Author
Andrew Gulliford, Ph.D. is a writer and historian with deep ties to the American West. Writing for the public has been one of Dr. Gulliford’s passions since he began his journalism career at the age of 14 writing a twice-weekly column for the Lamar Daily News in southeastern Colorado. Dr. Gulliford teaches popular college courses in wilderness and public history. He writes and edits non-fiction and personal essays about all aspects of the West with particular emphasis on the Southwest and on people who live and have lived in remote places.
PUBLISHED BOOKS
Dr. Gulliford’s books include:
The Woolly West: Colorado’s Hidden History of Sheepscapes
Winner in the Outstanding Nonfiction category for the 2019 Western Heritage Awards, from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.
In The Woolly West, historian Andrew Gulliford describes the sheep industry’s place in the history of Colorado and the American West. Tales of cowboys and cattlemen dominate western history—and even more so in popular culture. But in the competition for grazing lands, the sheep industry was as integral to the history of the American West as any trail drive.
With vivid, elegant, and reflective prose, Gulliford explores the origins of sheep grazing in the region, the often-violent conflicts between the sheep and cattle industries, the creation of national forests, and ultimately the segmenting of grazing allotments with the passage of the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934. Deeper into the twentieth century, Gulliford grapples with the challenges of ecological change and the politics of immigrant labor. And in the present day, as the public lands of the West are increasingly used for recreation, conflicts between hikers and dogs guarding flocks are again putting the sheep industry on the defensive.
Between each chapter, Gulliford weaves an account of his personal interaction with what he calls the “sheepscape”—that is, the sheepherders’ landscape itself. Here he visits with Peruvian immigrant herders and Mormon families who have grazed sheep for generations, explores delicately balanced stone cairns assembled by shepherds now long gone, and ponders the meaning of arborglyphs carved into unending aspen forests.
The Woolly West is the first book in decades devoted to the sheep industry and breaks new ground in the history of the Colorado Basque, Greek, and Hispano shepherding families whose ranching legacies continue to the present day.
Outdoors in the Southwest: An Adventure Anthology
Author and editor. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014). An exciting new collection of adventure stories and wilderness philosophy in the southwest. Winner in the category of Nature/Environment for the 2014 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards.
Sacred Objects and Sacred Places: Preserving Tribal Traditions
Author. (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2000). Finalist for the Colorado Book Award in the category of Colorado and the West, 2001. Second printing spring 2003. 3rd printing, 2007.
Boomtown Blues: Colorado Oil Shale
Author. (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 1989, 2003). 2nd edition. World Resources and Environmental Issues Series. Co-Winner of the Colorado Book Award in the category “Colorado and the West,” 2004.
Author. (Washington, D.C.: The Preservation Press of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, 1984). Reprinted in cloth in 1991 with a note by First Lady Barbara Bush. Reprinted in 1996 in a third edition by the University Press of Colorado with a new introduction by Stanford University historian David Tyack.
Editor. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005). Named one of the best “Southwest Books of the Year—2005” by the Tucson-Pima Library. Finalist for the Colorado Book Award for 2005.
San Juan Sampler: Selections from the Nina Heald Webber Southwest Colorado Postcard Collection
Editor. (Durango Herald Small Press, 2004). Book introduction by Richard Moe, President, National Trust for Historic Preservation, Washington, DC. Colorado Independent Publishers Association, 2005 “Evvy” Book Awards, 2nd Place winner in Travel/Recreation category.
Mesa Verde Centennial Book Series
Series Editor for seven books related to the 100th anniversary of Mesa Verde National Park, the world’s first cultural park. Published in 2005-2006 by the Durango Herald Small Press. First place winner in the Colorado Independent Publishers Associations Awards, 2007.
Edith Taylor Shaw’s Letters from a Weminuche Homestead, 1902.
Editor. The book was published with a $5,000 gift from the Robert Lindner Foundation, January 2003. 2nd printing with the Durango Herald Small Press, May 2003.
Garfield County, Colorado: The First Hundred Years – 1883-1983.
Editor. (Glenwood Springs, Colo.: Grand River Museum Alliance, 1983). Reprinted 1993. 3rd printing 1997.
MONTHLY COLUMN
Andrew’s monthly column “Gulliford’s Travels” is published in the Durango Herald newspaper.
ESSAY ANTHOLOGIES
His essays have been anthologized in Hard at Play in America (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press), Lewis & Clark: Legacies, Memories and New Perspectives (Berkeley: University of California Press); The Landscape of Home: A Rocky Mountain Land Series Reader (Boulder: Johnson Books) and Going Green (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press).
In addition to Preserving Western History, Gulliford also edited San Juan Sampler: Selections from the Nina Heald Webber Southwest Colorado Postcard Collection, Edith Taylor Shaw’s Letters from a Weminuche Homestead, and Garfield County, Colorado: The First Hundred Years, 1883-1983. He was series editor for seven new books in the Mesa Verde Centennial Book Series published during Mesa Verde National Park’s centennial in 2006. Dr. Gulliford’s recent writing and photographs can be seen in the new book Going Green, edited by Laura Pritchett and published by the University of Oklahoma Press (2009). His black and white photos illustrate the book and he has a chapter titled “Handprints in the Canyon.”
PRESS ARTICLES
Andrew is a monthly columnist for the Durango Herald/Cortez Journal, which makes use of his photographs, and the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel where he appears on the editorial page. Dr. Gulliford also writes Southwest Scene with stories and photos for Utah Adventure Journal. His popular writings appear in newspapers across the West with the High County News syndicated column “Writers on the Range” which goes out to 55 newspapers across the West, the Mountain Gazette, and as well as the Grand Junction Sentinel. Andrew has also written for Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Preservation, Utah Preservation, and Colorado Heritage.
ACADEMIC ARTICLES
Dr. Gulliford’s academic articles have appeared in American Indian Religious Traditions: An Encyclopedia, Annals of Wyoming, The Hayes Historical Journal: A Journal of the Gilded Age, High Plains Anthropologist, The Public Historian, Northwest Ohio Quarterly, Midwest Review, Journal of American Culture, and Journal of the West.
If readers are interested in buying or using his photographs or illustrations accompanying these articles or essays, please contact Andrew directly at andy@agulliford.com.
by andrewg