Download or read book Colorado Ghost Towns and Mining Camps written by Sandra Dallas and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 1988-01-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Depicts the history of more than one hundred Colorado towns abandoned after the end of the mining boom

Download or read book The Trail of Gold and Silver written by Duane A. Smith and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2011-05-18 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Trail of Gold and Silver, historian Duane A. Smith details Colorado's mining saga - a story that stretches from the beginning of the gold and silver mining rush in the mid-nineteenth century into the twenty-first century. Gold and silver mining laid the foundation for Colorado's economy, and 1859 marked the beginning of a fever for these precious metals. Mining changed the state and its people forever, affecting settlement, territorial status, statehood, publicity, development, investment, economy, jobs both in and outside the industry, transportation, tourism, advances in mining and smelting technology, and urbanization. Moreover, the first generation of Colorado mining brought a fascinating collection of people and a new era to the region. Written in a lively manner by one of Colorado's preeminent historians, this book honors the 2009 sesquicentennial of Colorado's gold rush. Smith's narrative will appeal to anybody with an interest in the state's fascinating mining history over the past 150 years.

Download or read book Ores to Metals written by James E. Fell, Jr. and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive treatment of the smelting industry of Colorado, originally published in 1979, is now back in print with a new preface by the author. Packed with fascinating statistics and mining data, Ores to Metals details the people, technologies, and business decisions that have shaped the smelting industry in the Rockies. Although mining holds more of the glamour for those in and interested in the minerals industry, smelters have continuously played a critical role in the industry’s evolution since their introduction in Colorado in the 1860s. At that time, miners desperately needed new technology to recover gold and silver from ores resistant to milling. Beginning as small independent enterprises, progressing to larger integrated firms working in urban centers, and finally following a trend toward mergers, the entire industry was absorbed into one large holding company—the American Smelting and Refining Company. Over time, fortunes were won and lost, business success was converted to political success, and advances were made in science and metallurgy. Drawing on archival material, Fell expertly presents the triumphs and troubles of the entrepreneurs who built one of the great industries of the West.

Download or read book A Chinaman s Chance written by Liping Zhu and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writers and historians have traditionally portrayed Chinese immigrants in the nineteenth-century American West as victims. For them, the American frontier was a place that offered no more than a "Chinaman's chance". By examining the early history of the Boise Basin, Idaho, Liping Zhu challenges the stereotypical image of the Chinese pioneers. Looking at various aspects of their experience, he takes an entirely new approach to the study of this ethnic minority. Between 1863 and 1910, a large number of Chinese immigrants resided in Idaho's Boise Basin, searching for gold. As in many Rocky Mountain mining camps, they comprised a majority of the population. Unlike settlers in many other boom-and-bust western mining towns, the Chinese in the Boise Basin managed to stay there for more than half a century. Like other pioneers, the Chinese immigrants in this unique Rocky Mountain mining region had equal access to the pursuit of happiness. Their basic material needs were guaranteed, and many individuals were able to accumulate a considerable amount of wealth and climb up the economic ladder. The Chinese equality was also seen in frontier justice. To settle the disputes, they frequently challenged white opponents in the various courts as well as in gun battles. Thus, the Chinese played all the stereotypical frontier roles - victors, victims, and villains. Despite occasional conflicts and personal rivalries, race relations between the Chinese and Euroamericans were relativeiy good; cultural accommodation, not confrontation, was the predominant theme. The Idaho Chinese actually received opportunities far beyond what has been assumed.

Download or read book Creating Colorado written by William Wyckoff and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sprawling Piedmont cities, ghost towns on the plains, earth-toned placitas set against the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, mining camps transformed into ski resorts--these are some of the diverse regions in Colorado explored in this fascinating book. Historical geographer William Wyckoff traces the evolution of the state during its formative years from 1860 to 1940, chronicling its changing cultural landscapes, social communities, and connections to a larger America and showing that Colorado has exemplified the unfolding of a complex western environment. Wyckoff discusses how nature, capitalism, a growing federal political presence, and national cultural influences came together to produce a new human geography in Colorado. He explains the ways in which the state's distinctive settlement geographies each took on a special character that persists to the present. He leads the reader through the transformation of the state from wilderness to a distinct region capable of accommodating the diverse needs of ranchers, miners, merchants, farmers, and city dwellers. And he describes how a state created out of cartographic necessity has been given uniqueness and meaning by the people who live there.

