Yesterday. Today, we will look at the environment and the impact of the California Gold rush. I would like to begin by, as ive said, at the beginning of the first presentation, begin by thanking a little larger than we normally do here, to pull back on the context of this. What is going on . The universe of colorado working once and they only ask one question. Whats going on here . I asked, thats the domestic ive ever heard a smart man say, but the past is a foreign country. Look around and say, whats going on . Whats happening . Whats going on with the California Gold rush. Lots of stuff, but one of the things that has been going on is that the place itself, to their environment itself has been fundamentally transformed, remade and is an episode an american westward expansion. It starts and it moves across the country, very dramatic development, the acquisition of texas and the organ territory in the mexican session. By 1848, we have the state. So this is part of that, but what i want to begin with is emphasizing that the goal of the California Gold rush, and all of the gold and silver rushes that followed that were fundamentally different as a form of westward expansion. Two reasons, to ways, first of all, they transformed the environment and our radical away from earlier lace. Well talk about that. Moving from North Carolina into tennessee, they were changing the environment, cutting down trees, plowing the fields and bringing Domestic Animals and it is regime of that area. They were changing it in very different ways radically different ways. Will spend most of the presentation looking at that. To step back further and look at this contractually, its a kind of westward expansion that was different. Before, was like moving lines, align moving from the Atlantic Coast to the appalachians into the trans appalachians, primarily agrarian expansion. But essentially a moving line. A gold rush, or a silver rush, is far removed from the society of the east. Its a gradual movement, pushing itself outward. It occurred in places that are isolated, in places that are far, distant from the society here, so its more like they occur out here and then expand not as a lie but and expanding circle. The california westward expansion does not look like that, it looks like that. And then eight years later, like that. And up in the Northern Rockies like that, and down to the southwest like that. Thats the kind of expansion were looking at, not just what happens on the ground, its the pattern of it. To me, i look at this and i think of an artillery shell, kind of locked into the backcountry. You go into here, up and idaho and montana, like that. And they expand outward, this is not an advancing, but a conclusive frontier, like that. You can even look at this geometrically or mathematically to get a sense of how this was different. Look at it this way you take a section of land, one mile by one mile. It was the line moving westward and you move it to the side of it. Eve increase the acreage from 640 acres to 960 acres, right . Now you have a circle. Boom and it contains 640 acres. The area of the circle of 640 acres, you take that and expand the radius half a mile, how many acres will that circle the, . That circle will be 276 acres. So, as a geometry of expansion and conquest the expanding circle has it all over the advancing lines, so thats what was happening out here, thats what was happening out here. The catastrophic effect of this was on native peoples, and thats what the next to presentations are about. I will not pay a lot of attention on that. Keep that in mind, especially going back to the first expansion, and i emphasize the variety of native peoples, virtually all of them live in an economy of hunting, gathering, and fishing. Well that has great advantages in a lot of ways, it required that they have virtually none interrupted access to a large area. Any change in that would be a real problem, and this was a huge change that undercut their environment and economic system. Okay. Sold, contractually, linger this as a big story of whats going on here, the fundamentally different kind of westward expansion, with different kinds of consequences. The second reason to remember, and its because of what happens in a gold rush or a silver rush as opposed to what happens with advancing farming frontiers. So will start with that. What does a mining camp need . Well, first of all, people need places to live. Cabins, stores, so you need would, would. This is true because unlike a farming frontier where the population expands gradually, and cut down trees, this is a place where people come and by the hundreds and thousands, and they all need a lot of would. The first impact was a string of the hillside, and ashley any moment, they also need a lot of work for the work that they did, for the flames and the rest. So almost immediate deforestation around the camp itself and that leads to erosion, problems with the streams and the rest. The place to live, they also need to eat, so another effect right away was the rapid depletion of game in the area they had these guys go out to hunt defeat themselves but also to market it. These neat stories appeared, and their hunting wild game, everything from squirrels to their. It the pleats very very quickly, this is an area that was suited to the other thing i mentioned about the nature of native society here, is that they lived in very small groups, very rarely more than 125 people, so that is what this area was the numbers that this area was currently supporting. Now, all of a sudden, you have to support hundreds of people and thousands of people, its gone almost immediately and began importing food, including