Emily Skinner, vibrant, observant, eternally young-at-heart, emigrated from Britain to Australia in 1854. Not only did she keep a ship-board journal, she later recorded her reminiscences of a colourful life as a miner's wife. Here, published for the first time, is Emily's account of a voyage half-way around the word to marry her sweetheart. She evokes wild storms, sea sickness, the malaise and boredom, the gossip and intrigue. Her impressions of the young town of Melbourne follow, as well as her recollections of what is now the town of Beechworth and the surrounding goldfields. Emily reaches across the years with her vivid descriptions contrasting the realities in her workday lifea "cooking, washing, childmindinga "with the wild dreams and aspirations of the miners. This personable account speaks to every reader as a refreshing and energetic story of a pioneering life which was tough and rigorous but always embraced.

With a scholar's precision and a novelist's eye, Stefan Kanfer tells the inside story of De Beers Consolidated Mines - from the nineteenth century diamond rush that transformed Johannes De Beer's humble South African farm into an exotic klondike, to the Oppenheimers' shadow empire that has achieved umatched global reach.

The mining sector is of major importance to the economy of Chile. Although dominated by copper - Chile is the world's leading producer - its production of potassium and sodium nitrate, gold, silver, rhenium, lithium iodine, molybdenum, boron and selenium, for example, is significant. Prominent representatives of the international minerals industry have contributed the papers that appear in Mining Latin America/Mineria Latinoamericana, the volume that lends its name to the conference organized by the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy, in association with the Instituto de Ingenieros de Minas de Chile, the Sociedad Nacional de Mineria Chilena and Latinomineria being held in Santiago de Chile in May, 1994. This book should be of interest to mining engineers, geotechnical engineers, geologists, and mineralogists.

The coal mine represented much more than a way of making a living to the miners of Thurber, Texas, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries--it represented a way of life. Coal mining dominated Thurber's work life, and miners dominated its social life. The large immigrant population that filled the mines in Thurber had arrived from more than a dozen nations, which lent a certain distinctiveness to this Texas town. In 1888 Robert D. Hunter and the Texas & Pacific Coal Company founded the town of Thurber on the site of Johnson Mines, a small coalmining village on the western edge of North Central Texas where Palo Pinto, Erath, and Eastland counties converged. William Whipple and Harvey E. Johnson first established a small community there in 1886 as the railroads' demand for coal enhanced the possibility of financial reward for entrepreneurs willing to risk the effort to tap the thin bituminous coal veins that lay beneath the ground. Where the first comers failed, Hunter and his stockholders prevailed. For almost forty years the company mined coal and owned and operated a town that by 1910 served as home to more than three thousand residents. In some respects, the town mirrored the work and culture of bituminous coal mining communities throughout the United States. Like most, it experienced labor upheaval that reached a dramatic climax in 1903 when the United Mine Workers, emboldened and strengthened by successes in other parts of the Southwest, organized Thurber's miners. Unlike elsewhere, however, the miners' success at Thurber was not fraught with violence and loss of life; furthermore, in the strike's aftermath good relations generally characterized employer/employeenegotiations. Marilyn Rhinehart examines the culture of the miners' work, the demographics and social life of the community, and the benefits and constraints of life in a company town. Above all she demonstrates the features both at work and after work of a culture shaped by the occupation of coal mining.

"This is the fascinating story of Howard E. Perry and his Terlingua fiefdom on the edge of Big Bend National Park. Ragsdale's "Quicksilver: ""Terlingua"" and the ""Chisos"" Mining Company" is perhaps the best book written on the Big Bend country."--William H. Goetzmann
Before Terlingua achieved some notoriety as the site of the annual World Championship Chili Cookoff, the ghost town was the bustling center of the mercury mining industry in the United States. This study, available again in a redesigned paperback edition, examines the company town and its feudal lord, Chicago industrialist Howard E. Perry, who built a hilltop mansion overlooking the dry domain.
Based on many primary sources, "Quicksilver" is solidly researched and historically sound. Color and authenticity come from the author's interviews with such individuals as Robert Cartledge, who for nearly three decades worked as store clerk, purchasing agent, and finally general manager of the Chisos Mining Company in Terlingua.

