Bylines

Megan Kate Nelson

Flooding in Livingston, Montana, with Yellowstone National Park mountains in the background.

What Extreme Flooding in Yellowstone Means for the National Park's Gateway Towns

These communities rely almost entirely on tourism for their existence—yet too much tourism, not to mention climate change, can destroy them.
Photo of Sitting Bull with an aerial view of the Yellowstone Basin in the background.

How Sitting Bull's Fight for Indigenous Land Rights Shaped the Creation of Yellowstone National Park

The 1872 act that established the nature preserve provoked Lakota assertions of sovereignty.
Man walks through the U.S. Capitol holding a confederate flag on Jan 6, 2021.
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1871 Provides A Road Map for Addressing the Pro-Trump Attempted Insurrection

Commitment to racial justice, not conciliation, is needed to save democracy.

Americans Need to Know the Hard Truth About Union Monuments in the West

During the Civil War, Union soldiers in the West weren’t fighting to end slavery, but to annihilate and remove Native Americans.
People wave from a Sons of Confederate Veterans parade float.
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The Latest Battle Over the Confederate Flag Isn’t Happening Where You’d Expect

How the forgotten fight for the West exposes the meaning of the Confederate flag.
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One of the 19th Century’s Most Important Documents Was Recently Discovered

How a rare copy of the U.S.-Navajo Treaty, once thought lost, was found in a New England attic.

Is Ron Chernow's Ulysses S. Grant biography "OK"?

On October 15th, a tweet by Bunk contributing editor Kevin Levin touched off this fascinating exchange between several historians on the subject of popular history. Among the topics it covered were novelty, craft, context... and the musical Hamilton.

Empty Pedestals

What should be done with civic monuments to the Confederacy and its leaders?

Why the Civil War West Mattered – and Still Does

The West cared very much about the Civil War.