sea turtles from the Galapagos Islands were brought in. The sea turtle population crashes, collapses but, more than that the farmers come in and clear the land to feed them, ranchers come in, they begin to clear the land and to pasture their cattle there and defense it off. All of this disrupts the environment, in fundamental ways. So those are basic things that happen. Simply by living there, simply by being there these mining camps begin to fundamentally change the environment that they live in. What else . What is about mining itself that has an effect . This is the image that we have growing up about what gold mining meant it. This is how they tested for goal to see it is a gold and a particular stream. Whether this is plastic, the gold eroded from the sierra nevada, the placer mining begins this way in ways they can locate a place there than they began to move into slightly more elaborate operations, the first for things like this is called a rocker, woodworkers doing is essentially that on a slightly larger scale with more gravel and dirt and it moving back and forths you do this and it washes through and you catch it on a little cleats here so this is a very simple operation something that one man or two men or three men can do. Of course it doesnt pay very well, you cant get very much gold there so they moved into a very large system. Using these things, it was just a wooden trench, it diverted water and sent the water through it, enabled shovel dirt from around the creek into it. Can you imagine . A few tried goaltending yesterday, right . Its not a comfortable thing to do. This is brutal work, you shovel dirt all day long, hour after hour. What you do is shovel the dirt and there. This is a long time, you see these, are called cleats or ripples. So the water washes down here, the goal being heavy, sinks down with some other material as the largest of washes throw and the gold is caught here, and then you go in with a pan and scoop that out and extract the plaster gold. So, a bit more elaborate. This will take the company several minutes to do this, sometimes larger. And they will start to build these flames to bring water from other places, you need a lot of water to do this. Water to go into these, three began to build these, to bring the water from elsewhere in what youre starting to do here is very engineer their environment itself, right . You every engineering the present flow of water. We will see that escalate to an astonishing scale. Next thing. Its pretty amazing. Thats to get the goal thats in the dirt away from the creeks and streams, right . But of course theres a lot of dirt and gravel staff to stream itself. What if the stream is a foot deep, you can go in there and get it out. If its ten feet deep, you cant. Its down there, so what do you . Do what you do is move that river. You simply divert the entire stream, someplace else, this elaborate operation and then get it down here. So as you can see, very quickly, it moves from this very simple, one to an operation into something that is approaching and industrial scale and, appropriately, according lee the changes become much larger, increasingly large, so this is a pretty drastic reordering of the environment, right . But that was nothing compared to the next step. The next step was still plaster mining of eroded gold. The next step is what is called hydraulic mining. Hydraulic meaning using water, they are used water but this releases water. Hydraulic mining first and peers, its invented here. It first appears in 1853. Interestingly, it was originally done as a safety device the goal here was in these ancient riverbeds, remember, i mentioned that before . It has been eroding for millions of years and a lot of that goal wasnt will reverse used to be. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, thousands of years ago but theyve moved that, theyre no longer there but the goal is in the gravel stay left behind. Some of these things are a couple of hundred feet, huge gravel beds and theres a lot of goal in there, so they go and have threat, they went backwards in coyote, as they would dig tunnels into it, to build the gravel out. Some of them using blasting powder, but that was really dangerous. Its a very unstable thing, so all sorts of caves and, accidental explosions, lots of damage. Lots of injuries, lots of that. So this guy came up with an idea, why dont we do this . We can take water using the power of Falling Water and direct it into these things and just watch them away, and watch them down into a larger equivalent of long tunnels. That way, we are safe. We are back here. It worked in terms of the safer, but they also quickly found out that this was a far more efficient way to get at the gold. Think of it this way, the gold is scattered there and we know it is there theres a lot of money there but its as if you took millions of dollars. This is the problems getting the pennies out and breaking it down yourself makes it impossible to get to the gold on a scale. But this you can do. How does it work . You find your water source above you altitude and then you channel it down to where you want. You send it through these iron pipes and, at the end of it you put a water cannon, there was one at the museum yesterday, you saw that . Its like a water cannon and then you fire it through that cannon against these hillsides. You might think that it would not create that much power well this stuff comes out at astonishing rate. They are counts occasionally of a cow being in the wrong place at the wrong time, being hit by the streams of water and they just explode. A few cases of people being killed, you do these tests, get the strongest