The Managed Memory of a Continent by Me Stuff Rivers, Ruins, and the Gatekeepers of History Read on Substack LINK: https://open.substack.com/pub/mestuff/p/the-managed-memory-of-a-continent?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Across the American West, the landscape tells a story of water on a scale that feels almost unimaginable today. Vast basins, dry inland sea floors, terraced shorelines etched into mountainsides, and thick sediment deposits point to enormous water systems that once dominated the region. Yet the prevailing explanations often compress this history into tidy narratives of gradual evaporation, glacial retreat, and slow climate shifts. At the same time, there are recurring references to catastrophic flooding, rapid sedimentation (some might call it the mudfloods), and major hydrological redirection, alongside evolving historical maps and shifting interpretations of the past. When you move through these states and see the terrain fi...