Dan Flores


Dan Louie Flores is an American writer and historian who specializes in cultural and environmental studies of the American West. He held the A.B. Hammond Chair in Western History at the University of Montana in Missoula, Montana until he retired in May 2014.

Background

Dan Flores is a writer who lives in the Galisteo Valley outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, and is A. B. Hammond Professor Emeritus of Western History at the University of Montana-Missoula. Flores was born in Vivian in Caddo Parish in northwestern Louisiana and grew up in nearby Rodessa. During the 1970s, he received his MA in history from Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana, and his Ph.D. in 1978 from Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, where he studied under Professor Herbert H. Lang. He began his academic career at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, where he taught from 1978 to 1992, spent a year at the University of Wyoming in 1986, and then relocated to the University of Montana, where he held the A.B. Hammond Chair in Western History from 1992 until he retired in May 2014.
Flores appeared in the 2023 Ken Burns documentary The American Buffalo.

Works

Books

Flores is the author of thirteen books.
  • Wild New World: The Epic Story of Animals and People in America.
  • Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History
  • American Serengeti: The Last Big Animals of the Great Plains
  • Visions of the Big Sky: Painting and Photographing the Northern Rocky Mountain West
  • Caprock Canyonlands: Journeys into the Heart of the Southern Plains, 20th Anniversary Edition
  • The Natural West: Environmental History in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains
  • Southern Counterpart to Lewis & Clark: The Freeman & Custis Expedition of 1806
  • Horizontal Yellow: Nature and History in the Near Southwest
  • The Mississippi Kite: Portrait of a Southern Hawk, with Eric Bolen
  • Caprock Canyonlands: Journeys into the Heart of the Southern Plains
  • Canyon Visions: Photographs and Pastels of the Texas Plains, with Amy Winton, Foreword by Larry McMurtry
  • Journal of an Indian Trader: Anthony Glass and the Texas Trading Frontier, 1790-1810
  • ''Jefferson & Southwestern Exploration''

    Awards and honors

Flores' work has received numerous accolades and awards including:
Flores' Wild New World has drawn praise as "An outstanding addition to the literature on the ecological history of America." For his Coyote America, Publishers Weekly commended "Flores’s mix of edification and entertainment" as "a welcome antidote to a creature so often viewed with fear." While Thomas Andrews acknowledges “Flores’s longstanding expertise in the environmental history of the American West” and commends his “boundless respect, thoughtfulness, and good humor” in writing Coyote America. Historian Elliott West has called Flores "one of the most respected environmental historians of his generation" and William Kittredge concurs, stating that Flores belongs in "the ranks of first-string Western American writers." "Engaging and provocative," "personal, passionate, and scholarly," Flores' work draws broad praise, including from author William deBuys, who calls Horizontal Yellow "one of the best books about place you'll ever read.".

Archives

Dan Flores' archives, research papers, and extensive photographs are housed in the Conservation Collection of the Western History and Genealogy Division of the Denver Public Library.