Weak rocks encountered in open pit mines cover a wide variety of materials, with properties ranging between soil and rock. As such, they can provide a significant challenge for the slope designer. For these materials, the mass strength can be the primary control in the design of the pit slopes, although structures can also play an important role. Because of the typically weak nature of the materials, groundwater and surface water can also have a controlling influence on stability. Guidelines for Open Pit Slope Design in Weak Rocks is a companion to Guidelines for Open Pit Slope Design, which was published in 2009 and dealt primarily with strong rocks. Both books were commissioned under the Large Open Pit (LOP) project, which is sponsored by major mining companies. These books provide summaries of the current state of practice for the design, implementation and assessment of slopes in open pits, with a view to meeting the requirements of safety, as well as the recovery of anticipated ore reserves. This book, which follows the general cycle of the slope design process for open pits, contains 12 chapters. These chapters were compiled and written by industry experts and contain a large number of case histories. The initial chapters address field data collection, the critical aspects of determining the strength of weak rocks, the role of groundwater in weak rock slope stability and slope design considerations, which can differ somewhat from those applied to strong rock. The subsequent chapters address the principal weak rock types that are encountered in open pit mines, including cemented colluvial sediments, weak sedimentary mudstone rocks, soft coals and chalk, weak limestone, saprolite, soft iron ores and other leached rocks, and hydrothermally altered rocks. A final chapter deals with design implementation aspects, including mine planning, design implementation, monitoring, surface water control and closure of weak rock slopes. Key Features: Illustration of the best practice in modern open pit mines State of the art approaches for challenging designs Use of numerous case histories written by large-open pit operators to illustrate state of practice Individual chapters/sections written by leaders in the industry As with the other books in this series, Guidelines for Open Pit Slope Design in Weak Rocks provides guidance to practitioners involved in the design and implementation of open pit slopes, particularly geotechnical engineers, mining engineers, geologists and other personnel working at operating mines.

While other historians have skated over the labour unrest of 1919, focusing instead on the general strike of 1926, Martyn Ives uncovers a remarkable incidence of unofficial mass strikes in the coalfields, waged against mineowners, the government, and trade union leaders. Led by revolutionaries, this mass movement also offered a glimpse of an alternative road to socialism.

When prospector “Ed” Schieffelin set out from Fort Huachuca in 1877 in search of silver, skeptics told him alL he’d find would be his own tombstone. What he did discover, of course, was one ofthe richest veins of silver in the West—a strike he wryly called Tombstone. Briefly a boomtown, in less than a decade Tombstonewas fading into what, for the next halfcentury, looked more like a ghost town. How is it, Kara McCormack asks, that the resurrection of a few of the town’s long-dead figures, caught forever in a thirty-second shoot-out, revived the moribund Tombstone— and turned it into what the Arizona Office of Tourism today calls “equal partsDeadwood and Disney”? A meditation on the marketing of “authenticity,” Imagining Tombstone considers this “most authentic western town in America” as the intersection of history and mythmaking, entertainment and education, the wish to preserve, the will to succeed, Imagining Tombstone The Town Too Tough to Die Kara L. McCormack and the need to survive. McCormack revisits the facts behind the feud that culminated in the Earp brothers’ and Doc Holliday’s long walk to their showdown with the Clantons and McLaurys—a walk reenacted by so many actors that it became a ritual of Hollywood westerns and a staple of present-day Tombstone’s tourist offerings. Taking into account decades of preservation efforts, stories told by Hollywood, performances on the town’s streets, the fervor of Earp historians and western history buffs, and global notions of the West, Imagining Tombstone shows how the town’s tenacity depends on far more than a “usable past.” If Tombstone is “The Town Too Tough to Die,” it is also, as this edifying and entertaining book makes clear, the place where authentic history and its counterpart in popular culture reveal their lasting and lucrative hold on the public imagination.

