The West begins where the average annual rainfall drops below twenty inches. When you reach the line which marks that drop - for convenience, the one hundredth meridian - you have reached the West.
Bernard DeVotoThe achieved West had given the United States something that no people had ever had before, an internal, domestic empire.
Bernard DeVotoSomething can be done with people who put pickled onions in: strangulation seems best.
Bernard DeVotoIt is imperative to maintain portions of the wilderness untouched so that a tree will rot where it falls, a waterfall will pour its curve without generating electricity, a trumpeter swan may float on uncontaminated water - and moderns may at least see what their ancestors knew in their nerves and blood.
Bernard DeVoto