I am an historian of parks, place, and pollution in the American West.
I’m working on a book about land re-use in Butte, Montana, tracing the practice of turning mining claims into parks from 1882 to the present.
I currently work as a public historian for the State of Colorado in my role as Senior Exhibition Developer and Historian at the History Colorado Center in Denver, and teach as an adjunct professor for the History Department at the University of Colorado Denver.
*This is a personal website that does not represent the views of the State of Colorado.*
Gwendolyn R. Lockman earned her PhD and MA in U.S. History from the University of Texas at Austin and a BA in American Studies from Georgetown University. She has worked in museums, local historic preservation, classrooms in both public and private institutions, and has written for public and academic audiences in the Washington Post, The Metropole (Urban History Association) and Not Even Past (UT Austin).
Gwen’s book project is about Butte, Montana’s evolving uses of land within the city as the community contended with population and industry growth. Turning our attention to the tensions between prioritizing an extractive resource industry and creating spaces for culture, leisure, and recreation reveals a deeper level of the ever-precarious balancing act of life and making a living. This project profiles the re-use of mining property for public green space dating to 1882, and the politics and perils that come with this method of remediation in the modern environmental era. Butte’s history is emblematic of major themes in the history of the American West, deeply tied to politics, extractive resources, natural environment, immigration, and identity.
“Enjoying the Beauties of the Day and Listening to the Famous Boston & Montana Band,” from Adolf H. Heilbronner, “Sights and Scenes and a Brief History of Columbia Gardens, Butte’s only Pleasure Resort,” Butte Miner Co., 1902. Butte Digital Image Project at Montana Memory Project, Butte-Silver Bow Public Library, Flickr.com (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
Foreman’s Park, Butte, MT June 2022
(old Mountain Consolidated mine site)
Presenting at the 2022 Western History Association Conference in San Antonio, TX.
1893 Mining Claim Map, Butte, Montana
Silver Bow Creek walking trail, looking West.
Before graduate school, I worked in the legal department for the Washington Nationals Baseball Club Major League Baseball team. At the Nationals, I worked directly with in-house and outside counsel, the Washington Nationals Youth Baseball Academy Board of Directors, and the Office of the Commissioner of Baseball. My major projects included annual preparation of Capital Improvements at Nationals Park and serving as an office manager for the MLB Event Operations Headquarters during the 2018 MLB All-Star Game. I began volunteering at the Youth Baseball Academy as a mentor while in college and continued to do so until I left the Nationals.
I have worked in student affairs, residential living, university admissions, and have taught English as a Second Language. I’ve played saxophone for 20 years, though not with much frequency since my Georgetown Pep Band days, when you may have seen me cheering from the sidelines of a Hoyas basketball game.
Or, if you don’t watch college basketball but I still look familiar, you may have seen me appear on Season 39 of Jeopardy!, where I came in third, managing to get one Daily Double about Beyoncé and Jay-Z correct, but missing a Daily Double about the Chicago Fire, in an American History category, losing my very, very brief lead over future Tournament of Champions contestant, Stephen Webb, and earning the mockery of my dearest friends and relatives to this day.