guy in camp, given a crowbar whimsical up at that stream of water, and you cant do it. They come out with this astonishing, power the water is very happy and what you do is accumulate youre weight of that water as it comes down and comes out with this extraordinary power to watch the stuff away. In effect, in a day, in a day you do a National Erosion will take thousands of years. So this is manmade erosion against these places. It works. It works on an increasingly larger scale look at that you see people like ants down there blasting away at the stuff. Once it blasted away, then, theres a monitor. The water comes through here it blast away at the hillside and is washed down here into this line, theres a grating like a rock or but on a vast scale. It goes down to this grating, down here, the larger stuff fills up to here and here and then it goes into a settling places where it settles down and then you process. Enormous operations. What do you need for Something Like that . Above all, you need water. Lots and lots of water to do this. They tap into lakes in the high country, they divert reverse above them. To get the water down they would build influence. These flames were huge. Huge and, essentially, there wouldnt reverse. What theyre doing here is really engineering the entire river system of a region, redirecting the reverse. Some of them are astonishing feat of engineering, like this one. Thats what this looks like to me. Some of them went through large hills in effect, redirecting hold water shields, so you redirect into an entirely different system and it becomes your river system because you built it. Remaining. And a different way. How much are we talking about . Her total works of looms, the first hydraulic was a 1953 so, seven years, seven years they built this wooden reverse. If you took all of the flames and strong them out in one line. Here we are. The one time youre allowed to speak. Any guesses . New york. Good guess. Boston and back. The mother lode, where we are, and back. More than 5000 miles 700 miles of the first hydraulic. Much of the environment of much of california. Would to build a camp, how much we do need for this . So in effect, the deforestation goes into hyper drive or scripts of trees. That leads to aquatic life, and all sorts of other problems. That is only part of one problem with the streams in the water. The other one is, went to get into the settling bids, described earlier, now youve got to get the goal out of the detritus. You cant go there with pants and do it and we talked about one of the key traits that it is very inert and does not combined with many things at all. Theres a few other elements that others join with. One of, them and we talk about them is mercury. It will then bond and then you extract the bonded stuff out of their. He is one of the Worlds Largest minds, and it was a spain when it was a mercury mine. It was already from using mercury, center down into mexico. This mine began to go into hyper drive to present these. Sooner barr itself is harmless, when you take it out of the mine, the mine is expanded many feet, virtually slave labor going into these letters carrying this stuff with these packs on their back. Carrying up and is put into these rosters, crushed down, and extract the mercury. This in a bar is harmless, mercury is not, mercury its poisonous. It has all kinds of awful effects. It produces massive salivating, you get the jitters, and eventually insanity. And death. Nasty stuff youre all familiar the mad hatter . Mercury was used in making hats, mercury shoes and making hats. And headers palmer suffered mercury poisoning. Whole areas around it and the workers live from the village from here and walked around with masks over their face, but still, there was massive mercury poisoning up among these. The collection of the library, who has the jitters, my appetites gone, im slobbering and that was how mercury was produced and it has taken and hydraulics to process the gold. What we are talking about, it estimated that the hydraulics before they finally ended use more than 10 Million Pounds of mercury at the height of these hydraulicing, used one of 1. 4 Million Pounds per year, dumping it into here. Where does it go . They hope to save it. But it costs money, so they did all it could do, once the gold and mercury reciprocated, to preserve the mercury. Inevitably, its not that sophisticated operation. Inevitably it got out and went into the streams. So, massive amounts of mercury goes into the streams and rivers, it is then part of the ecosystem of the river, breaking down and two forms that are than consumed indirectly and the larger fish eat the smaller fish and the even more meet those fish, before they get to the side of the people eight and the concentration is increasing Something Like 100,000. People are eating these Margaret Fish its a lot of water. As i mentioned, the larger these hydraulics and the mine. North brownfield, thank you, northam field mine it, in one day, this mine used as the city of london used in one day. You imagine the water supply of london being diverted into just one mine, and all that water is being sent out, being filled with mercury, the results are still with us. There are telling me yesterday about other lingering effects of the gold rush. Okay thats, the problem that continues to be with californianss. Theres another problem that proved to be even more intractables. Youre watching enormous amounts in the hillsides, and continues and the systems, dumping these larger stuff, but want to get down to what you want to keep, which is the goal and the mercury, what to do with the rest . Thats a lot of stuff. A lot of dirt, a