Book description
History has left us a classic image of western mining in the grizzly
forty-niner squatting by a clear stream sifting through gravel to
reveal gold. What this slice of Western Americana does not reveal,
however, is thousands of miners doing the same, their gravel washing
downstream, causing the water to grow dark with debris while trout
choke to death and wash ashore. Instead of the havoc wreaked upon the
western landscape, we are told stories of American enterprise,
ingenuity, and fortune.
The General Mining Act of 1872, which declared all valuable mineral
deposits on public lands to be free and open to exploration and
purchase, has had a controversial impact on the western environment
as, under the protection of federal law, various twentieth-century
entrepreneurs have manipulated it in order to dump waste, cut timber,
create resorts, and engage in a host of other activities damaging to
the environment. In this in-depth analysis, legal historian Gordon
Morris Bakken traces the roots of the mining law and details the way
its unintended consequences have shaped western legal thought from
Nome to Tombstone and how it has informed much of the lore of the
settlement of the West.
Gordon Morris Bakken earned B. S., M. S., Ph. D., and J. D. degrees
from the University of Wisconsin. He teaches courses on American legal
and constitutional history, westward movement, American military
heritage, women of the American West, women and American law, as well as
historical thinking and historical writing at California State
University, Fullerton. He is the author or editor of numerous books
including
Icons of the American West: From Cowgirls to Silicon Valley.
