| Edition |
1st ed. |
| Description |
242 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
|
text txt rdacontent |
|
unmediated n rdamedia |
|
volume nc rdacarrier |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 215-229) and index. |
| Contents |
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. |
| 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. |
| Subject |
California -- Environmental conditions -- History.
|
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Nature -- Effect of human beings on -- California.
|
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Mineral industries -- California -- History.
|
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Mines and mineral resources -- California.
|
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Forests and forestry -- Effect of mining on -- California.
|
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Rivers -- Effect of mining on -- California.
|
|
Mines and mineral resources. (OCoLC)fst01022541
|
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Mineral industries. (OCoLC)fst01022218
|
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Ecology. (OCoLC)fst00901476
|
|
Nature -- Effect of human beings on.
(OCoLC)fst01034564
|
|
California. (OCoLC)fst01204928
|
| Genre/Form |
History. (OCoLC)fst01411628
|
| ISBN |
0809095351 (alk. paper) |
|
9780809095353 (alk. paper) |
|
0809069326 |
|
9780809069323 |
| Standard No. |
9780809095353 |
|
