The subject is Denver. I was in town for a writer’s conference this past week, and a panel of authors from Colorado talked about creating stories and characters about this region. The topic kept drifting to the contrasts in Denver, to the clash of cultures and histories. Like many cities in America, it seems to be under vigorous construction at the moment, but perhaps Denver has always been remaking itself.
This is a city not quite in the center of either the Lower 48 or the entire U.S., but it’s near those locations, which maybe makes it the perfect site for the meeting of two sides. Rural/Urban. Conservative/Progressive. West/East. Mountains and … Fewer Mountains. Hot/Snow. Pure Air/Inversion Smog Layer. Simple/Sophisticated.
Is it the proximity to the Continental Divide? Or does the Continental Divide go through a diverse Colorado, and split these things in two? Whichever is the case, it heightens the contrasts.
Downtown Winnemucca on June 24th, photo by kajmeister.
If we had planned out the messenger relay stops between San Francisco and, say, Denver or Chicago, would we have put one in Winnemucca? It doesn’t have the feel of “oasis” or “tavern” — it barely feels like an elongated rest stop.
Winnemucca is 2.5 hours–as the Subaru cruises–from Reno, which is 2 hours from Sacramento, which is 2 hours from the Bay Area, which is our starting point. There are effectively only two ways out of California. You bomb south on I5 to Los Angeles, then either go “up” through Las Vegas and maybe the Grand Canyon, Zion, or Bryce and head up to Utah or “down” south of Death Valley, toward Flagstaff and Albuquerque.
Or, you head north and go through Donner Pass and down into the wide, wide, wide plain of Nevada, which is not even as interesting as the deserts of Arizona and the hills that bracket the central valley of California.
Only two ways through California.
I suspect that no one has Winnemucca as an ultimate destination.
Note: I could not resist updating and reposting this essay from an earlier year ’cause they just won’t stop talking about B.R.
Betsy Ross was fake news. I hate to puncture your patriotic bubble over this one, but her story was entirely made up. Alternative Facts.
When I first started researching “Flag Day,” I fully expected to write about the circle of stars and the bars of stripes and was upset to be reminded – that it’s not true. Curse that biography I read about her in the second grade… say it’s not so! Wikipedia has the details, or you can track down journal articles like this one on “Betsy Ross ‘Bit of Fiction’–The Flag'” in the The American Catholic Historical Researches, 6(4), 1910, which flatly states:
The New England Historical and Genealogical 1909… settles conclusively the Betsy Ross controversy claim to be legendary and without foundation, tradition based on tales from memory. Students and teachers should do all in their power to correct or eliminate, if possible, another bit of fiction United States.
“Betsy Ross ‘Bit of Fiction’–The Flag'” in the The American Catholic Historical Researches, 6(4), 1910.
Vexillologists tell us not to be fooled by these decrepit fictions. Vexillologist should be our word for the day!
Ross, by the way, was an upholsterer who did sew, but the details of how she created the design in a response to a George Washington request in 1776 were made up by an enterprising descendant, William Canby, who wanted to hawk fake artifacts on the Internet. (Or the Internet version in 1870, which was the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.) Since her house is now treated as a historical site and a cottage industry has sprung up around her name, his ploy worked.
The Grand Union Flag & the British East India Company
Now I am going to blow your mind. The flag below was the first flag of the United States.