This book assesses the state of the science on the environmental impacts of mountaintop mines and valley fills (MTM-VF) on streams in the Central Appalachian Coalfields. These coalfields cover about 48,000 square kilometres (12 million acres) in West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee, USA. This book focuses on the impacts of mountaintop removal coal mining, which, as its name suggests, involves removing all -- or some portion -- of the top of a mountain or ridge to expose and mine one or more coal seams. The excess overburden is disposed of in constructed fills in small valleys or hollows adjacent to the mining site. Conclusions are drawn, based on evidence from peer-reviewed literature, and from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement released in 2005, and that MTM-VF lead directly to five principal alterations of stream ecosystems: (1) springs, and ephemeral, intermittent, and small perennial streams are permanently lost with the removal of the mountain and from burial under fill, (2) concentrations of major chemical ions are persistently elevated downstream, (3) degraded water quality reaches levels that are acutely lethal to standard laboratory test organisms, (4) selenium concentrations are elevated, reaching concentrations that have caused toxic effects in fish and birds and (5) macroinvertebrate and fish communities are consistently degraded.

How Canada became an empire in its own right and how Canadian life came to be mediated through mineral extraction. Extraction is the process and practice that defines Canada, at home and abroad. Of the nearly 20,000 mining projects in the world from Africa to Latin America, more than half are Canadian operated. Not only does the mining economy employ close to 400,000 people in Canada, it contributed $57 billion CAD to Canada's GDP in 2014 alone. Globally, more than 75 percent of the world's mining firms are based in Canada. The scale of these statistics naturally extends the logic of Canada's historical legacy as state, nation, and now as global resource empire. Canada, once a far-flung northern outpost of the British Empire, has become an empire in its own right. This book examines both the historic and contemporary Canadian culture of extraction, with essays, interviews, archival material, and multimedia visualizations. The essayists and interviewees-who include such prominent figures as Naomi Klein and Michael Ignatieff-come from a range of fields, including geography, art, literature, architecture, science, environment, and business. All consider how Canadian life came to be mediated through mineral extraction. When did this empire emerge? How far does it reach? Who gains, who loses? What alternatives exist? On the 150th anniversary of the creation of Canada by Queen Victoria's Declaration of Confederation, it is time for Canada to reexamine and reimagine its imperial role throughout the world, from coast to coast, from one continent to another. Authors & Image Contributors A Tribe Called Red, Allan Adam, Howard Adams, Yassin 'Narcy' Alsalman, Christopher Alton, Pedro Aparicio, Margaret Atwood, Aaron Barcant, Real V. Benoit, Justice Thomas Berger, Hernan Bianchi Benguria, Susan Blight, Paula Butler, David Chancellor, Lianne Marie Leda Charlie, Jean Chretien, Tiffany Kaewen Dang, Dene Nation National Office, Alain Deneault, Eriel Tchekwie Deranger, Diaguitas Huascoaltinos, Mary Eberts, Genevieve Ennis Hume, Georges Erasmus, Andy Everson, Pierre Falcon, Evan Farley, Alex Golub, David Hargreaves, Daniel Hemmendinger, Gord Hill, James Hopkinson, Hume Atelier, Michael Ignatieff, Hayden King, Thomas King, Naomi Klein, Erica Violet Lee, Kari Polanyi Levitt, Nina-Marie Lister, Ryan McMahon, Zannah Mae Matson, Chris Meyer, Ossie Michelin, Jacob Moginot, Kent Monkman, Doug Morrison, James Murray, Joan K. Murray, Phoebe Nahanni, Charmaine Nelson, Eli Nelson, George Osodi, Maryanne Pearce, Barry Pottle, Moura Quayle, Tushar Rajyaguru, Louis Riel, RVTR, Olga Semenovych, Michelle St. John, Maurice Strong, Molly Swain, Ashley C. Thompson, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, John Van Nostrand, Chelsea Vowel, Mel Watkins, Sally M. Weaver, Patrick Wolfe, Rita Wong, The Wyrd Sisters, Sohyun Kate Yoon, Suzanne Zeller

This book examines the 2011 edition of U.S. Geological Survey's Mineral Commodity Summaries (MCS), which includes information on events, trends and issues for each mineral commodity as well as discussions and tabular presentations on domestic industry structure, government programs, tariffs, 5-year salient statistics and world production and resources. In 2010, the value of mineral production increased in the United States, suggesting that the domestic non-fuel minerals industries, especially the metallic minerals industries, were beginning to feel the effects of recovery from the economic recession that began in December 2007 and lasted well into 2009. Some major mining sectors continued to struggle, however, with no increase in production or value of production.

