“By what peculiar twist of perception, I wondered, had I managed to see the plowed fields and second-growth forests of southern Wisconsin—a landscape of former prairies now long vanished—as somehow more “natural” than the streets, buildings, and parks of Chicago? All represented drastic human alterations of earlier landscapes.” Environmental HistoryUrban HistoryRural History Book:Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West Source: Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West