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| mining in the american west: Mining Archaeology in the American West Donald L. Hardesty, 2010-07 Mining played a prominent role in the shaping and settling of the American West in the nineteenth century. Following the discovery of the famous Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1859, mining became increasingly industrialized, changing mining technology, society, and culture throughout the world. In the wake of these changes Nevada became an important mining region, with new people and technologies further altering the ways mining was pursued and miners interacted. Historical archaeology offers a research strategy for understanding mining and miners that integrates three independent sources of information about the past: physical remains, documents, and oral testimony. Mining Archaeology in the American West explores mining culture and practices through the microcosm of Nevada’s mining frontier. The history of mining technology, the social and cultural history of miners and mining societies, and the landscapes and environments of mining are topics examined in this multifocus research. In this updated and expanded edition of the seminal work on mining in Nevada, Donald Hardesty brings scholarship up to the present with important new research and insights into how people, technology, culture, architecture, and landscape changed during this period of mining history. |
| mining in the american west: Gold Rushes and Mining Camps of the Early American West Vardis Fisher, Opal Laurel Holmes, Opal Laurel Fisher, 1968 Distributed by the University of Nebraska Press for Caxton Press Vardis Fisher and Opal Laurel Holmes bring together the stories of all of the remarkable men and women and all of the violent contrasts that made up one of the most entrhalling chapters in American history. Fisher, a respected scholar and versatile creative writer, devoted three years to the writing of this book. |
| mining in the american west: A Mine of Her Own Sally Zanjani, 2000-09-01 prospectors for the first time. Sally Zanjani depicts more than one hundred women prospectors in often grueling, financially unrewarding, and utterly lonely efforts to strike it rich from the desert Southwest to the frozen rocks of Alaska and the Yukon. She tells their stories with warmth and skill and, in bringing them to life, forever changes our mental picture of the women who helped shape the modern West. |
| mining in the american west: Landscapes of Extraction Betsy Fahlman, 2021-11-15 Works from an exhibition that proves mining can be as sublime as it is destructive. Landscapes of Extraction explores the art of mining, which completely transformed the American West. These landscapes of enterprise altered the natural environment on a spectacular scale, with open pit mines, coal tipples, and oil rigs. Yet artists have often found these scenes beautiful, even sublime. The four scholarly essays presented here explore how artists have portrayed the mining industry in the American West. The multiple landscapes created by large-scale mining inspired these artworks: the mines themselves, the towns that grew up around them, and the miners and their families who lived and worked there. The industry has shaped communities and landscapes throughout the West: Arizona, California, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas, and Utah. Landscapes of Extraction explores how a powerful regional narrative became a fundamental element of national identity and played out on a vast geographical scale. |
| mining in the american west: Mercury and the Making of California Andrew Scott Johnston, 2013-09-15 Exploring the development of California and the relationship between the built environments of the mercury-mining industry and the emerging ethnic identities and communities in California, Mercury and the Making of California brings mercury to its rightful place alongside gold and silver in their defining roles in the development of the American West. In this pioneering study, Andrew Johnston examines the history of California’s mercury-mining industry—and its defining role in the development of the American West. Mercury was crucial to refining gold and silver; therefore, its production and use were vital to creating and securing power and wealth in the west. The first industrialized mining in California, mercury mining had its own particular organization and structure shaped by powers first formed within the Spanish Empire, transformed by British imperial ambitions, and manipulated by groups made wealthy and powerful by controlling it. In addition, the landscapes of work and camp and the relations among the many groups—Mexicans, Chileans, Spanish, British, Irish, Cornish, American, and Chinese—throughout the industry’s history illustrate the complex history of race and ethnicity in the American West. Combining rich documentary sources with a close examination of the existing physical landscape, Andrew Johnston explores both the detail of everyday work and life in the mines and the larger economic and social structures in which mercury mining was enmeshed, revealing the significance of mercury mining to Western history. |
