Mining California : an ecological history / Andrew Isenberg.
Isenberg, Andrew C. (Andrew Christian)
2005
GE155.C2 I84 2005 (Mapit)
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Title
Mining California : an ecological history / Andrew Isenberg.
Author
Isenberg, Andrew C. (Andrew Christian)
Edition
1st ed.
ISBN
0809095351 hardcover alkaline paper
9780809095353 hardcover alkaline paper
Publication Details
New York : Hill and Wang, 2005.
Language
English
Description
242 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.
Call Number
GE155.C2 I84 2005
Dewey Decimal Classification
333.7/09794
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 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. --Publisher.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [215]-229) and index.
Record Appears in
On-Campus Resources > Books
All Resources
The political economy of California industrialization
The alchemy of hydraulic mining : technology, law, and resource-intensive industrialization
Banking on Sacramento : urban development, flood control, and political legitimization
Capitalizing on nature : innovation and production in the redwood forests
Gambling on the grassland : kinship, capital, and ecology in Southern California
The enclosure of the plateau : land and labor in the high lake country
Epilogue : economic development and the California environment.

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