The free, independent spirit, the energy and hopefulness that have marked Americans are not causes, but results. They have sprung from unfenced land. Public Domain has given a consciousness of freedom even to the dweller in the crowded cities, and has been a wellspring of hope even to those who have never thought of taking refuge upon it.
—Henry George, Progress and Poverty, 1879
After breakfast at dawn, it didn’t take Trish and me long to get out of La Grande, Oregon. Turn east on state Hwy 82, duck under the Interstate, go past a couple of 4-way traffic lights and you’re out in farmlands backstopped by the Wallowa Mountains, the granite dome called Eagle Cap (9,595ft.) steel gray with the sun rising behind it. Add to the mountain wall the road’s paralleling railroad tracks, their sidings dead-ending at grain silos, packing sheds and warehouses; the lonely barns spotting fields of wheat, flax and alfalfa, onions and potatoes, and driving across the Grande Ronde River Valley was like being a backseat kid again and taking in the side window scenery along old US Hwy. 99 through the San Joaquin before the I-5, the Peripheral Canal, the population explosion and the smog.
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