UTEP Professor Publishes New Book on the Guadalupe Mountains and Environmental History in the Borderlands

Based on a collaborative contract with the National Park Service, Dr. Jeffrey P. Shepherd has published his second book, The Guadalupe Mountains National Park: An Environmental History of the Southwest Borderlands (University of Massachusetts Press, 2019).  This project grew out of Dr. Shepherd’s longtime interest in the complex interactions between human cultures and their environments over space and time.   Dr. Shepherd, whose interests also focus on Indigenous peoples of the Americans and the U.S. – Mexico borderlands in particular, conducted research in libraries and manuscript collections in the Denver Regional Branch of the National Archives, the State Library and Archives in Santa Fe, the University of New Mexico, the Center for Big Bend Studies at Sul Ross State University, and multiple repositories in Austin, Texas.   He also conducted oral histories with key players in the history of the National Park. 

The book investigates the deep-time history of the Mountains, which grew out of a massive ocean, to the archeological and historical record of Indigenous peoples, all the way through Spanish exploration, settlement by migrants, as well as the creation of the National Park in the late twentieth century.  The Guadalupes, which are only ninety minutes from El Paso, are the highest point in Texas and they are a geological marvel, as well as an impressive example of “sky island mountains” surrounded by a vast “sea” of the Chihuahuan desert.  Dr. Shepherd notes that National Parks help us understand our critical relationships with the natural world but they are also key sites of historical memory and cultural preservation. 

Click here for a link to the book at the University of Massachusetts Press

https://www.umass.edu/umpress/title/guadalupe-mountains-national-park