lot of nasty stuff, its got slowly, but how do you get rid of it . You cant let it build up, pretty soon, you will be covered with, it so you have to get rid of it. You have to get rid of it. How do you do that . Part of it is pretty impressive and would sink a shaft into the earth and tunnel outward to a nearby canyon or something, so what they did was, in effect build their own caves, the descriptions of these places, subterranean waterfalls all going down, lashing out of this area, down into this place, out of sight, out of mind. Eventually blushing downstream, and its a lot of it. A lot of it. How much are we talking about . How much dirt are we talking about . That flushed out of the sierra nevada, down into these River Systems and eventually into san francisco. One of the great geologists up to 17th century, a brilliant geologist, he tackle that problem. And try to calculate at the evidence of these and came up with these rough guests, a rough, very well educated gas of what we are talking about. How much is it . Imagine the panama canal. How much dirt it would take to build the panama can now. Its a lot. Now think of that, think of that amount of dirt and multiply it by six and a half times. Six and a half the volume of debris taken out today the canal, thats how much but fleshed out. Another example, think of the Great Pyramid of visa, a big thing now fill it with dirt. Multiply it two of the peace times the volume of the pyramid of canada s in washington. And a lot of it makes it all the way to san francisco, so much was flushed out that eventually it affects the title patterns. You gilbert argued that this was the first time in Human History that man becomes, whats called a deal more fake force. The first time in Human History that people have become a geological force, not just changing the environment, were always doing that but not to change in the environment and that way, but changing the shape, the fundamental shape of the earth itself. So where is it going . Its going down this River Systems. It fills up these rivers at an astonishing rate, going down the silver systems, as they come out of the mountain, as the Falling Water levels out, its levels out to the bottom and at the reverse began to rise. And rise. 100 feet more, so a town like marriage bill, for example, when it was sounded, sort of a Market Center for the minds of the hill, a town like marries veil was on the river and was probably 20 8 30 feet down to the river, right . Pretty soon, the river is coming up, and pretty soon it level and then it is above. It starts to flood the town, so they build levees along the river to protect the town from the river that is rising because of all the stuff flushed down from above it, its all nasty and polluted, for the next in some casess. It causes a problem. The problem is even greater for the farmers. Remember, as these towns expanded, agriculture begins to develop around them. Farmers come in, and began to clear the area and to farm there. Theyre all along the rivers, now all the stuff is coming down, flooding the reverse periodically. And, as a flood, they send this stuff to the farmers fields until, after awhile, in some cases, in this is very well documented because theres a series of lawsuits on this, its very well documented. In some cases, the entire farm is covered with this slippery. Its completely an airboat, no way you can use it for anything. Often cases, it is poisonous. So youre out of business. Youre out of business. It was not a family brought an end to the hydraulic system. It wasnt because people were concerned about the environment, except for economic reasons. It wasnt an hour range about what was happening to the world, it was the fact that the farmers were going under. I will talk a little bit later about what happens in the california economy. Gold production peaks around 1852, to 1853, it begins to decline. At the same time, agriculture is booming. So, if you think of this in terms of a classic political conflict between interests, the mining interests versus the agricultural interests, the balance its tipping. So, at one point, finally, there are a series of efforts to try to control or stop this, none of them work. So finally theres this lawsuit against the north bloom field mind and others to either halt or pay reparations, paid damage, which would be impossible. To pay for that, they could not possibly do. It essentially, its a lawsuit to stop hydraulic. It goes into a court. It is fought out over a lengthy period of time, very expensive lawsuit on all sides. A very interesting lawsuit, if you look at the arguments on both sides. A couple of my favorites are the attorneys for the mines, they argued, this guy is suing him, right . The damage is done. He says, well, how do you know its me . Can you tell exactly whos mass that is. I guess, true enough, but attorneys for the farmers said, i dont care if its you or him, this is what it is, and what you guys are doing, these are the effects. The court said, yes, you are right. Youre right. Then, and this is my favorite argument. Then, the attorneys for the mines said, okay, its ours. Right . Okay. All of our stuff now is over your field. Its not your land anymore. Its our land. This is our mass, and the judge said, i dont think so. Finally, it goes to a decision, which everyone expected, for many people expected was going to go in favor of the mines because the judge was very pro minds. But he said, no. Theyre absolutely right. This has to stop either you pay for it or you stop, and they stopped. 