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.
Not since William Cronon's" Nature's Metropolis" has a historian so
skillfully applied John Muir's insight--"When we try to pick out
anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the
universe"--to the telling of the history of the American West.
Beautifully told, this is western environmental history at its
finest.
Andrew C. Isenberg is a professor of history at Temple University.
He is the author of "The Destruction of the Bison": " An
Environmental History, 1750-1920" and is a former fellow of the
Huntington Library and the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for
Historical Studies. A "Choice" Outstanding Academic Title Between
1849 and 1874, almost one billion dollars in gold was mined in
California. The California gold rush was a key chapter in American
industrialization, not only because of the wealth it produced but
because of its heavy environmental costs. With labor costs high and
capital scarce, California miners used hydraulic technology to
shift the burden of their enterprise onto the environment:
high-pressure water canons washed hillsides into sluices that used
mercury to trap gold but let the soil wash away, and eventually
thousands of tons of poisonous debris entered California's rivers.
The profitability of hydraulic mining spurred other forms of
resource exploitation in the state, including logging, large-scale
ranching, and city-building. These, too, took their toll on the
environment. This resource-intensive development, typical of
American industrialization, became the template for the
transformation of the West.
Not since Williams Cronon's "Nature's Metropolis" has a historian
so skillfully applied John Muir's insight--"When we try to pick out
anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the
universe"--to telling the ecological history of the American West.
Succinct and provocative, "Mining California" is environmental
history at its finest. A "Choice" Outstanding Academic Title "At a
time when [California's] residency has been forecast to grow by 13
million in the next 25 years, with its population probably
stretching into its farthest regions, "Mining California" offers
sobering reading on the consequences of unchecked expansion."--Tess
Taylor, "San Francisco Chronicle Book Review" "At a time when
[California's] residency has been forecast to grow by 13 million in
the next 25 years, with its population probably stretching into its
farthest regions, "Mining California" offers sobering reading on
the consequences of unchecked expansion."--Tess Taylor, "San
Francisco Chronicle Book Review" "A broadly researched history of
the impact of human, especially Euramerican, settlement in
California . . . Isenberg amply demonstrates how California's
unstable geography, erratic weather, singular mix of natural
resources, and shortages of capital and labor all encouraged growth
of extractive industries (of which mining was the first example)
and innovations to reduce labor costs and achieve economies of
scale through the large-scale organization of enterprise . . .
Offering excellent maps and a comprehensive bibliography, the book
is richly illustrated, fully endnoted, and superbly written. This
excellent read, a model for future studies, deserves highest
recommendations and above."--D. Steeples, Mercer University
(Emeritus), "Choice" "Based on extensive archival work and written
in clear prose accessible to both a general and more specialist
audience, "Mining California" is a welcome addition to the growing
number of studies on the environmental history of mining in the
American West."--Peter Coates, "Environmental History" "Andrew
Isenberg's erudite new book explores the beginnings of European
impact on my own state of California, to which I had moved under
the spell of its supposedly pristine environment but unaware of its
history, which is concisely recounted here."--Jared Diamond, author
of "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" and
"Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
"
"Andrew Isenberg shoves rustic myths aside to reveal a gold rush
California that roared, buzzed, clanked, and trembled with
machines, and bore the cost in polluted rivers, denuded mountain
slopes, ruined ranches, and shattered Indian communities. Anyone
wanting to understand the industrial, social, and ecological
revolutions that constituted America's most famous economic boom
must read this elegant and provocative book."--Louis Warren,
University of California, Davis
"As entertaining as it is insightful, Isenberg's book does justice
to the dramatic ecological transformations California underwent in
the half century after the gold rush. This is environmental history
at its best."--J.R. McNeill, author of "Something New Under the
Sun: An Environmental History of the 20th-century World
"
"Andrew Isenberg's superb new book analyzes the ecological domino
effect set in motion by the California gold rush, which touched off
the cycles of environmental degradation the scale of which we can
only now fully appreciate. Filled with lessons and warnings,
"Mining California" is a timely and important book."--William
Deverell, Director, Huntington-USC Institute on California and the
West
"Forget rugged individualism: corporations owned the Old West,
agribusiness dominated the 19th-century landscape, and speculators
looted the public trust. So writes environmental historian
Isenberg, observing that the passage of the Homestead Act of 1862
did little to prevent the West from being carved into
resource-extractive estates. In this setting, California suffered
'enclosure, ' much as the highlands of Scotland had; Indians were
pushed aside, valuable properties appropriated and the government
molded to benefit the largeholders. In Northern California, the
driving forces were not only agricultural interests, but also
companies devoted to removing ore and timber. They prospered, while
their workers and tenants suffered; as Isenberg points out, for
example, the miners who worked the first wave of the Gold Rush were
earning $20 a day in 1848, but only $3 a day in 1856 (and that
second number, he notes, 'represents only the wages of those who
earned enough in the gold country to remain there'). One cause was
the replacement of labor-intensive forms of extraction with
machinery; on the American River, placer mining technology took the
place of humans, and soon whole mountains were washed into the San
Francisco Bay. Timber companies removed huge quantities of redwood
trees, once
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