ABSTRACT
Few words have fallen so quickly from fashion as the word “rural.” Once a word worthy of presidents and popes, “rural” in copy and study has become as marginal and peripheral as the areas to which it refers. Defying the trends in its usage, the word holds value in U.S. environmental history, as perhaps few other words do. Defined by extraction activities, open spaces, agrarian contrarianism, or dependent development, rural areas have provided places to see both the collaborative and independent work of people and nature. From cornfields to coal and oil fields, rural America includes spaces of continuity and discontinuity ideal for studies of past nature. Histories of human–environment interaction have reaped benefits by exploring the events, conditions, and developments found in these spaces. Farm fields, backwoods, and hinterlands have enabled historians to put the country back in the countryside, and historical study has clarified and reframed current environmental issues.