| mining in the american west: Western Mining Otis E. Young, Jr., Otis Young, Robert Lenon, 1977-06-01 Here, for the first time, is a clear account in words and pictures of the methods by which gold and silver were extracted and processed in the Old West. The author describes the early days of Spanish and Indian mining and the wild era inaugurated by the American prospector who rushed west to get rich quick, ending with the year 1893, when repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act virtually closed the mining frontier. The account gives in laymen’s language the techniques employed in prospecting, placering, lode mining, and milling, particularly those employed by the Spaniards, Indians, and Cornishmen, and shows how the ever-practical Americans adapted and improved them. Special attention is given to the methods employed in the California and Montana gold fields, Colorado and the Comstock Lode, the Black Hills, and Tombstone, Arizona. In these pages the reader also meets some of the unforgettable personalities whose lives enriched (and sometimes impoverished) the mining camps. |
| mining in the american west: Hard As the Rock Itself David Robertson, 2011-05-18 The first intensive analysis of sense of place in American mining towns, Hard as the Rock Itself: Place and Identity in the American Mining Town provides rare insight into the struggles and rewards of life in these communities. David Robertson contends that these communities - often characterized in scholarly and literary works as derelict, as sources of debasing moral influence, and as scenes of environmental decay - have a strong and enduring sense of place and have even embraced some of the signs of so-called dereliction. Robertson documents the history of Toluca, Illinois; Cokedale, Colorado; and Picher, Oklahoma, from the mineral discovery phase through mine closure, telling for the first time how these century-old mining towns have survived and how sense of place has played a vital role. Acknowledging the hardships that mining's social, environmental, and economic legacies have created for current residents, Robertson argues that the industry's influences also have contributed to the creation of strong, cohesive communities in which residents have always identified with the severe landscape and challenging, but rewarding way of life. Robertson contends that the tough, unpretentious appearance of mining landscapes mirrors qualities that residents value in themselves, confirming that a strong sense of place in mining regions, as elsewhere, is not necessarily wedded to an attractive aesthetic or even to a thriving economy. |
| mining in the american west: Mining in the Old West Sandor Demlinger, 2006 From the 1848 discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in northern California, follow the development of mining in the American West through over 300 vintage photos. See the people and places of history face to face. See the early mining towns and the makeshift mining operations rising on the mountainsides. This is a treasure trove for historians, Old West aficionados, and lovers of old photographs. |
| mining in the american west: In Pursuit of Gold Sue Fawn Chung, 2011-08-01 Both a history of an overlooked community and a well-rounded reassessment of prevailing assumptions about Chinese miners in the American West, In Pursuit of Gold brings to life in rich detail the world of turn-of-the-century mining towns in the Northwest. Sue Fawn Chung meticulously recreates the lives of Chinese immigrants, miners, merchants, and others who populated these towns and interacted amicably with their white and Native American neighbors, defying the common perception of nineteenth-century Chinese communities as insular enclaves subject to increasing prejudice and violence. While most research has focused on Chinese miners in California, this book is the first extensive study of Chinese experiences in the towns of John Day in Oregon and Tuscarora, Island Mountain, and Gold Creek in Nevada. Chung illustrates the relationships between miners and merchants within the communities and in the larger context of immigration, arguing that the leaders of the Chinese and non-Chinese communities worked together to create economic interdependence and to short-circuit many of the hostilities and tensions that plagued other mining towns. Peppered with fascinating details about these communities from the intricacies of Chinese gambling games to the techniques of hydraulic mining, In Pursuit of Gold draws on a wealth of historical materials, including immigration records, census manuscripts, legal documents, newspapers, memoirs, and manuscript collections. Chung supplements this historical research with invaluable first-hand observations of artifacts that she experienced in archaeological digs and restoration efforts at several of the sites of the former booming mining towns. In clear, analytical prose, Chung expertly characterizes the movement of Chinese miners into Oregon and Nevada, the heyday of their mining efforts in the region, and the decline of the communities due to changes in the mining industry. Highlighting the positive experiences and friendships many of the immigrants had in these relatively isolated mining communities, In Pursuit of Gold also suggests comparisons with the Chinese diaspora in other locations such as British Columbia and South Africa. |
| mining in the american west: Yellowcake Towns Michael A. Amundson, 2004-02-25 Yellowcake Towns provides a look at the supply side of the Atomic Age and serves as an important contribution to the growing bibliography of atomic history. |
| mining in the american west: The Saloon on the Rocky Mountain Mining Frontier Elliott West, 1996-09-01 Elliott West’s careful analysis of the role and development of the saloon as an institution on the mining frontier provides unique insights into the social and economic history of the American West. Drawing on contemporaneous newspapers and many unpublished firsthand accounts, West shows that the physical evolution of the saloon, from crude tents and shanties into elegant establishments for drinking and gaming, reflected the growth and maturity of the surrounding community. |
