Out Here on Our Own: An Oral History of an American Boomtown. By J.J. Anselmi

Abstract

Beginning with an acknowledgment of stolen land and the 1885 Chinese Massacre at Rock Springs, Wyoming, author, musician, and former resident J.J. Anselmi curates “a collection of stories told by people who, at one time or another, have called that place home” (p. ix). Anselmi places forty-one twenty-first-century interviews in conversation with each other and nine published first-person accounts to unveil local perceptions over time of the relentless plunder of a western place and the resiliency of its people. Twelve thematic chapters uncover the ways Rock Springs inhabitants adapted to coal mining’s boom-bust economic cycles, assaults on physical and mental health, and the area’s harsh isolation: what one narrator calls “nature’s brutality” (p. 69). Teens during the 1970’s boom now recall swelled populations, tent cities, free-flowing money, and a ten-to-one male-to-female ratio; also, civic corruption, gambling, prostitution, suicide, violence, and underage substance abuse. The inevitable bust that followed collapsed Rock Springs into one of “these bare-bones communities that are sucked dry” (p. 63).