Phoebe Young

Phoebe Young is Professor of History at the University of Colorado Boulder where she teaches and writes about the environmental and cultural history of the United States and the American West. Young received her B.A. from Bryn Mawr College and her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego. Her most recent book, Camping Grounds: Public Nature in America from the Civil War to Occupy (Oxford University Press, 2021), traces the hidden history of camping and the outdoors in American life that connects a familiar recreational pastime to camps for functional needs and political purposes. Camping Grounds was reviewed in The New Yorker in April 2022 and won the 2022 Norris and Carol Hundley Award from the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association.

May 2, 2023

The Weight of History

The Appalachian Trail is a much more diverse place in 2023 than it was as recently as 20 years ago. But if you spend much time on the trail, you know it’s still a pretty white place. There are many stories about the challeng…