| mining in the american west: Gambling on Ore Kent Curtis, 2013-07-15 Gambling on Ore examines the development of the western mining industry from the tumultuous and violent Gold Rush to the elevation of large-scale copper mining in the early twentieth century, using Montana as representative of mining developments in the broader US mining west. Employing abundant new historical evidence in key primary and secondary sources, Curtis tells the story of the inescapable relationship of mining to nature in the modern world as the United States moved from a primarily agricultural society to a mining nation in the second half of the nineteenth century. In Montana, legal issues and politics—such as unexpected consequences of federal mining law and the electrification of the United States—further complicated the mining industry’s already complex relationship to geology, while government policy, legal frameworks, dominant understandings of nature, and the exigencies of profit and production drove the industry in momentous and surprising directions. Despite its many uncertainties, mining became an important part of American culture and daily life. Gambling on Ore unpacks the tangled relationships between mining and the natural world that gave material possibility to the age of electricity. Metal mining has had a profound influence on the human ecology and the social relationships of North America through the twentieth century and throughout the world after World War II. Understanding how we forged these relationships is central to understanding the environmental history of the United States after 1850. |
| mining in the american west: Mining Coal and Undermining Gender Jessica Smith Rolston, 2014-03-31 Though mining is an infamously masculine industry, women make up 20 percent of all production crews in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin—the largest coal-producing region in the United States. How do these women fit into a working culture supposedly hostile to females? This is what anthropologist Jessica Smith Rolston, herself a onetime mine worker and the daughter of a miner, set out to discover. Her answers, based on years of participant-observation in four mines and extensive interviews with miners, managers, engineers, and the families of mine employees, offer a rich and surprising view of the working “families” that miners construct. In this picture, gender roles are not nearly as straightforward—or as straitened—as stereotypes suggest. Gender is far from the primary concern of coworkers in crews. Far more important, Rolston finds, is protecting the safety of the entire crew and finding a way to treat each other well despite the stresses of their jobs. These miners share the burden of rotating shift work—continually switching between twelve-hour day and night shifts—which deprives them of the daily rhythms of a typical home, from morning breakfasts to bedtime stories. Rolston identifies the mine workers’ response to these shared challenges as a new sort of constructed kinship that both challenges and reproduces gender roles in their everyday working and family lives. Crews’ expectations for coworkers to treat one another like family and to adopt an “agricultural” work ethic tend to minimize gender differences. And yet, these differences remain tenacious in the equation of masculinity with technical expertise, and of femininity with household responsibilities. For Rolston, such lingering areas of inequality highlight the importance of structural constraints that flout a common impulse among men and women to neutralize the significance of gender, at home and in the workplace. At a time when the Appalachian region continues to dominate discussion of mining culture, this book provides a very different and unexpected view—of how miners live and work together, and of how their lives and work reconfigure ideas of gender and kinship. |
| mining in the american west: Mining Frontiers of the Far West, 1848-1880 Rodman Wilson Paul, 2001 Long out of print, this study of western mining is now available with three new chapters by Elliott West. When originally published in 1963, Professor Paul's book offered the first comprehensive view of western mining as an integral part of the settlement process. In his supplemental chapters, Professor West presents a social history of mining camps - encompassing discussions of gender, class, race, labor, and the environment. The combined scholarship of Paul and West makes a strong case for the transforming effects of the mining frontier on western society in particular and American society in general. This revised, expanded edition continues to offer a distinctively vivid voice and an unusually keen eye for telling detail.--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved |
| mining in the american west: Reclaiming the American West Alan Berger, 2002-10-25 Berger (design, Harvard U.) provides an overview of what possibilities are offered by converting abandoned mines, as well as the physical, philosophical, technological, environmental, political, regulatory and ethical issues involved. In the opening chapters, he addresses the history, size, scope, and various forms of reclamation projects. Subsequent topics cover more speculative and theoretical discussions of aesthetics, space, nature, time and revaluing, together with photographic evidence. The book contains 199 color illustrations and is oversize: 11.25x9.5. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR |
| mining in the american west: Thomas F. Walsh John Stewart, 2012-06 Thomas F. Walsh tells the story of one of the West's wealthiest mining magnates - an Irish American prospector and lifelong philanthropist who struck it rich in Ouray County, Colorado. In the first complete biography of Thomas Walsh, John Stewart recounts the tycoon's life from his birth in 1850 and his beginnings as a millwright and carpenter in Ireland to his tenacious, often fruitless mining work in the Black Hills and Colorado, which finally led to his discovery of an extremely rich vein of gold ore in the Imogene Basin. Walsh's Camp Bird Mine yielded more than $20 million worth of gold and other minerals in twenty years, and the mine's 1902 sale to British investors made Walsh very wealthy. He achieved national prominence, living with his family in mansions in Colorado and Washington, D.C., and maintaining a rapport with Presidents McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, and Taft, as well as King Leopold II of Belgium. Despite his fame and lavish lifestyle, Walsh is remembered as an unassuming and philanthropic man who treated his employees well. In addition to making many anonymous donations, he established the Walsh Library in Ouray and a library near his Irish birthplace, and helped establish a research fund for the study of radium and other rare western minerals at the Colorado School of Mines. Walsh gave his employees at the Camp Bird Mine top pay and lodged them in an alpine boardinghouse featuring porcelain basins, electric lighting, and excellent food. Stewart's engaging account explores the exceptional path of this Colorado mogul in detail, bringing Walsh and his time to life. |
| mining in the american west: Mining North America John R. McNeill, George Vrtis, 2017-07-03 Over the past five hundred years, North Americans have increasingly turned to mining to produce many of their basic social and cultural objects. From cell phones to cars and roadways, metal pots to wall tile and even talcum powder, minerals products have become central to modern North American life. As this process has unfolded, mining has also indelibly shaped the natural world and North Americans' relationship with it. Mountains have been honeycombed, rivers poisoned, and forests leveled. The effects of these environmental transformations have fallen unevenly across North American societies. Mining North America examines these developments. Drawing on the work of scholars from Mexico, the United States, and Canada, this book explores how mining has shaped North America over the last half millennium. It covers an array of minerals and geographies while seeking to draw mining into the core debates that animate North American environmental history generally. Taken together, the authors' contributions make a powerful case for the centrality of mining in forging North American environments and societies--Provided by publisher. |
| mining in the american west: The Archaeology of American Mining Paul J. White, 2019-12-09 Mining History Association Clark C. Spence Award The mining industry in North America has a rich and conflicted history. It is associated with the opening of the frontier and the rise of the United States as an industrial power but also with social upheaval, the dispossession of indigenous lands, and extensive environmental impacts. Synthesizing fifty years of research on American mining sites that date from colonial times to the present, Paul White provides an ideal overview of the field for both students and professionals. The Archaeology of American Mining offers a multifaceted look at mining, incorporating findings from an array of subfields, including historical archaeology, industrial archaeology, and maritime archaeology. Case studies are taken from a wide range of contexts, from eastern coal mines to Alaskan gold fields, with special attention paid to the domestic and working lives of miners. Exploring what material artifacts can tell us about the lives of people who left few records, White demonstrates how archaeologists contribute to our understanding of the legacies left by miners and the mining industry. A volume in the series the American Experience in Archaeological Perspective, edited by Michael S. Nassaney |
| mining in the american west: Oak Flat Lauren Redniss, 2020-11-17 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A powerful work of visual nonfiction about three generations of an Apache family struggling to protect sacred land from a multinational mining corporation, by MacArthur “Genius” and National Book Award finalist Lauren Redniss, the acclaimed author of Thunder & Lightning “Brilliant . . . virtuosic . . . a master storyteller of a new order.”—Eliza Griswold, The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY KIRKUS REVIEWS Oak Flat is a serene high-elevation mesa that sits above the southeastern Arizona desert, fifteen miles to the west of the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation. For the San Carlos tribe, Oak Flat is a holy place, an ancient burial ground and religious site where Apache girls celebrate the coming-of-age ritual known as the Sunrise Ceremony. In 1995, a massive untapped copper reserve was discovered nearby. A decade later, a law was passed transferring the area to a private company, whose planned copper mine will wipe Oak Flat off the map—sending its natural springs, petroglyph-covered rocks, and old-growth trees tumbling into a void. Redniss’s deep reporting and haunting artwork anchor this mesmerizing human narrative. Oak Flat tells the story of a race-against-time struggle for a swath of American land, which pits one of the poorest communities in the United States against the federal government and two of the world’s largest mining conglomerates. The book follows the fortunes of two families with profound connections to the contested site: the Nosies, an Apache family whose teenage daughter is an activist and leader in the Oak Flat fight, and the Gorhams, a mining family whose patriarch was a sheriff in the lawless early days of Arizona statehood. The still-unresolved Oak Flat conflict is ripped from today’s headlines, but its story resonates with foundational American themes: the saga of westward expansion, the resistance and resilience of Native peoples, and the efforts of profiteers to control the land and unearth treasure beneath it while the lives of individuals hang in the balance. |