Download or read book Red Light Women of the Rocky Mountains written by Jan MacKell and published by UNM Press. This book was released on 2011-10-12 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the development of the American West, prostitution grew and flourished within the mining camps, small towns, and cities of the nineteenth-century Rocky Mountains. Whether escaping a bad home life, lured by false advertising, or seeking to subsidize their income, thousands of women chose or were forced to enter an industry where they faced segregation and persecution, fines and jailing, and battled the hazards of disease, drug addiction, physical abuse, pregnancy, and abortion. They dreamed of escape through marriage or retirement, but more often found relief only in death. An integral part of western history, the stories of these women continue to fascinate readers and captivate the minds of historians today. Expanding on the research she did for Brothels, Bordellos, and Bad Girls (UNM Press), historian Jan MacKell moves beyond the mining towns of Colorado to explore the history of prostitution in the Rocky Mountain states of Arizona, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. Each state had its share of working girls and madams like Big Nose Kate or Calamity Jane who remain celebrities in the annals of history, but MacKell also includes the stories of lesser-known women whose role in this illicit trade nonetheless shaped our understanding of the American West.

Download or read book The Slums of Aspen written by Lisa Sun-Hee Park and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2013-07-22 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, Allan Schnaiberg Outstanding Publication Award, presented by the Environment & Technology section of the American Sociological Association How the elite ski resort reshaped the socio-economic and demographic landscape in pursuit of profit and pleasure Environmentalism usually calls to mind images of peace and serenity, a oneness with nature, and a shared sense of responsibility. But one town in Colorado, under the guise of environmental protection, passed a resolution limiting immigration, bolstering the privilege of the wealthy and scapegoating Latin American newcomers for the area’s current and future ecological problems. This might have escaped attention save for the fact that this wasn’t some rinky-dink backwater. It was Aspen, Colorado, playground of the rich and famous and the West’s most elite ski town. Tracking the lives of immigrant laborers through several years of exhaustive fieldwork and archival digging, The Slums of Aspen tells a story that brings together some of the most pressing social problems of the day: environmental crises, immigration, and social inequality. Park and Pellow demonstrate how these issues are intertwined in the everyday experiences of people who work and live in this wealthy tourist community. Offering a new understanding of a little known class of the super-elite, of low-wage immigrants (mostly from Latin America) who have become the foundation for service and leisure in this famous resort, and of the recent history of the ski industry, Park and Pellow expose the ways in which Colorado boosters have reshaped the landscape and altered ecosystems in pursuit of profit and pleasure. Of even greater urgency, they frame how environmental degradation and immigration reform have become inextricably linked in many regions of the American West, a dynamic that interferes with the efforts of valorous environmental causes, often turning away from conservation and toward insidious racial privilege.

Download or read book Aspen written by Malcolm J. Rohrbough and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1986 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All those who delight in modern Aspen as a ski resort and cultural center, as well as those who enjoy reading about all the old Wild West, will be charmed by this book. In its heyday as a mining town, Aspen rivaled the camps of the California Gold Rush, Virginia City in Nevada's Comstock Lode, and Leadville in Colorado, and from 1887 to 1893 it was the riches silver-mining center in America. Aspen's story begins in 1879 with seven prospectors camped in tents by the intersection of the Roaring Fork River and Castle Creek at the foot of Aspen and Smuggler Mountains. The first great spurt of growth came in 1883, when Jerome B. Wheeler, a partner in Macy's Department Store, bought several claims and built roads and a smelter. The arrival of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad in 1887 transformed Aspen into a major metropolis by the standards of the day, with some 12,000 inhabitants and services that included six newspapers, two banks, an opera house, electric lights and telephones, a street car system, a waterworks, and schools and churches. The city became home to colorful personalities like B. Clark Wheeler, grandiose promoter and editor of the Aspen Times, and Davis H. Waite, his father-in-law and a local reformer who was elected governor of Colorado in 1892. Rohrbough brings to life the dynamic entrepreneurs such as David M. Hyman and Henry B. Gillespie who made the town and profited from it, the vicious court fights that resulted from mining disputes, and most effectively of all, the atmosphere of a booming mining community. In July 1893 the price of silver dropped sharply and within a week, all the mines in Aspen closed. By 1930, Aspen was virtually a ghost town, with a population of 705. But then a new generation of entrepreneurs discovered another natural resource in this former mining camp. It was snow.

Download or read book Wall of Silver written by Richard Kellogg and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Land of Contrast written by Frederic J. Athearn and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Making of Our Country written by Smith Burnham and published by . This book was released on 1921 with total page 702 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Bonanza Trail written by Muriel Sibell Wolle and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-12 with total page 894 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This classic account of Old West mining camps and gold-hunting prospectors is “a successful digging of a rich historical vein . . . phenomenal” (The New York Times). This colorful blend of history, reference, and travelogue brings to life the frenzied search for precious metals in nineteenth-century America through a tour of mining camps and former boomtowns, many now abandoned. It reveals the unbelievable privations men endured in the high Sierra and the Rockies and in crossing the desert wastes of Arizona, Utah and Nevada; the mines first discovered in New Mexico by Coronado and his men four centuries ago; and the first great rush that hit California in 1849. She follows the miners who poured in successive waves into the golden gulches of Oregon, Washington and Idaho, climbed to the deeper mines high in the mountains of Montana, Wyoming and Colorado, and dared at last to penetrate the hostile Black Hills of South Dakota. In personally following the trails of the pioneering prospectors, Wolle stumbles upon mute evidence of past bloodshed, lust, and struggle, and recreates the excitement of the period. A gifted artist, she also includes maps and “more than a hundred poignant sketches conveying the loneliness, melancholy and crumbling dryness of ghost cities which throbbed once with the hopes of many people” (The New York Times). “The fascinating and definitive book on the ghost and near-ghost towns of the Old West.” —Lucius Beebe, The Territorial Enterprise “Good popular history and [a] useful reference work.” —Library Journal

