Memorializing the West: Prologue

Given the nation’s widespread and often heated reckoning with sites of memorialization and commemoration in recent years, the new season of Western Edition – the podcast from the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West (ICW) – questions six such sites across the American West.

Who put that plaque there? Who decided that a statue needed to be fixed on a plinth in that space or on that street corner? And when? Why was it worth marking or remembering? Is it still important or significant, perhaps now maybe for different reasons? Do community members, people who walk by, or those who make an effort to visit, find these places and the words written about them meaningful?

Launching on May 2, 2023, Western Edition: Memorializing the West explores historical memory, commemoration, and memorialization from Catalina Island to Daly City, California; Jackson, Wyoming to Los Angeles; Denver to San Antonio.