| mining in the american west: Mining California Andrew C. Isenberg, 2010-08-24 An environmental History of California during the Gold Rush Between 1849 and 1874 almost $1 billion in gold was mined in California. With little available capital or labor, here's how: high-pressure water cannons washed hillsides into sluices that used mercury to trap gold but let the soil wash away; eventually more than three times the amount of earth moved to make way for the Panama Canal entered California's rivers, leaving behind twenty tons of mercury every mile—rivers overflowed their banks and valleys were flooded, the land poisoned. In the rush to wealth, the same chain of foreseeable consequences reduced California's forests and grasslands. Not since William Cronon's Nature's Metropolis has a historian so skillfully applied John Muir's insight—When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe—to the telling of the history of the American West. Beautifully told, this is western environmental history at its finest. |
| mining in the american west: We the Miners Andrea G. McDowell, 2022-06-28 The California Gold Rush is thought to exemplify the Wild West, yet miners were expert organizers. Driven by property interests, they enacted mining codes, held criminal trials, and decided claim disputes. But democracy and law did not extend to “foreigners” and Indians, and miners were hesitant to yield power to the state that formed around them. |
| mining in the american west: The Devil Is Here in These Hills James Green, 2015-02-03 “The most comprehensive and comprehendible history of the West Virginia Coal War I’ve ever read.” —John Sayles, writer and director of Matewan On September 1, 1912, the largest, most protracted, and deadliest working-class uprising in American history was waged in West Virginia. On one side were powerful corporations whose millions bought armed guards and political influence. On the other side were fifty thousand mine workers, the nation’s largest labor union, and the legendary “miners’ angel,” Mother Jones. The fight for unionization and civil rights sparked a political crisis that verged on civil war, stretching from the creeks and hollows of the Appalachians to the US Senate. Attempts to unionize were met with stiff resistance. Fundamental rights were bent—then broken. The violence evolved from bloody skirmishes to open armed conflict, as an army of more than fifty thousand miners finally marched to an explosive showdown. Extensively researched and vividly told, this definitive book about an often-overlooked chapter of American history, “gives this backwoods struggle between capital and labor the due it deserves. [Green] tells a dark, often despairing story from a century ago that rings true today” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette). |
| mining in the american west: Silver and Gold Mining Camps of the Old West Sandy Nestor, 2013-01-29 The lure of gold in the American West beckoned to thousands of hungry settlers eager to stake a claim, reap the wealth, and escape often difficult conditions at home, whether Eastern cities, Europe or China. Prospectors found that veins of gold and silver were elusive and could dry up suddenly. Forced to move often in search of the next big lode, they left behind them hundreds of mining camps and settlements, many of which still exist across the Western landscape. This reference work catalogs silver and gold mining camps by state in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. Each entry includes location, names of known miners, year of discovery, and ore value. Unique details of each camp are given, including historical events, buildings and businesses present. Interesting anecdotes abound about the resident miners. The work is indexed by topic and mine, and appendices offer a glossary and the Miners’ Ten Commandments (Placerville [California] Herald, 1853). |
| mining in the american west: Industrializing the Rockies David A. Wolff, 2003 In Industrializing the Rockies, David A. Wolff places the deadly conflicts and strikes as well as the racial tensions and the economics of the coal industry in the context of the Western coal industry from its inception in 1868 to the age of maturity in the early twentieth century. The result is the first book-length study of the emergence of coalfield labor relations and a general overview of the role of coal mining in the American West. |
| mining in the american west: A History of Mining in Latin America Kendall W. Brown, 2012-03-16 For twenty-five years, Kendall Brown studied Potosí, Spanish America's greatest silver producer and perhaps the world's most famous mining district. He read about the flood of silver that flowed from its Cerro Rico and learned of the toil of its miners. Potosí symbolized fabulous wealth and unbelievable suffering. New World bullion stimulated the formation of the first world economy but at the same time it had profound consequences for labor, as mine operators and refiners resorted to extreme forms of coercion to secure workers. In many cases the environment also suffered devastating harm. All of this occurred in the name of wealth for individual entrepreneurs, companies, and the ruling states. Yet the question remains of how much economic development mining managed to produce in Latin America and what were its social and ecological consequences. Brown's focus on the legendary mines at Potosí and comparison of its operations to those of other mines in Latin America is a well-written and accessible study that is the first to span the colonial era to the present. |
