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<br />Wafa'" Resources Prop"=- p..od Issue! <br /> <br />A: No. We were all enthusiastic about the University of Chicago,and it was also <br />the cheapest thing for us to do because we could live at home and walk t1lree <br />blocks to the university. <br /> <br />Q: Did you major In geography from the very beginning? How did your interest <br />in geography d'"eJop? <br /> <br />A: I decided to go into geography when I was a sophomore at the university and <br />took a coursen geography. But my interest, I think, had already been <br />formed because my father was a partner in a ranch in the Tongue River <br />Valley in Wyo-ning, in addition to his railroad job. I used to spend the <br />summers at the ranch irrigating, helping with the hay, helping drive the sheep <br />to the mountains, tending sheep camp. I was interested vety early in natural <br />resources matters. But our ranch experience came to a close in the I030s <br />with the combination of the Depression, the drought, and grasshoppers. An <br />early spring storm made my father go broke and he dropped out of the ranch <br />[operation]. B\i the time I got to the university I was quite alert to anything <br />that was being said about natural resources and water and land. When I <br />encountered a group in the geography department that was interested in this, <br />that was to he 'I 10gical intellectual home. <br /> <br />Q: Now, was the fJniyersity of Chicago unusual or even unique in having an <br />interest in this particular area of geography at that time? <br /> <br />A: It was unique ir twc' respects, I think. It was the first full-fledged geography <br />department in the United States. The founding chairman as a physical <br />geographer-geologist, [Rollin D.] Salisbury, with his right-hand person being <br />Harlan BarrowI. wl10 had become the chairman. They were much under the <br />influence of [Charles R.] Van Hise of the University of Wisconsin, who you <br />may recall pub I shed the first book on conservation of natural resources in the <br />United States. ln addition to establishing an early and strong department, Ihey <br />had from the o;itset a clear interest in conservation problems. <br /> <br />Q: Was there a Enopean influence in that department, would you say? The <br />reason why I a~,k that is that it's my impression that, in general, geography <br />departments arc mo'-e influential in Europe than in the United States. There <br />seems to be a longer tradition of people majoring in geography-paying <br /> <br />4 <br />