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Mining California: An Ecological History
Hill and Wang
ISBN13:
9780809069323
$18.00
$17.00
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, heres 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 Californias 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 Californias forests and grasslands. Not since William Cronons Natures Metropolis has a historian so skillfully applied John Muirs insightWhen we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universeto the telling of the history of the American West. Beautifully told, this is western environmental history at its finest.
- | Author: Andrew C. Isenberg
- | Publisher: Hill and Wang
- | Publication Date: July 25, 2006
- | Number of Pages: 256 pages
- | Language: English
- | Binding: Paperback
- | ISBN-10: 0809069326
- | ISBN-13: 9780809069323
- Author:
- Andrew C. Isenberg
- Publisher:
- Hill and Wang
- Publication Date:
- July 25, 2006
- Number of pages:
- 256 pages
- Language:
- English
- Binding:
- Paperback
- ISBN-10:
- 0809069326
- ISBN-13:
- 9780809069323