| mining in the american west: Black Coal Miners in America Ronald L. Lewis, 1987-01-01 From the early day of mining in colonial Virginia and Maryland up to the time of World War II, blacks were an important part of the labor force in the coal industry. Yet in this, as in other enterprises, their role has heretofore been largely ignored. Now Roland L. Lewis redresses the balance in this comprehensive history of black coal miners in America. The experience of blacks in the industry has varied widely over time and by region, and the approach of this study is therefore more comparative than chronological. Its aim is to define the patterns of race relations that prevailed among the m. |
| mining in the american west: Ghost Towns of the American West Raymond Bial, 2001-02-26 If it is abandoned by all or most of its inhabitants, a settlement becomes a ghost town. The buildings and dirt streets may remain, but the character and soul of the place change entirely. And so it was with mining camps, lumber camps, and cowboy towns scattered across America, particularly in the West: places with names like Gregory’s Diggings, Deadwood, Bodie, Calico, Goldfield, and Tombstone, some of the over 30,000 deserted towns in the United States. Why did people come to these isolated places? Why did they leave? As Raymond Bial’s narrative explores the history of our ghost towns, his well-composed photo-graphs silently tell their stories: of bustling, muddy streets, of large mercantile stores, and, ultimately, of short-lived dreams of gold, fertile land, or simply a good place to call home. |
| mining in the american west: Guidelines for Identifying, Evaluating and Registering Historic Mining Properties Bruce J. Noble, Robert Spude, 1992 |
| mining in the american west: Thunder In the Mountains Lon Savage, 1985-06-15 The West Virginia mine war of 1920-21, a major civil insurrection of unusual brutality on both sides, even by the standards of the coal fields, involved thousands of union and nonunion miners, state and private police, militia, and federal troops. Before it was over, three West Virginia counties were in open rebellion, much of the state was under military rule, and bombers of the U.S. Army Air Corps had been dispatched against striking miners.The origins of this civil war were in the Draconian rule of the coal companies over the fiercely proud miners of Appalachia. It began in the small railroad town of Matewan when Mayor C. C. Testerman and Police Chief Sid Hatfield sided with striking miners against agents of the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, who attempted to evict the miners from company-owned housing. During a street battle, Mayor Testerman, seven Baldwin-Felts agents, and two miners were shot to death.Hatfield became a folk hero to Appalachia. But he, like Testerman, was to be a martyr. The next summer, Baldwin-Felts agents assassinated him and his best friend, Ed Chambers, as their wives watched, on the steps of the courthouse in Welch, accelerating the miners' rebellion into open warfare.Much neglected in historical accounts, Thunder in the Mountains is the only available book-length account of the crisis in American industrial relations and governance that occured during the West Virginia mine war of 1920-21. |
| mining in the american west: Killing for Coal Thomas G. Andrews, 2010-09-01 On a spring morning in 1914, in the stark foothills of southern Colorado, members of the United Mine Workers of America clashed with guards employed by the Rockefeller family, and a state militia beholden to Colorado’s industrial barons. When the dust settled, nineteen men, women, and children among the miners’ families lay dead. The strikers had killed at least thirty men, destroyed six mines, and laid waste to two company towns. Killing for Coal offers a bold and original perspective on the 1914 Ludlow Massacre and the “Great Coalfield War.” In a sweeping story of transformation that begins in the coal beds and culminates with the deadliest strike in American history, Thomas Andrews illuminates the causes and consequences of the militancy that erupted in colliers’ strikes over the course of nearly half a century. He reveals a complex world shaped by the connected forces of land, labor, corporate industrialization, and workers’ resistance. Brilliantly conceived and written, this book takes the organic world as its starting point. The resulting elucidation of the coalfield wars goes far beyond traditional labor history. Considering issues of social and environmental justice in the context of an economy dependent on fossil fuel, Andrews makes a powerful case for rethinking the relationships that unite and divide workers, consumers, capitalists, and the natural world. |
