caprock Canyonlands: Journeys into the Heart of the Southern Plains, will be published in 2010.

Field Of Study:

American West, U.S. Environmental History, and Native American History

Selected Publications:

Visions of the Big Sky: Painting and Photography in the Northern Rocky Mountain West  (University of Oklahoma Press, 2010) 

The Natural West: Environmental History in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001; paperback edition, 2003)

Southern Counterpart to Lewis & Clark: The Freeman & Custis Expedition of 1806 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, Red River Books paperback, 2nd edition, 2002)

Horizontal Yellow: Nature and History in the Near Southwest (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999; paperback edition, 1999)

The Mississippi Kite: Portrait of a Southern Hawk, with Eric Bolen  (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993)                

Caprock Canyonlands: Journeys into the Heart of the Southern Plains (Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1990; paperback edition, 1997)

Canyon Visions: Photographs and Pastels of the Texas Plains, with Amy Winton, Foreword by Larry McMurtry  (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 1989; paperback edition, 1989)

Journal of an Indian Trader: Anthony Glass and the Texas Trading Frontier, 1790-1810 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1985; paperback edition, 1998)

Jefferson & Southwestern Exploration (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984; paperback edition, 1986)

Other Publications:

“Bringing Home All The Pretty Horses: The Horse Trade in the Early American West, 1785 - 1825,” Montana, the Magazine of Western History 58 (Summer 2008): 3-21, 94-6.

“Land That I Love,” Texas Monthly 35 (July 2007): 74-80.

“Wars Over Buffalo: Stories versus Stories on the Northern Plains,” in Michael Harkin and David Rich Lewis, eds., Native Americans and the Environment: Perspectives on the Ecological Indian (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007): 153-70. 

“Jefferson’s Grand Expedition and the Mystery of the Red River,” in Patrick Williams, et al., eds., A Whole Country in Commotion: The Louisiana Purchase and the American Southwest (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2005): 21-39.

“Societies to Match the Scenery: Twentieth-Century Environmental History in the American West,” in A Companion to The American West, William Deverell, ed. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2004): 256-71.

“Der Wirkliche Llano Estacado,” in Karl May im Llano Estacado, Meredith McClain and Reinhold Wolff, eds. (Hansa Verlag, 2004): 61-71.

“A Prairie Story: How the Plains Indians Lost Their Empire (and Their Homes) in Texas,” In Donald Willett and Stephen Curley, Invisible Texans: Women and Minorities in Texas History (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004): 106-117.

“Loving the Plains, Hating the Plains, Saving the Plains,” in The Past and Future of the Southern High Plains, Sherry Smith, ed. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003): 219-244.

“Reinventing the World at the Head of the Columbia, in The River We Carry With Us: Two Centuries of Writing from the Clark Fork Basin, Tracy Stone-Manning and Emily Miller, eds.  (Livingston, Mt.: Clark City Press, 2002): 175-84.

“Poetry to Trespass For,” in The Waltz He Was Born To: An Introduction to the Writing of Walt McDonald, Janice Whittington and Andrew Hudgins, eds. (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2002): 111-21.

“Bison Ecology and Bison Diplomacy Redux: Another Look at the Southern Plains from 1800 to 1850,” in American Environmental History, Louis Warren, ed. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2003): 160-75. 

"A Very Different Story: Exploring the Southwest from Monticello With the Freeman and Custis Expedition of 1806," Montana, the Magazine of Western History 50 (Spring 2000): 2-17.

"Nature's Children: Environmental History as Human Natural History," in Andrew Kirk and John Herron, eds., Human Nature: Biology, Culture, and Environmental History (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999): 11-30.

"Essay: The Great Plains ‘Wilderness’ as a Human-Shaped Environment,” Great Plains Research 9 (Fall 1999): 343-55.

"Place: Thinking About Bioregional History," in Michael McGinnis, ed., Bioregionalism (London: Routledge Press, 1998): 43-58.

"Making the West Whole Again: A Historical View of Restoration," in  Bob Keiter, ed., The Native Home of Hope: Community, Ecology, and the American West (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1998): 58-68.

"Environmentalism and Multiculturalism in Western History," in Hal Rothman, ed., Reopening the American West (Phoenix: University of Arizona Press, 1998): 24-37. 

"Spirit of Place in the American West," in James Sherow, ed., A Sense of the American West: An Environmental History Anthology (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998): 31-8.