“Physical and Cultural Geography – Mountains of the U.S. and Canada,” will delve into how mountains are created, how they wear away, how they affect the weather and climate, and how they impact such things as the biomes, water availability, and the stability of the land.  Tom “argues” that mountains are not only magnificent things to see, to understand, and as important parts of our geography, but that they have dramatic effects on human activities ranging from our having to navigate around, over, or through them to travel (think of the settlers moving west in the old TV show “Wagon Train”) to impacting where we live, work, and recreate. 

Indeed, mountains are a critical part of our history and have impacted the movement of humans in North America, no doubt starting with the earliest Native Americans 10-20,000 years ago. There are remarkable stories about how our mountains have been part of our more recent history, and Tom will cover many of these formative events and how mountains played a role in shaping us as a nation.  Indeed, as examples of historical events Tom will discuss and how these events shaped history. Think in terms of the Lewis and Clark expedition that opened up the nation, the hardships faced by the Donner Party in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in 1846, or the construction of the first continental railway.

The course itself will cover many facets of mountains, and many mountains ranging from our neighboring Blue Ridge to the amazing Rockies to the spectacular, and relatively new, mountains of Hawai’i.  Each week Tom will focus on mountains in different parts of the U.S., not only from the perspective of geology, but also from the perspective of human history.