| mining in the american west: It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own Stephen A. Bly, 2016-03-24 Pepper Paige is sick and tired of her life. Sick of fighting and emptiness that surround her as a dance-hall girl - and tired of fearing Jordan Beckett, a violent patron who has turned his attentions on her. Pepper gets her chance to escape when a woman injured in a stagecoach wreck dies in her room. Before she dies, the stranger - a refined, educated Christian - informs Pepper that she was on her way west to marry a rancher she knew only through his letters. Pepper decides to assume Suzanne's identity and get a fresh start on life. But unknown to Pepper, her fiancé is not really Zach, the Christian man who'd been corresponding with Suzanne. Zach has been killed by Indians, and a prison escapee named Tap Andrews has decided to pass himself off as the rancher. What happens when the pair meet? Will they end their charade and embrace the truth about each other's past, as well as the truth of God's love for them? Who will be left standing when Jordan tracks down Tap and finds out that he is about to marry Pepper?--Back cover. |
| mining in the american west: U.S. History P. Scott Corbett, Volker Janssen, John M. Lund, Todd Pfannestiel, Sylvie Waskiewicz, Paul Vickery, 2024-09-10 U.S. History is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of most introductory courses. The text provides a balanced approach to U.S. history, considering the people, events, and ideas that have shaped the United States from both the top down (politics, economics, diplomacy) and bottom up (eyewitness accounts, lived experience). U.S. History covers key forces that form the American experience, with particular attention to issues of race, class, and gender. |
| mining in the american west: The Mining Law of 1872 Gordon Morris Bakken, 2011-09-16 Bakken traces the roots of the mining law and details the way its unintended consequences have shaped western legal thought from Nome to Tombstone. |
| mining in the american west: African Americans on the Western Frontier Monroe Lee Billington, Roger D. Hardaway, 1998 Thirteen essays examine the roles African-Americans played in the settling of the American West, discussing the slaves of Mormons and California gold miners; African-American army men, cowboys, and newspaper founders; and others on the frontier. Also includes a bibliographic essay. |
| mining in the american west: The American West Transformed Gerald D. Nash, 1985 The industrialization of the American West during World War II brought about rapid and far-reaching social, cultural, and economic changes. Gerald D. Nash shows that the effect of the war on that region was nothing less than explosive. |
| mining in the american west: A Companion to the American West William Deverell, 2008-04-15 A Companion to the American West is a rigorous, illuminating introduction to the history of the American West. Twenty-five essays by expert scholars synthesize the best and most provocative work in the field and provide a comprehensive overview of themes and historiography. Covers the culture, politics, and environment of the American West through periods of migration, settlement, and modernization Discusses Native Americans and their conflicts and integration with American settlers |
| mining in the american west: Coal Wars David Bullock, 2014 Sleepy little Roslyn has always been a coal town, ever since a railway company opened the first mine in 1886. Strikes are a way of life for central Washington miners and their families, but Tuesday, April 3, 1934, is different. This time, the labor shutdown divides families and pits neighbor against neighbor. Fearful children beg their fathers not to cross picket lines. ¿I¿d rather have you yellow than dead,¿ one sobs. Supporters of the Western Miners Union of America¿ordinary wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters¿pelt cars with rocks, rotten eggs, pine cones, and cow pies. They curse and shriek insults. As the morning wears on, their taunts and assaults escalate. They fight for their husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons¿tough men performing dangerous jobs. The miners and their families want safer working conditions, fair wages, and a reasonable workday. They had expected their longtime national union, the United Mine Workers of America, to stand strong during contract negotiations. Instead, UMWA leaders chose dismissive actions, setting the stage for the rise of a new local organization, the Western Miners Union of America. With a country in the midst of a national economic depression, the fledgling group faces opposition from a mighty labor union, a powerful railroad empire, and even their own government. Communist activists and other radical labor groups offer support. But when conflicting alliances turn residents of Roslyn, Cle Elem, and Ronald against each other, a heated and violent battle follows, leaving deep, lasting scars. |
| mining in the american west: A Mine of Her Own Sally Springmeyer Zanjani, 1997 From the California gold rush through the mid-twentieth century, a special breed of women played an integral and heretofore unrecognized part in some of the most stirring adventures of the pioneer experience: the saintly Nellie Cashman; the copper queen Ferminia Sarras, known for her grand sprees; the former rodeo champion turned prospector; the ex-actress who snowshoed her way to Nome; and many more. Chosen as one of the top ten books of all time by the Mining History Association, A Mine of Her Own tells the definitive story of America's women prospectors for the first time. |
| mining in the american west: A Natural Order Lucas Foglia, 2012 |
| mining in the american west: Bravo 20 Richard Misrach, 1990 Shows public lands illegally used to test bombs |
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3 days ago · British Columbia must deliver on its mining potential: PwC Revenue from BC mining operations fell to C$13.9 billion in 2024 from C$15.8 billion in 2023, PwC's latest report shows.