Coal mine disasters in the United States are relatively rare events; many of the roughly 50,000 miners underground will never have to evacuate a mine in an emergency during their careers. However, for those that do, the consequences have the potential to be devastating. U.S. mine safety practices have received increased attention in recent years because of the highly publicized coal mine disasters in 2006 and 2010. Investigations have centered on understanding both how to prevent or mitigate emergencies and what capabilities are needed by miners to self-escape to a place of safety successfully. This report focuses on the latter - the preparations for self-escape. In the wake of 2006 disasters, the U.S. Congress passed the Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act of 2006 (MINER Act), which was designed to strengthen existing mine safety regulations and set forth new measures aimed at improving accident preparedness and emergency response in underground coal mines. Since that time, the efforts of the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) have contributed to safety improvements in the mining industry. However, the Upper Big Branch mine explosion in 2010 served as a reminder to remain ever vigilant on improving the prevention of mine disasters and preparations to help miners survive in the event of emergencies. This study was set in the context of human-systems integration (HSI), a systems approach that examines the interaction of people, tasks, and equipment and technology in the pursuit of a goal. It recognizes this interaction occurs within, and is influenced by, the broader environmental context. A key premise of human-systems integration is that much important information is lost when the various tasks within a system are considered individually or in isolation rather than in interaction with the whole system. Improving Self-Escape from Underground Coal Mines, the task of self-escape is part of the mine safety system. Table of Contents Front Matter Summary 1 Introduction 2 Mine Safety Regulations and Practices 3 Understanding Self-Escape 4 Decision Making 5 Safety Culture 6 Training References Appendix A: Regulations Relevant to Self-Escape Appendix B: Mine Accident, Injury and Illness Report Appendix C: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff

An oral history of the West Virginia Mine Wars published to coincide with the centennial of the Battle of Blair Mountain. In 1972 Anne Lawrence came to West Virginia at the invitation of the Miners for Democracy movement to conduct interviews with participants in, and observers of, the Battle of Blair Mountain and other Appalachian mine wars of the 1920s and '30s. The set of oral histories she collected-the only document of its kind-circulated for many years as an informal typescript volume, acquiring an almost legendary status among those intrigued by the subject. Key selections from it appear here for the first time as a published book, supplemented with introductory material, maps, and photographs. The volume's vivid, conversational mode invites readers into miners' lived experiences and helps us understand why they took up arms to fight anti-union forces in some of the nation's largest labor uprisings. Published to coincide with the celebration of the Blair Mountain centennial in 2021, On Dark and Bloody Ground includes a preface by public historian Catherine Venable Moore and an afterword by Cecil E. Roberts of the United Mine Workers of America.

Treasure House to the World tells the story of the rise of Canadian gold mining and its environmental consequences in the Abitibi region of northern Ontario in the early twentieth century. It connects Canadian gold mining to its international context and demonstrates how mining companies redistribute the harms associated with extraction to nearby communities.

On a misty morning in eastern Kentucky, cross-bearing Christians gather for a service on a surface-mined mountain. They pray for the health and renewal of the land and for their communities, lamenting the corporate greed of the mining companies. On another day, in southern West Virginia, Andrew Jordon hosts Bible study in a small cabin overlooking a disused 1,400-acre surface mine. He believes his efforts to reclaim sites like these represent responsible environmental stewardship. In Sacred Mountains, Andrew R. H. Thompson highlights scenes such as these in order to propose a Christian ethical analysis of the controversial mining practice that has increasingly divided the nation and has often led to fierce and even violent confrontations. Thompson draws from the arguments of H. Richard Niebuhr, whose work establishes an ideal foundation for understanding Appalachia. Thompson provides a thorough introduction to the issues surrounding surface mining, including the environmental consequences and the resultant religious debates, and highlights the discussions being carried out in the media and by scholarly works. He also considers five popular perspectives (ecofeminism, liberation theology, environmental justice, environmental pragmatism, and political ecology) and offers his own framework and guidelines for moral engagement with the subject. Thompson's arguments add to the work of other ethicists and theologians by examining the implications of culture in a variety of social, historical, and religious contexts. A groundbreaking and nuanced study that looks past the traditionally conflicting stereotypes about religion and environmental consciousness in Appalachia, Sacred Mountains offers a new approach that unifies all communities, regardless of their beliefs.