1874, so in effect, hydraulic mining comes to an end around 1874, as you can see around the hydraulic digging example of this. Polluted streams and the rest. We are still living with it. Okay. All of that its plaster mining. There was another kind of mining, of course, load mining. This was a mining that attempts to get at the veins of gold that are not yet eroded in the mountains. To that, you borrow and to, take a good guess edward you will find those lines, you burrow into it and if you can find them, you blast the stuff away, and haul out the or, courts and granted. Hall it out and then process it. Im not going to go into a great detail here. But if youre looking at california by far the largest amount of goal taking out was plaster gold. But if youre looking at low mining, we are close to the grass valley, and other low minds around. But, this is in anticipation of what will happen across the rest of the west. Now, tomorrow, the presentation on some of the industrialization of the west through these sorts of things, that will talk more about mining, apart from the title of this by going over the sierra. Its not gold, it silver. Actually, its gold and silver. But primarily silver. Its in nevada, not california, but its really just an offshoot of here. They start by mining gold. That was the most dramatic example of load mining in the west, but they would also below mining across the mining west in colorado, in arizona as well. So we will go into more detail about how that worked tomorrow but today, if youre talking about the environmental costs, the environmental effects of this, lets look at some of what this meant. How does it work . This guy is borrowing down to the ground, about to pull out the rock, and remember, this is an eroded gold. So this is gold that is still embedded in the rock. You break it down, we blast it into these pieces. You can haul them out in courts and then you dump them, and then you hear is grass valley. The marilyn, idaho mine, i think it is called. Thats the mine in grass valley. Its now a state park. You can go up and visit this. Places like this. What does it take. Look at this now. Would, it takes a lot of wood. So in addition to would being taken to build the first to put it underground. , when you go into more developed low mining areas. A pretty good estimate that the amount of what to use, but also for a feel for that, but the greatest amount was underground, the tunnels under the low total 200 miles of tunnels under virginia city. All of them held up by what . You have a pretty good estimate about how much it was used, measuring the amount of member to make a blank an inch sick. If you were to take all of that would and turn it all into planks, the foot wide and an inch thick, and you lay it into and two and, how far would they go . 150,000 miles. Hundred 50,000 miles of planks. All of that used in that one place. To expand that into the whole area, and all those other areas of mining. In effect there just retool in the entire system, or much of it. There are other ways that they will go into effect, but we talk about the industrialization of the west through mining and other economies. Up top, its been taking out to these. The forcing you do, is you have to crush it, you have to break it down to the formula to find an extreme. Break it down to the point where the gold does can be extracted. You have to pulverize it. That was done through stamp mills and half basic forms. The prototype, and its basically, you think of internal Combustion Engine with christians going off, rotating of the camp shaft. So, just like a car thats how it goes, you power this thing, and as it goes these things are going up and down, pounding on them ability or up there. Use water to put it out and then you put the solution out there and treated with mercury, which is often lost in the streams. Do exhilarating tire process in the plaster system. Its a huge operation. He went to the Indian Museum and you describe the acorns, and you made the point that you did not stir them and yesterday in the museum, our guy was in the stone, and thats where they had been pounding, so i stood there and said okay, indian women pounding acorns and, 50 feet away, this. Theres a way in which this encapsulates the entire story. This way of life, and that way of life. Pounding to pounding. In any case, what you saw was the scale they began with as the binding was expands, this becomes increasingly industrialized. In the black hills the biggest factories in the east. So you dont pay much attention by this is, thats just the slightest suggestion of whats going on. Whats going on, a lot is going on. One final point to end with, you talk about the environmental change, its natural to focus on the mining, and hydraulics and the grass valley to look there to keep the tight release. But its important to pull back. Another implication of this distinctive pattern, is that theres this immediate impulse to connect to it. You get through these, and immediate effort to build roads, eventually, railroads and such but the first impulse, and this remains long after the completion and starting with the trails, we looked at this map, whats happening among the trails . And the rest of the santa fe trail, from right about here but these people for every person, three or four animals, toxin mainly but also horses and cheap. There are eating the grass, being driven and let across, theyre taking their toll. They are putting their water, will talk about that. What effect does that have on indian peoples . We can go into this but on the great plains and even more so and the great basin, indians had to have access to those River Valleys and streams. First of all, in the great basin, a lot of the grasses grew that they used for food. They harvested the seeds of these grasses, although