CAW Spotlight: Tim Brown

"I cannot imagine a better colleague and collaborator. Tim has very solid academic credentials, with a PhD in History from Stanford, as well as a very sharp mind, a merry wit, a great presence, and remarkable persistence. When he joined the Center team, we received a huge and longlasting gift of good fortune."

-Patty Limerick

In 2003, Tim Brown, his wife Teresa and two daughters had been happily living in San Francisco for seven years. Tim had just finished a three-year post-doc at Stanford University and was casting about for teaching positions in the area. In August, they visited Tim's home state of Colorado to spend some time with friends and family. While there, they chanced upon a decrepit, for-sale farmstead north of Boulder. Forty acres of prairie dogs and invasive weeds. Next thing they knew, they had purchased the property and were packing boxes. Teresa, the visionary of the family, knew they were destined to have goats and chickens and a big vegetable garden. Tim wondered where he was going to work (while not pulling weeds and feeding the animals).

Tim found teaching work in the history department at CU, and spent a couple of semesters giving lectures and grading mountains of undergraduate essays. He was, however, aware of and intrigued by the university's dynamic regional public policy unit, The Center of the American West, and thought to ask its director, Patty, if he might get involved. A month later Tim changed course and was fully occupied by the Center. He was immediately immersed in a tangle of issues around the environmental troubles caused by abandoned hardrock mines. For the next year he worked on the Center's report, Cleaning Up Abandoned Hardrock Mines in the West, a publication that exerted a decisive influence on federal policy development. Since then, Tim has worked on a range of Center projects, including Colorado water issues, public land legislation, and Western energy development. Tim is now at work on a book manuscript on the ties between the Department of the Interior and American attitudes towards the West and public lands.

Back to main newsletter page