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POMEROY RECEIVES AHA'S AWARD FOR SCHOLARLY DISTINCTION

Earl Pomeroy, professor emeritus of history at the University of California, San Diego, has been honored with the American History Association's Award for Scholarly Distinction.

Pomeroy is widely considered one of the most influential western historians of the 20th century. A native of California who earned his doctorate at UC Berkeley, Pomeroy taught in the UCSD Department of History from 1975 until his retirement in 1984. His many honors include a National Endowment for the Humanities senior fellowship (1968), two Guggenheim Fellowships (1956 and 1972), and the AHA's Albert J. Beveridge Award for the first of his four books, "The Territories and the United States, 1861-1890: Studies in Colonial Administration" (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1947). He served as president of the Western Historical Association in 1993, and his fourth book, "The Pacific Slope: A History of California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah and Nevada" (Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), remains popular as a western history textbook three decades after its publication.

In the award citation, the AHA wrote that Pomeroy "stands as an inspiration to historians of the American West who carry on the legacy he established in the 1950s and 1960s that extolled a new regional history ... Earl Pomeroy's legacy ultimately does not turn simply on the remarkable prescience of his writings. It instead rests upon his reintegration of western history into the mainstream of the American historical experience."