now the bellies of oxygen. The trees the indian for the most part where from the high country hunting, the great basin wrath when, it gets cold they cant go back home to iowa. And anything outside of that is putting its life and its. And this is a very dangerous environment, if you can make it in the reverse thats where the trees are they need water from their horses, the protection from those slightly depressed streams. They have to have it if they cant have it, they dont have access to that, theyre indictable. I figure that out once. We have good estimates how much would a cap of 25 or 30 people used, its basically the equivalent of 11 of the largest moving vans that we have today. Florida ceiling, so they come back and the weekend, by the middle of 1860 they were literally both alone tree and then they were gone but you have to go far away. , which was disastrous. And catastrophic so the environmental effect the galapagos are being decimated, reverie environments in nebraska are being stripped of indian people have said. The effect is far lighter footings fit because theres a very rare photo of the encampments feet for. Including the effect of disease, remember, these overland trails, these things that have to be constructed for their communication of diseases. And they did. During the rush i, talked about the effect of these diseases on the rushes, the overland theres themselves. Its pretty impressive. Hundreds of graves and trails and theyre also bringing diseases and they would come into the camps and asked for the toll passing through there and out of curiosity he will be presented to them as well and absolutely catastrophic because i was one of the earlier years and the camps of the cheyennes and the cheyenne band the so many died and dispersed into horrific losses. The sources say their population dropped by half foot but still they were absolutely terrific losses. This is a winter camp on. A winter count is planes and their industry which is on a bison hide and is a spiral made of individual drawings and each of those drawings represents the collective memory of the most important notable thing that happened. This is the year crows attack and theres a designated historian which is to remember the story behind this which will go year by year and in the spiral its absolutely fascinating into looking into them. This is a winter for the year 1849. It shows a man who will put up in the fetal position and is screaming in agony agony and it was a nasty, nasty disease. The death rate among them was absolutely horrific. All and with we came across this awhile back and we had a man empowered stands barry who is an engineer i was going with a group of vision ears in california and had a very good account of the title of what we saw in california and if you read the aground going across the plains they say they stopped for the day and took the day off and he looks over north plaid and he says he sees five since these teepees and you see whats been taken how he. Goes across the river and nobody is there any goes up to them and looks in the lodges and there are licata, west coast sue hes think of the horseback and there are courses and other dressed in the rear finery and in spears and the very best close. He said there was a beautiful 16 Year Old Girl and was wrapped in a very high quality bison rogue and leggings and beautiful dear skin clothes and decorated with the porcupine coils and just fabulous beadwork. Not too unlike weve seen in the museum yesterday. We went back to his camp and got to his camp and we are celebrating. Why are they celebrating . The reason they stopped at the bank was because this was july 4th 1849. To me, its sums up a lot of the story and today that we used to celebrate the birth of the republican and the popular mine stems run opportunity and named professional football teams after like yesterday with july 4th 1849 and thats what the last was all about and thats also what the west was all about. It also the Environmental Impact of california and i will be the topic of the next to presentations. I want you to think about that when, you see the photographs like this and what you hit your wagon to on that type of thing. Again, it benefits for this country are enormous, enormous. But there was a price. The price to the land, price to the environment, most of all, a price to the people to the land that was. That is what we will look at the next session. Thank you. applause we got sometimes for questions i think to, be not . Yeah sure. You spoke about the price that were in today. How much of the River Valleys and the river ecosystems have recovered today and how much of the land of those areas in california . Its a tricky question. What does recovered mean . If you follow the trail now its all inaudible the trails were where they were with the International Wave thats the way indians moved across for generations as the lady interstates moved across. I have a slide i showed you with routes at the time of contact and i put it next to a map on interstates and the same. Thing they dont recover anything ever, nothing ever recovers back to st. Louis. Environmental change never versus, but what we see, what do you see it pained bell up in other ways, you dont see, of course, the kind of devastation that i showed you, to see a very different place. What a lot of it has come back, there is a very interesting method of really photography now, people that have gone back and got an iconic photographs of places in the past if they can get the same angle and time of day and take a photograph today. Theres some over, and its quite amazing, to go back and its just a wasteland, and that all of these trees. The land