W. Turrentine ‘Turpie’ Jackson; History Professor

W. Turrentine “Turpie” Jackson, 85, UC Davis history professor and scholar on the American West. Jackson was one of a select group of internationally renowned Western historians who argued that the West exhibited important developments in modern America--that the West was settled not by rugged individualists but by capitalists, government surveyors and people who took advantage of federal subsidies. A native of Ruston, La., Jackson grew up in El Paso, Texas, and was educated at the University of Texas. He taught at UCLA, Iowa State University and the University of Chicago before joining the newly established College of Letters and Science at UC Davis in 1951. After he retired in 1985, Jackson’s mother endowed the Turrentine Jackson Scholarship in his honor, and three years ago, Jackson and his wife endowed the W. Turrentine Jackson Chair in the History of the Western United States. Jackson wrote three prize-winning books, “Wagon Roads West” in 1952, “Treasure Hill: Portrait of a Silver Mining Camp” in 1963 and “The Enterprising Scot: Investors in the American West after 1873” in 1968. On Sunday in Davis, Calif., of complications from abdominal surgery.