HSUMD Monthly Meeting at the Historic USO Building

For the November meeting of the Historical Society of the Upper Mojave Desert, author and historian Robert B. Marks will speak about his new book, Deep Time in the Mono Lake Basin: Nature and History over the Last 10,000 Years. The meeting will take place on Sunday, November 15 at 2:00 p.m. at the Historic USO Building.

In his sweeping environmental history of the Mono Lake Basin, Marks reveals a larger story of how human actions and natural forces shape the environment. He begins with the region’s Indigenous peoples, followed by the mid-nineteenth century arrival of Euro-American settlers and the dispossession of the Kootzaduka’a people. In the decades that followed, struggles for the control of water diverted nearly all freshwater out of the basin to Los Angeles, precipitating an ecological crisis by the 1970s. The responding environmental restoration movement has, for now, preserved the Mono Lake Basin. A dramatic and hopeful history, this book explores a beloved region to illuminate questions of water, power, and our relationship with the natural world that echo far beyond the American West.

Robert B. Marks is Emeritus Professor of History and Environmental Studies at Whittier College, where he served for 41 years researching and teaching how human societies and natural environments shape each other across time and geography. He has published several books and articles on Chinese and world environmental history. His new book on the Mono Lake Basin applies this deep expertise to California’s Eastern Sierra, tracing 10,000 years of geological forces, Indigenous stewardship, water politics, and ecological restoration. A resident of June Lake, his new book brings both scholarly rigor and intimate knowledge to the complex history of an ancient landscape.

The monthly meetings of the HSUMD are free and open to the public. For more information, contact the Book Store at 760-375-8456 during business hours: Wednesday through Saturday from 11 am to 2 pm.