Mining - Wikipedia
Mining is the extraction of valuable geological materials and minerals from the surface of the Earth. Mining is required to obtain most materials that cannot be grown through agricultural …
Mining | Definition, History, Examples, Types, Effects, & Facts ...
May 28, 2025 · Mining, process of extracting useful minerals from the surface of the Earth, including the seas. A mineral, with a few exceptions, is an inorganic substance occurring in …
Mining - National Geographic Society
Oct 19, 2023 · Mining is the process of extracting useful materials from the earth. Some examples of substances that are mined include coal, gold, or iron ore. Iron ore is the material from which …
What is Mining? - Geology In
Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, usually from an orebody, lode, vein, seam, reef or placer deposit. These deposits form a mineralized …
The Main Types of Mining and their Differences
Dec 24, 2024 · This article reviews different mining methods, their economic roles, and the sustainability challenges they pose in the context of resource extraction.
All About Mining - Minerals Education Coalition
Mining has been a part of the Earth’s history since prehistoric times. Mining has played a role throughout the millennia – from Neanderthals’ use of stone, to ancient Egyptians’, Greeks’, …
National Mining Association - The National Mining Association is …
Mining powers America, from the fuels that feed our energy grid to the metals that carry power to our homes and businesses. Coal and minerals play a key role in every stage of energy delivery.
Mining Magazine | Mining news and in-depth features
Trust Mining Magazine for daily breaking news, exclusive interviews, in-depth analysis, and updates on mining operations and development. Stay informed, stay ahead in the mining …
Mining 101: What You Need to Know About the Mining Industry
Mining is the extraction of materials from the earth that contain some value or economic interest to the miner. Mining is required to obtain any material that cannot be grown through agricultural …
MINING.COM - No 1 source of global mining news and opinion
3 days ago · British Columbia must deliver on its mining potential: PwC Revenue from BC mining operations fell to C$13.9 billion in 2024 from C$15.8 billion in 2023, PwC's latest report shows.
Mining - Wikipedia
Mining is the extraction of valuable geological materials and minerals from the surface of the Earth. Mining is required to obtain most materials that cannot be grown through agricultural …
Mining | Definition, History, Examples, Types, Effects, & Facts ...
May 28, 2025 · Mining, process of extracting useful minerals from the surface of the Earth, including the seas. A mineral, with a few exceptions, is an inorganic substance occurring in …
Mining - National Geographic Society
Oct 19, 2023 · Mining is the process of extracting useful materials from the earth. Some examples of substances that are mined include coal, gold, or iron ore. Iron ore is the material from which …
What is Mining? - Geology In
Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, usually from an orebody, lode, vein, seam, reef or placer deposit. These deposits form a mineralized …
The Main Types of Mining and their Differences
Dec 24, 2024 · This article reviews different mining methods, their economic roles, and the sustainability challenges they pose in the context of resource extraction.
All About Mining - Minerals Education Coalition
Mining has been a part of the Earth’s history since prehistoric times. Mining has played a role throughout the millennia – from Neanderthals’ use of stone, to ancient Egyptians’, Greeks’, …
National Mining Association - The National Mining Association is …
Mining powers America, from the fuels that feed our energy grid to the metals that carry power to our homes and businesses. Coal and minerals play a key role in every stage of energy delivery.
Mining Magazine | Mining news and in-depth features
Trust Mining Magazine for daily breaking news, exclusive interviews, in-depth analysis, and updates on mining operations and development. Stay informed, stay ahead in the mining …
Mining 101: What You Need to Know About the Mining Industry
Mining is the extraction of materials from the earth that contain some value or economic interest to the miner. Mining is required to obtain any material that cannot be grown through agricultural …