Current trends in mining are driving the demand for subsurface extraction technologies with low surface impacts that protect surface and ground water. Moreover, the necessity for sustainable mineral extraction technologies has increased as regulatory restrictions and technical challenges to traditional mining grow with production from deeper and deeper remaining metal resources. This book provides a state-of-the-art synopsis of in situ metal recovery and remediation technologies based on both research and commercial projects. In situ recovery uses fluid-based metal dissolution and recovery to extract one or more commodities from a largely intact rock mass using similar processes that create ore deposits. The fluid is circulated through ore by gravity and/or pumps using injection and recovery wells. A processing facility is usually established at the surface of the operation to extract the commodity of interest. The barren fluid is then recirculated back into the recovery circuit. In situ remediation uses similar wellfield technology and chemical processes to stabilize metal contaminants by injecting agents that form stable solids or less toxic species when combined with a contaminant. The fluid depleted in the stabilizing agent is then pumped back to the surface and regenerated. In situ mining or recovery has been successfully applied to several commodities, including uranium, sulfur, evaporites, and copper, which have favorable chemical properties and deposit types for in situ recovery.

Being a lover of steam locomotives is a bit like chasing a setting sun - with the real diehards searching out survivors further and further from their home territory. Many enthusiasts would mark August 1968 as the end of 'proper' steam locomotives in the United Kingdom, the date when British Rail withdrew their final examples. However, for those in the know, steam continued to contribute to the British economy in industrial settings for nearly a further two decades. In the coal and ironstone mining industry, in power generation, in chemical factories, steelworks and foundries, small, rugged locomotives continued to toil away on a daily basis. Some were lovingly cared for, while others were worked into the ground. The author discovered colliery steam by accident and often explored this world while accompanied by his younger, equally enthusiastic, brother. This led them to some of the more obscure and less traditionally scenic parts of the country, but some of these industrial settings had a haunting beauty of their own. The photographs featured here give a taste of this particular setting for steam workhorses.

The exploiting of stone in Cumbria dates back to the Neolithic period when volcanic rock from the high Lakeland fells was worked to make hand axes. In Roman times sandstone was extensively quarried for building Hadrian's Wall and forts like Carlisle. The industry expanded in the Middle Ages as stone was needed for high-status buildings like castles, tower houses and monasteries as well as for bridges and, later on, for dry-stone walls and road building. Cumbria has a wide variety of rock types that proved suitable for building and other uses, and quarry workings, large and small, can be found across the county. Countless abandoned quarries exploited limestone, sandstone, flagstone, slate, granite, sands and clays and gypsum, and quarrying was a major local industry in the fells, along the west coast and on the Pennine edge. For many centuries, men laboured in difficult and dangerous conditions, in all weathers and in very remote locations, to supply increasing demands for stone products, many of which were exported. Some quarries still operate today, supplying markets across the country. The story of how stone was won is an important part of our disappearing heritage: this book explores the rich legacy of quarrying across Cumbria.

Identifies good practices for targeting limited financial resources to conduct integrity due diligence checks for extractive sector licensing. Principles contained will help countries to meet EITI beneficial ownership disclosure requirements to improve integrity and transparency in regulatory licensing processes in extractive sectors.

The Coeur d'Alenes, a twenty-five by ten mile portion of the Idaho Panhandle, is home to one of the most productive mining districts in world history. Historically the globe's richest silver district and also one of the nation's biggest lead and zinc producers, the Coeur d'Alenes' legacy also includes environmental pollution on an epic scale. For decades local waters were fouled with tailings from the mining district's more than one hundred mines and mills and the air surrounding Kellogg, Idaho was laced with lead and other toxic heavy metals issuing from the Bunker Hill Company's smelter. The same industrial processes that damaged the environment and harmed human health, however, also provided economic sustenance to thousands of local residents and a string of proud, working-class communities. Living with Lead endeavors to untangle the costs and benefits of a century of mining, milling, and smelting in a small western city and the region that surrounds it.