Download or read book The Mountainous West written by William Wyckoff and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1995-01-01 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traditional interpretations of the American West have concentrated on the importance of its aridity to the region's cultural evolution and development. But the West is marked by a second fact of physical geography that distinguished it (from the experiences of settlers) from the east. As pioneers struggled with the climate west of the hundredth meridian, they were also confronted by mountains strewn across the region and offering their own set of limitations and opportunities. This volume focuses on these green islands of the Mountainous West that have witnessed patterns of settlement and development distinct from their lowland neighbors. In thirteen essays, the contributors address the mountains by means of five themes: the mountains as barriers to movement, islands of moisture, a zone of concentrated resources, an area of government control, and a restorative sanctuary. The focus ranges from California's Sierra Nevada to the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, Utah, and Montana. William K. Wyckoff is an associate professor, Department of Earth Sciences, Montana State University. He is the author of The Developer's Frontier: The Making of the Western New York Landscape and of articles in many journals, including The California Geographer, Social Science Journal, Geographical Review, and Journal of Historical Geography. Lary M. Dilsaver is a professor in the Department of Geology and Geography, University of South Alabama. The author, with William Tweed, of Challenge of the Big Trees: A Resource History of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, he has also written articles in journals such as Geographical Review, Annals of Tourism Research, and Yearbook of the Association of Pacific CoastGeographers.

Download or read book Mining the Borderlands written by Sarah E. M. Grossman and published by University of Nevada Press. This book was released on 2018-10-01 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the dawn of the twentieth century, the US-Mexico border was home to some of the largest and most technologically advanced industrial copper mines. This despite being geographically, culturally, and financially far-removed from traditional urban centers of power. Mining the Borderlands argues that this was only possible because of the emergence of mining engineers—a distinct technocratic class of professionals who connected capital, labor, and expertise. Mining engineers moved easily between remote mining camps and the upscale parlors of east coast investors. Working as labor managers and technical experts, they were involved in the daily negotiations, which brought private US capital to the southwestern border. The success of the massive capital-intensive mining ventures in the region depended on their ability to construct different networks, serving as intermediaries to groups that rarely coincided. Grossman argues that this didn’t just lead to bigger and more efficient mines, but served as part of the ongoing project of American territorial and economic expansion. By integrating the history of technical expertise into the history of the transnational mining industry, this in-depth look at borderlands mining explains how American economic hegemony was established in a border region peripheral to the federal governments of both Washington, D.C. and Mexico City.

Download or read book Historical Geography of the Georgetown Colorado Silver Mining Area written by James Gibson Biggins and published by . This book was released on 1973 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Valley of Opportunity written by Steven F. Mehls and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 1982 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This publication represents the latest Class I (History) to be written for the western slope of Colorado. Our three districts in this region of Colorado now have histories specifically for them. Such works provide a valuable and needed synthesis of history and literature for these areas and also gives our managers data that are used on a daily basis for land-use decision making. Multiple land use is a Bureau mission that is being met. Oil and gas, coal, oil shale and other energy minerals, not to mention rights-of-ways, grazing programs, recreation projects and land-use planning, are all supported by histories such as this. Resource Management Plans and subsequent Environmental Impact Statements that are produced for the Bureau's Area Offices are the foundations for long-term land-use management. The Glenwood Springs, Colorado, Resource Management Plan/Environmental Impact Statement is a Bureau pilot document and serves as a management tool for the Glenwood Springs Resource Area. This history, Volley of Opportunity supports the Resource Management Plan. In addition, a history provides background and support for the upcoming Grand Junction Resource Area Management Plan/Environmental Impact Statement. The Volley of Opportunity has already been used for Oil Shale Environmental Statements and for the Federal Coal Leasing Program in the Grand Junction, Colorado, District. Truly, such histories are not only multiple-use in scope but are also management tools that provide basic understanding for land use decisions. Additionally, this history represents an ongoing effort to provide the public reader with a work that is not only interesting but is also well researched. In this way, another sector is satisfied. These histories are used by schools, libraries, universities and, of course, the general public. Again, multiple-use is served. Finally, as the Volley of Opportunity was being prepared, it happened that the City of Grand Junction's Centennial would occur in 1982. Coincidentally, the Glenwood Springs Resource Management Plan will be published in November 1982. Since this history serves several purposes, it is appropriate that it also is the Bureau's contribution to Grand Junction's Centennial celebration.

Download or read book Mines and Minerals written by and published by . This book was released on 1909 with total page 606 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: