From Homeland to Mining Frontier and Back

Reviewed by: Insider Stories of the Comstock Lode and Nevada's Mining Frontier, 1859–1909: Primary Sources in American Social History Sanford E. Marovitz Insider Stories of the Comstock Lode and Nevada's Mining Frontier, 1859–1909: Primary Sources in American Social History. 2 vols. Ed. Lawrence I. Berkove. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2007. xlviii + 1076 pp. Cloth, $199.95. In 1907, roughly half a century after the great Comstock lode of silver and gold was discovered in western Nevada, George Graham Rice established a new weekly in Reno entitled the Nevada Mining News. Within a year he added a column called "By-the-Bye" that presented weekly glimpses of early Comstock history with copious references to details of the industry. Portrayed are the diverse characters who participated in it from laborers to investors, con-men, judges, and politicos, as well as such prominent authors as Mark Twain and Dan DeQuille among others in the "Sagebrush School," an erstwhile designation that Lawrence I. Berkove has revitalized through his outstanding scholarship in the area. Berkove is the editor of Insider Stories of the Comstock Lode and Nevada's Mining Frontier, 1859–1909: Primary Sources in American Social History, an unwieldy title necessary to convey a sense of what the two-volumes contain in over eleven hundred pages, including an illuminating introduction and "Glossary of Mining Terms." The text comprises the fifty-seven "By-the-Bye" columns published between 30 April 1908 and 27 May 1909, followed by an insightful appendix on Twain and another on the unscrupulous Senator "Slippery Jim" Fair. Although "By-the-Bye" continued after the News moved to New York in 1909, Berkove's coverage ends with the tabloid's departure from Reno. All columns are numbered and dated in the table of contents with subheadings to indicate the topics in each, making it easy to locate subjects of special interest. Berkove reproduces the columns directly from the originals of 1908–09, adding footnotes to explain obscure references or name a few of the narrators identified by such vague designations as "the old veteran," "the septuagenarian Comstocker," and "a former newsman," that do not always refer to the same individuals. He identifies the speakers according to the dates of events being described because not all the narrators were [End Page 178] at the Comstock simultaneously; for example, Joseph Goodman was there in the 1860s and early 1870s and Samuel Davis arrived shortly after Goodman left, so Davis could not have described from experience incidents that occurred prior to 1875. Goodman became the owner and publisher of the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, noted now chiefly because he hired Twain as one of his writers; indeed, Roughing It (1872) includes experiences Twain underwent as a reporter for the Enterprise and several "By-the-Bye" columns relate directly to them. Most of "By-the-Bye" was not written until decades after the events occurred, and the weekly narratives are presented as long quotations as if memorized verbatim interviews of speakers who were present at the scene. The idea was not to deceive but to present the past authentically. The events and people portrayed were still recent enough to be recalled by old-timers generally familiar with Comstock history and the ersatz reality of its legends. The narratives cover virtually all aspects of Comstock life, especially in its most prominent community, Virginia City. Although the columns are all self-contained, many of the characters reappear under other circumstances or are described by different speakers. Accounts depict heroic pony-express riders, humane outlaws and brutal ones like Sam Brown (who killed quickly without warning or apparent cause), vigilante action, and all the activities associated with mining. The reports in column 55 on a conflict between the Enterprise and the Virginia City Opera House in March 1864 are made particularly rich because of the unexpected role assumed by the show's star, Adah Isaacs Menken, in support of Goodman, Twain, and DeQuille. Because fortunes were made and lost so quickly—in days or even hours—exaggeration in reporting new strikes, evaluations of individual mines, and especially the buying and selling initially of feet and later of shares in claims was commonplace. If...

Reviewed by: Company Suburbs: Architecture, Power, and the Transformation of Michigan’s Mining Frontier by Sarah Fayen Scarlett Alison K. Hoagland, Professor Emerita Sarah Fayen Scarlett. Company Suburbs: Architecture, Power, and the Transformation of Michigan’s Mining Frontier. Knoxville, Tennessee: University of Tennessee Press, 2021. Pp. 291. Bibliography. Illustrations. Index. Maps. Notes. Photographs. Table. Hardcover: $55.00. Power and hierarchy are expressed in residential neighborhoods in myriad ways—for example: lot size, street trees, architecture, landscaping, proximity to desirable things, and distance from offensive ones. Viewers read these signals and many more in order to assess a home and the status of its occupants. Sarah Fayen Scarlett takes on this social sorting in Company Suburbs: Architecture, Power, and the Transformation of Michigan’s Mining Frontier, her study of middle- and upper-class neighborhoods in Michigan’s Copper Country. Scarlett explores the neighborhoods, specific houses, and public spaces of people who were engaged with maintaining power in an inequitable mining industry. Company Suburbs is a fascinating study of how the built landscape reinforces social difference. To understand the residential landscape that the mining industry spawned, Scarlett takes two well-studied systems—corporate paternalism and suburbanization—and examines their intersection in the Copper Country. Initially, companies provided housing for their elite managers and mining captains, just as they did for miners and unskilled laborers. But, at the Quincy Mining Co., [End Page 130] mine officers moved away from their free housing into the elite neighborhood that became known as East Hancock. While suburbs usually connote picturesque surroundings and distance from workplaces, these neighborhoods did not afford the separation of workplace and home that residents might have desired. The mining companies controlled the available land—accommodating their managerial elite but controlling them nonetheless. Hence the term “company suburb.” Scarlett’s close study of specific houses gives depth to her argument about status and architecture. James Pryor altered his house on the east side of Houghton repeatedly. While meticulously documenting a quarter century of alterations, Scarlett relates his changing circumstances in terms of his business, family size, and wealth. Beginning in 1875 with a modest house built for a manager at Shelden-Columbian mine, Pryor produced an elaborate Queen Anne-style dwelling that faced both Main Street (later College Avenue), which was emerging as a prestigious boulevard, and Portage Lake, where his expanding lumberyard contributed to his wealth. Inside the house, room functions changed as well, finally becoming a fashionable wood-paneled interior with wall paintings and beveled mirrors. This is surely the only occasion of a historian using the room designations written in a fuse box as evidence for her argument! While Pryor’s house illustrated overlapping landscapes of the industrial and the domestic, Scarlett turns to East Hancock to examine overlapping social landscapes. To understand the world of the Finnish servant who lived in one house in 1900, Scarlett explores how she might have moved through the house—where she was in her domain and where was she on her employer’s turf—as well as how she moved through the neighborhood and town to get to and from the Finnish area. Scarlett similarly looks at movement when she shifts her attention to the Calumet area, where she tracks the construction of houses for the enormously wealthy investors of the Calumet and Arizona Mining Co. In the first decade of the twentieth century, they clustered in a few blocks of the newly developing village of Laurium. But, in 1913, strikers paraded past these very houses on their way to the Palestra, the only building on non-company land that was large enough to accommodate strike meetings. The dissonance between the strikers and the idle wealthy, the street and the mansion, serve to illustrate Scarlett’s point about contentious social geographies. In this thoroughly researched work, Scarlett combines two areas of study usually kept separate, by scholars as well as geography: industry and suburbs. Her examination of the two together reaps benefits, bringing new insights into the relationship between landscape, people, and power. [End Page 131] Alison K. Hoagland, Professor Emerita Michigan Technological University Copyright © 2022 Historical Society of Michigan

Book Review| July 01 1977 A Governor’s Wife on the Mining Frontier: The Letters of Mary Edgerton from Montana, 1863-1865. Utah, the Mormons, and the West Series, no. 7 A Governor’s Wife on the Mining Frontier: The Letters of Mary Edgerton from Montana, 1863-1865. Utah, the Mormons, and the West Series, no. 7, James L. Thane Jr. K. Ross Toole K. Ross Toole Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Utah Historical Quarterly (1977) 45 (3): 315. https://doi.org/10.2307/45061090 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation K. Ross Toole; A Governor’s Wife on the Mining Frontier: The Letters of Mary Edgerton from Montana, 1863-1865. Utah, the Mormons, and the West Series, no. 7. Utah Historical Quarterly 1 January 1977; 45 (3): 315. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/45061090 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressUtah Historical Quarterly Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © Copyright 1977 Utah State Historical Society1977 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Political ecologists are increasingly interested in the dynamics of power and authority where mining and conservation converge. We contribute to this emerging literature by applying an 'actor-oriented' approach to explore the creation of protected areas in African mining frontiers. Concretely, we look at how 'multiple-use' protected areas have been layered on top of mining frontiers in eastern DRC and northern Madagascar. Both of these mining frontiers include artisanal, semi-industrial, and industrial mining activities and permits. In the DRC case, various state and non-state armed actors are also implicated in mining. Our results show that the legitimacy of conservation at mining frontiers evolves as a process involving indiscrete phases of negotiation, coercion, resistance and cooperation. When authorities and alliances supporting mining interests preclude coercive conservation strategies, conservation authorities need to negotiate their way through different phases of resistance and cooperation. We find that in both cases, local actors living at the extraction and conservation nexus assert their agency and 'forum shop', by switching their allegiances between conservation and mining actors.

Book Review| February 01 1969 Review: The Mining Frontier: Contemporary Accounts from the American West in the Nineteenth Century, by Marvin Lewis The Mining Frontier: Contemporary Accounts from the American West in the Nineteenth CenturyMarvin Lewis Clark C. Spence Clark C. Spence Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Pacific Historical Review (1969) 38 (1): 99–100. https://doi.org/10.2307/3636902 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Clark C. Spence; Review: The Mining Frontier: Contemporary Accounts from the American West in the Nineteenth Century, by Marvin Lewis. Pacific Historical Review 1 February 1969; 38 (1): 99–100. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/3636902 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentPacific Historical Review Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1969 The Pacific Coast Branch, American Historical Association Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Book Review| July 01 1985 Lying on the Eastern Slope: James Townsend’s Comic Journalism on the Mining Frontier Lying on the Eastern Slope: James Townsend’s Comic Journalism on the Mining Frontier, Richard A. Dwyer and Richard E. Lingenfelter. Ralph J. Roske Ralph J. Roske Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Utah Historical Quarterly (1985) 53 (3): 298–299. https://doi.org/10.2307/45061195 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Ralph J. Roske; Lying on the Eastern Slope: James Townsend’s Comic Journalism on the Mining Frontier. Utah Historical Quarterly 1 January 1985; 53 (3): 298–299. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/45061195 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressUtah Historical Quarterly Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © Copyright 1985 Utah State Historical Society1985 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Book Review| February 01 1986 Review: Lying on the Eastern Slope: James Townsend's Comic Journalism on the Mining Frontier, by Richard A. Dwyer and Richard E. Lingenfelter Lying on the Eastern Slope: James Townsend's Comic Journalism on the Mining FrontierRichard A. DwyerRichard E. Lingenfelter H. R. Dieterich H. R. Dieterich Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Pacific Historical Review (1986) 55 (1): 117–118. https://doi.org/10.2307/3639125 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation H. R. Dieterich; Review: Lying on the Eastern Slope: James Townsend's Comic Journalism on the Mining Frontier, by Richard A. Dwyer and Richard E. Lingenfelter. Pacific Historical Review 1 February 1986; 55 (1): 117–118. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/3639125 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentPacific Historical Review Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1986 The Pacific Coast Branch, American Historical Association Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

On the morning of January 24, 1848, John W. Marshall, one of the first New Jerseyans to seek a new and better life in the West, in spected the tailrace for the sawmill he was building on the south fork of the American River for John A. Sutter. In the newly-exposed stream bed, he spied a dull yellow metal. A few days later, Marshall rode to Sutter's New Helvia head quarters, where Sacramento now stands, to share the exciting dis covery with the eccentric Swiss emigre. Despite attempts to keep the find secret, the news slowly spread. By May and early June, nearly all the able-bodied men had poured out of San Francisco for the gold fields. Pacific Basin prospec tors, from as far away as Australia and South America, followed later that summer. Not until November, however, did eastern skeptics begin to believe the rumors that had been circulating for several months. When President Polk spoke of Cali fornia gold in his December fare well address to Congress, all doubts evaporated. As the snows melted from the prairies in the spring of 1849, an army of would-be mil lionaires crowded the western-most settlements, poised to make a mad overland dash to the new El Dorado. Some hardy souls were al ready underway, making a perilous sea journey around Cape Horn or through the Isthmus of Panama. The California gold rush was on! The unexpected discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill marked only the beginning of mining's substan tial impact on the American West. In contrast to Frederick Jackson Turner's conception of an orderly westward expansion by successive waves of fur traders, miners, and farmers, the mining frontier in stead leapt across the interior West and initially implanted itself on the Pacific. For the remainder of the nineteenth century, it fanned out across the region, from Alaska to the Black Hills of Dakota and to the deserts of the Southwest. Yet, the mining frontier, especially dur ing its earliest years, also shared many of the characteristics of the westward movement identified by Turner. On perhaps no other fron tier, for example, were restlessness and optimism more prominent. These similarities and differences with the classical Turnerian model make teaching about the mining frontier both interesting and in structive.

Research Article| February 01 1993 Unequal Opportunity on a Mining Frontier: The Role of Gender, Race, and Birthplace George M. Blackburn, George M. Blackburn Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Sherman L. Ricards Sherman L. Ricards Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Pacific Historical Review (1993) 62 (1): 19–38. https://doi.org/10.2307/3640521 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation George M. Blackburn, Sherman L. Ricards; Unequal Opportunity on a Mining Frontier: The Role of Gender, Race, and Birthplace. Pacific Historical Review 1 February 1993; 62 (1): 19–38. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/3640521 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentPacific Historical Review Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1993 The Pacific Coast Branch, American Historical Association Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Book Review| August 01 1991 Review: Gold Camp Desperadoes: A Study of Violence, Crime and Punishment on the Mining Frontier, by R. E. Mather and F. E. Boswell Gold Camp Desperadoes: A Study of Violence, Crime and Punishment on the Mining FrontierR. E. MatherF. E. Boswell Roger D. McGrath Roger D. McGrath Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Pacific Historical Review (1991) 60 (3): 410–411. https://doi.org/10.2307/3640468 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Roger D. McGrath; Review: Gold Camp Desperadoes: A Study of Violence, Crime and Punishment on the Mining Frontier, by R. E. Mather and F. E. Boswell. Pacific Historical Review 1 August 1991; 60 (3): 410–411. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/3640468 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentPacific Historical Review Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1991 The Pacific Coast Branch, American Historical Association Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

This chapter challenges current debates in global justice and the fight against impunity. Shifting the lens from the symbolism of global justice towards the structural conditions that have shaped international criminal justice as a field over time can help reposition the Habré success story not simply as an anomaly in a context of wider backlash against the International Criminal Court (ICC), but rather as a reflection of the structure of global justice as a weak field. The chapter then discusses the need to study systematically the evolution of legal markets on the African continent. In this, the project to institute a criminal chamber within the African Court of Justice and Human Rights has perhaps been too promptly dismissed as overly ambitious due to the lack of resources and state support within the African Union (AU). Interestingly, this project includes not only the crimes under the purview of the ICC, but also various other trans-border crimes such as trafficking, corruption, and the illicit exploitation of resources. The prominence taken in recent years by Africa as a new ‘mining frontier’—and with it, as a new haven for US and UK multinational corporate firms—underscores the timeliness of opening research paths on these ongoing transformations across the continent.

G.Thomas Edwards Town Boosterism on Oregon's Mining Frontier JamesVansvtkle andWalliila. Colombia Riverport, 1860-1870 ~~"T~~*^^ URING THE EARLY SETTLEMENT of the Pacific Northwest, land speculators dreamed of thewealth they could reap in the region. In the 1840s and 1850s, speculation in theOregon Territory focused along the Willamette River and on farm lands bordering Willamette Valley waterways. Town-boosters hoped to sell platted land and transform their barren property into a commercial center. Although "many towns had no more than a paper existence," geog rapherWilliam Loy explained, "each group of town promoters had faith, courage, and even confidence that itsparticular venture would outstrip all the rest."1By the early 1860s, themining rush in eastern Oregon, Idaho, and Montana drew speculators' attention to the needs of distant mining camps and towns.While Willamette Valley promoters had sought to gain from the nearby agricultural frontier, later speculators wanted to establish steamboat landings on the Columbia River in order to draw wealth from a vast interiormining frontier. These later town-builders understood that some profits would result from selling town lots; but providing goods and services tominers, teamsters, muleskinners, merchants, tradesmen, and others would earn much greater income. Perhaps themost successful Columbia River port speculator in the 1860s was an experienced businessman from California's mining frontier, JamesMilton Vansyckle. As themajor promoter of Wallula, a town located on the site of the Hudson's Bay Company's FortWalla Walla along the 7^ OHQ vol. 106, no. 1 ? 2005 Oregon Historical Society QHS neg.,CN 016015 Travelers in the 1860s thought Wallulds Front Street showed Vansyckle's impressive ability to build a vital port in a hostile environment. Other emerging Oregon towns had similar appearances. In the 1840s, for example, Portland's downtown looked much likeWallula does in thisphotograph. eastern bank of theColumbia River, Vansyckle became a prominent Walla Walla County resident. He had enjoyed a promising career inCalifornia and Oregon before moving to the bleak Washington Territory site. Born in 1822 inCincinnati, Ohio, Vansyckle took his wife, Susanna, and children toCalifornia in the early 1850s. In September 1853,he became the Stockton agent for Wells Fargo, a young, fast-growing company dependent upon skilled managers. Vansyckle managed the company's bank and oversaw the transportation of gold dust from California's southern mines. In that instant city,he learned about speculative real estate and observed steam1 boats from San Francisco carrying miners and mining supplies and freight wagons and pack mules hauling loads to interiormining camps and towns. Widely respected in Stockton, "Milt" Vansyckle, as he was known, served as chief engineer of the volunteer fire department and, in 1855,asmayor. Two years later, Wells Fargo promoted him to the position of superintendent in Edwards, Town Boosterism on Oregon's Mining Frontier 77 Sacramento, requiring him to travel to scattered agencies. He also served briefly as superintendent in the company's San Francisco office. In 1858, Vansyckle's employer appointed him tohead itsPortland office, a significant post thathe would hold until July1859. Soon the aspiring new comer was elected to the city council, was chosen as the fire department's chief engineer, and served as a delegate to the stateDemocratic convention, where he supported Senator JoeLane against Salem editor Asahel Bush in a struggle formastery of the party. A Democratic editor inPortland hailed Vansyckle and his allies for defeating "dangerous and treacherous Repub licans," while the Oregonian, a voice for the Republican Party, included him among the "small men in California" who grew "wonderfully large inOregon in a brief period."2 Vansyckle eventually lost his position with Wells Fargo, according to one critic, "on account of dabbling in politics, to the injury of the company's business."3 With a partner he then briefly operated Portland's Metropolis Hotel.4 Vansyckle soon saw the potential of the upper Columbia. In the spring of 1859,he and other Portland profit-seekers must have read that Lt. John Mullan was directing soldiers building a road between Fort Benton on theMissouri River inwhat isnow Montana andWalla Walla, Washington Territory. Travelers who reached Walla Walla via the new road would then proceed along a branch of theOregon Trail to theColumbia River. Obvi ously a river port...

The ‘will to improve’ at the mining frontier: Neo-extractivism, development and governmentality in the Ecuadorian Amazon

This article examines the growing bauxite mining activities aimed at extracting aluminum ore in the Netharhat Valley, located in the Gumla and Latehar districts of Jharkhand. Adivasis share an inseparable relationship with land and forest, which play a vital role in shaping their identity and social structure. However, the introduction of new mining frontiers has ushered in persistent extraction challenges in Adivasi’s life. Although capitalist varied interests promise Adivasis for development imperatives and their chance to uplift themselves through mining, the outcomes are both complex and multifaceted. The current situation is marked by complexity as the introduction of the new mining frontiers has skewed the balance. The article illustrates the diverse consequences of extensive mining on the Adivasis and their diminishing control over land and forests. It illustrates the varying stances on the issue of mining, and their differing opinions have created divisions among the villagers based on class, economic priorities and market opportunities. The introduction of new resource frontiers has weakened village egalitarianism and institutions, allowing for mining capitalism to penetrate the Adivasi heartlands.

Geological structures and the location of in Ghana traditional mining in the southwestern Akan region - African states, technology, political economy and gender the Wassa gold rush of 1877-1885 - African and European promoters of mining capitalism barriers to production in the 1880s - capitalization, technology, labour recruitment and transportation the colonial government and the expanding miners frontier - pressures for mining district administration, health services and transport improvements overcoming the odds - labour, technology, management and production at the bit three Wassa mining companies 1883-1897 retrospect and aftermath -mining frontiers, capitalism, labour and the colonial state.