Mining California An Ecological History
Mining California An Ecological History
- ISBN 13:
9780809069323
- ISBN 10:
0809069326
- Format: Paperback
- Copyright: 07/25/2006
- Publisher: Hill and Wang
New From $17.37
Sorry, this item is currently unavailable.
List Price $18.00 Save $0.63
New
$17.37
Usually Ships in 2-3 Business Days
We Buy This Book Back!
Included with your book
Free Shipping On Every Order
Note: Supplemental materials are not guaranteed with Rental or Used book purchases.
Extend or Purchase Your Rental at Any Time
Need to keep your rental past your due date? At any time before your due date you can extend or purchase your rental through your account.
Summary
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 milerivers 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'sNature's Metropolishas 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.