This important study examines the role of Africa's strategic mineral resources in global defense and in the international economic system. Beginning with an overview of the situation as a whole, the author discusses the role of transnational corporations in the exploitation of Africa's mineral resources and explains the implications of the theories of Matthew Effect, dependency, core-periphery, and imperialism. Among the issues Ogunbadejo considers are the political economy of strategic minerals; the political significance of American, European, and Soviet dependence on these minerals vis-a-vis their relations with the producer nations; and the impact of geopolitical considerations on U.S./South African relations.

Barnsley, Rotherham and Worksop sit on top of the Midland coalfield, stretching from Nottingham into Yorkshire and the mining industry in this area once supported tens of thousands of jobs in collieries dotted across the landscape. In this book, the culmination of some forty years of research, author Ken Wain tells the story of the mining industry in the area from the primitive mines of the medieval period to the rundown of the industry and the end of deep mining in Britain. The Coal Mining Industry of Barnsley, Rotherham and Worksop tells the life stories of the many collieries in this part of England. From the large towns to small villages built around their local pit, Ken gives an insight into the growth of coal mining in the area as well as some of the human stories of disaster and of the working and living conditions for the miners and their families.

On the basis of an examination of the colonial mercury and silver production processes and related labor systems, Mercury, Mining, and Empire explores the effects of mercury pollution in colonial Huancavelica, Peru, and Potosi, in present-day Bolivia. The book presents a multifaceted and interwoven tale of what colonial exploitation of indigenous peoples and resources left in its wake. It is a socio-ecological history that explores the toxic interrelationships between mercury and silver production, urban environments, and the people who lived and worked in them. Nicholas A. Robins tells the story of how native peoples in the region were conscripted into the noxious ranks of foot soldiers of proto-globalism, and how their fate, and that of their communities, was and still is chained to it."

From sun-baked Black Mesa to the icy coast of Labrador, native lands for decades have endured mining ventures that have only lately been subject to environmental laws and a recognition of treaty rights. Yet conflicts surrounding mining development and indigenous peoples continue to challenge policy-makers.
This book gets to the heart of resource conflicts and environmental impact assessment by asking why indigenous communities support environmental causes in some cases of mining development but not in others. Saleem Ali examines environmental conflicts between mining companies and indigenous communities and with rare objectivity offers a comparative study of the factors leading to those conflicts.
"Mining, the Environment, and Indigenous Development Conflicts" presents four cases from the United States and Canada: the Navajos and Hopis with Peabody Coal in Arizona; the Chippewas with the Crandon Mine proposal in Wisconsin; the Chipewyan Inuits, Dene and Cree with Cameco in Saskatchewan; and the Innu and Inuits with Inco in Labrador. These cases exemplify different historical relationships with government and industry and provide an instance of high and low levels of Native resistance in each country. Through these cases, Ali analyzes why and under what circumstances tribes agree to negotiated mining agreements on their lands, and why some negotiations are successful and others not.
Ali challenges conventional theories of conflict based on economic or environmental cost-benefit analysis, which do not fully capture the dynamics of resistance. He proposes that the underlying issue has less to do with environmental concerns than with sovereignty, which often complicates relationships between tribes and environmental organizations. Activist groups, he observes, fail to understand such tribal concerns and often have problems working with tribes on issues where they may presume a common environmental interest.
This book goes beyond popular perceptions of environmentalism to provide a detailed picture of how and when the concerns of industry, society, and tribal governments may converge and when they conflict. As demands for domestic energy exploration increase, it offers clear guidance for such endeavors when native lands are involved.

Africa's resource boom has lifted growth, but has been less successful in improving people's lives. Yet much of the focus in academic and policy circles has been on appropriate management of the macro-fiscal and governance risks that have historically undermined development outcomes.