Resettling the Range

The ranchers who resettled British Columbia’s interior in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries depended on grassland for their cattle, but in this they faced some unlikely competition from grasshoppers and wild horses. With the help of the government, settlers resolved to rid the range of both. Resettling the Range explores the ecology and history of the grasslands and the people who lived there by looking closely at these eradication efforts. In the process, the author uncovers in claims of “range improvement” and “rational land use” more complicated stories of dispossession and marginalization.