THE FUTURE OF THE
Southern Plains

This public symposium was held in September, 2001on the campus of Southern Methodist University.  It featured historians, geographers, and a climatologist, who reflected on the past of the South Plains and offered thoughts on future trends.  Historically, this region—which includes West Texas, eastern New Mexico, the Oklahoma panhandle, and southeastern Colorado—has depended upon the oil and livestock industries. Neither has flourished in recent years. To complicate matters, the region’s economic development depends upon water, a resource that is dwindling fast as the South Plains continues to suffer from drought.  The book based on these presentations, Future of the Southern Plains, edited by Sherry Smith, is now available through University of Oklahoma Press. 

The experts presented papers which addressed such issues as:

►the transition from family farm to corporate agribusiness
►the challenge of balancing regional growth with environmental constraints
►a proposal to create a Great Plains landscape aesthetic to attract tourism
►a historical view of drought over the millenia
►an analysis of the nature of petroleum production and its consequences for employment as well as public policy
►the political culture of the Texas Panhandle, and
►the impact of Mexican Americans and Hispanic institutions on the South Plains.

Public Program held on April 6 and 7, 2001

            Elliott West "Trails and Footprints: Past Patterns of the Southern Plains"

West is the distinguished professor of history at the University of Arkansas and the author of five books on western and American social and environmental history. He has won numerous awards for The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers and the Rush to California, including Francis Parkman Prize and the Ray Allen Billington Prize.

Session I: Water & Droughts.

Connie Woodhouse "Droughts of the Past; Implications for the Future?

Currently a physical scientist with the NOAA National Geophysical Data Center's Paleoclimatology Program, Woodhouse also holds a research scientist position at the Univeristy of Colorado's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research. She earned her Ph.D at the University of Arizona in 1996 and was awarded a National Research Council Associateship for her postdoctoral work at NOAA.

John Opie "A Tale of Two Water Management Districts: Saving a Working Future for the High Plains."

Opie, a well-known environmental and agricultural historian, is the author of Ogallala: Water for a Dry Land, Nature's Nation: An Environmental History of the United States and The Law of the Land.

Session II: Politics & Ethnicity.

Jeff Roche "Origins of the New Right: The Political Culture of the High Plains."

Roche received his Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico. He is the author of Restructured Resistance: The Sibley Commission and the Politics of Desegregation in Georgia, as well as several articles on conservatism in the twentieth century.

Yolanda Romero "The Mexican-American Experience in Twentieth-Century Northwest Texas."

Romero grew up in Lubbock, Texas, and received her Ph.D. from Texas Tech University. Her dissertation was on "The Mexican American Frontier Experience in Twentieth Century Northwest Texas. Romero is a professor of American History and Mexican American History at the North Lake campus of the Dallas County Community College District.

           Dan Flores "The Elusively Beautiful Plains."

Flores is the A. B. Hammond Professor of Western History at the University of Montana-Missoula and writes on the environmental history of the American West. His most recent book is Horizontal Yellow: Nature and History in the Near Southwest. His new book, The Natural West, will appear later this year.

Session Three: Economics

Diana Davids Olien "Petroleum in the Future of the Southern Plains."

Olien is the author and co-author of six books on oil in Texas. She recently completed Oil in Texas: The Gusher Age, 1896-1945, with Roger M. Olien. It is the first volume of a two volume history of the petroleum industry in Texas.

John Miller Morris "When Corporations Rule the Llano Estacado."

Morris was born on the High Plains in Canyon, Texas. He is an Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and Social Geography at the University of Texas at San Antonio, specializing in historical geography of the Southwest. He is the author of three books, including El Llano Estacado: Exploration and Imagination on the High Plains of Texas and New Mexico, a work honored with seven book awards.

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Co-sponsored by
The William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies
& The Stanton Sharp Symposium

Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX

The Stanton Sharp Symposium is supported by a generous gift from Ruth Sharp Altshuler honoring her son, Stanton Sharp. The Sharp Fund enhances faculty research and teaching in the William P. Clements Department of History. Inaugurated in 1991, the Sharp Symposium brings to the SMU campus some of the nation’s most distinguished scholars for lectures, discussions, and interaction with students, faculty members, and the public.