Why does the West - both in the United States and Canada - differ from the East? Scholars have put forward two fundamentally different and contradictory explanations: the West as the displaced, archaic, frontier East; and the West as a subculture developed indigenously in response to the demands of a dry, rugged physical environment.

In this groundbreaking volume, Terry Jordan and his co-authors look to the log folk buildings of the Mountain West, from New Mexico to Alaska, to explain what makes the West "the West." Arguing that artifacts such as dwellings, barns, and fences can, if correctly interpreted, reveal much about the origins and character of the regional culture, they set forth not only the first comprehensive description and analysis of Western folk architecture but also a systematic explanation of the culture of the West.