Claiming Nature through Risky Behavior: How the Leisure Class Appropriated the Rocky Mountains and Found Transcendence in the Process

By the late nineteenth century residents of the Mountain West had learned to negotiate and mitigate many of the environmental risks they encountered at home and on the job.  At the same time the Rocky Mountains became the site of a very different kind of risk taking, not one forced by where people lived and worked, but one chosen by middle and upper class nature-lovers who sought the excitement of climbing peaks, swooping down slopes on their skis, and observing the power of snow slides.  The evolution of mountaineering as a sport stands in sharp contrast to the daily struggles Mountain West residents faced because recreationists deliberately sought risks in their endeavors.  The hazard mitigation efforts of residents of the Mountain West and store of knowledge they had built over time in response to their dangerous environment failed to resonate with elites who wanted to view the mountains as an idealized site for knowing nature and claiming sacred spaces through a particular kind of risk taking where the purpose lay not in reducing risky activities but in celebrating them, overcoming them, and using them to achieve spiritual renewal.  Indeed, outsiders’ romantic interpretation of the dangers of mountain living highlighted the bravery and daring that constituted working in the mountains’ mines and rail lines, a belief that reinforced the valuation of mountains as sites for risky behavior and overlooked residents’ efforts to limit the hazards they encountered.   In identifying the moment when the middle and upper class laid claim to mountain survival skills and the mountains as spiritual territory a more complete picture of this period when Americans began to seek protection of high country spaces is revealed and shows that it was often the potential for risky behavior rather than simply physical beauty that imbued the mountains with value.