does have a way of coming back, but of course, there are other ways that it takes much longer. Mercury, chemical pollutions, and things like that. Other kinds of mining, theres a mining side there, not a gold mine but its a mine that the water comes back and is officially designated the worst water in the world, quite literally. Its acidic content is 6300 times the content acidity up battery acid. That doesnt correct itself very quickly, it sticks around for a long time until we have to think about today. Yes . You said in 1874 there was this lawsuit, mining stopped an 1874 as a result of a lawsuit and to what extent did the gold miners are gold mining influence the creation of the First National park or was advocating for the environment and this time . Thats a fascinating question. We tried to remember what im going to talk about, but the whole story of the creation of First National parks the, first is yosemite, the First National, park not just in the United States but in the world as yellowstone, two years before that, 1872. Its really an entirely different samples except to this degree, by that time, the American Public its becoming aware of the velocity of this change out in the west and this is a time in which, after the civil war, and they are seeing the west increasingly as a place where the country can unite, where we can come together, put all of this civil war stuff behind us. One way they do that is look to the west as ways of forming a common identity and one of the ways that you can find a common identity from the United States as opposed to england or the old world is, okay, you guys have got the coliseums, you have the cathedrals you have a very old cities, we have wilderness. Beautiful wilderness, bizarre wilderness like yellowstone. So there is this impulse to create the silence of what people see as pristine, untouched places. They werent, of course. But they believed there was something out there that would preserve what it was that are distinctively american, that preserves our identity. But also economic interests involving thats, the Yellowstone Park is created around the Northern Pacific railroad, trying to get tourists to go up there, so its a jumble of and pulses. I dont think that people immediately connected to the need for that with the devastation is going on. Yosemite, i have to study houston 80 more closely to understand that. Its probably out there but im not sure theres any connection to that. The destruction inaudible but actually relegated out of the business, you can do hydraulic mining but under such strict conditions that they just put most of them out of business. There is one hydraulic mind that is still operating, its up out of alberta and its called a specific mine, i have seen it. I wrote it on horseback, i would not lie about a thing like that. The other thing is you have this Big Hydraulic infrastructure, where you cant move that but there is the business thing, you can move that, so they relocated up on the headwaters of the trinity river, where they continue to do hydraulic mining and spoiled the salmon fishery, which is the hoop reservation and Everything Else down stream. That operated well into the 20th century. Thanks, but yes. My question ties into what michael had to say and there are many people involved in conservation efforts and all the accounts we read were very fashionable and straightforward and the assertion of what theyre doing so in terms of mining. Were there anything youve come across in accounts where people are thinking about the actual impact theyre having on things . Ive asked my question myself. On many accounts and especially elsewhere in colorado. Going places you see that are on outside visitors who come there and say holy toledo, really. People like isabella bergh who are in colorado and they point that out. Its a cash cow and in fact, the book im trying to finish goes into some detail about the destruction of this and strip the hills and hes right. Theres a vivid description of the oval things they were doing and this description comes out of the minds that has risen and see what we can do. He is praising what they were doing and they see this as we now are the gods of the earth. Before the mining started as they progressed where they were successful and finding gold or the deal the same amount as they progressed . Much more in amounts of it and finding gold is a tricky question. Both sides were blasting with water and i knew the gold was in there and was easy enough to find but it is a matter of investment as opposed to profit. It was not economical enough they came up with the hydraulic system where they talked about this more and imagine what Something Like that would cost which was a very expensive and elaborate infrastructure so, and sometimes takes months and months to build Something Big enough thats all out lied but no one is doing that. Some big guy with a rocker and these are huge corporations that are big, big business. We think the rise of take business in these years and civil war is an eastern phenomenon and we think of rockefeller and all that. But once you do that, if youre right in youre estimate make a lot of money and profits are huge and cost her huge. You mentioned before how america is protected by disease. It explores before in the area and what he wrote and journals and how the areas where whole tribes had been decimated and they dont know why. Starting to believe its disease was rocked by the 1500s and the caribbean were not everyone made it. Do you see how this affected deep western United States. Are you saying that this was by the americans and brought also population as that or was it smaller . We have less of a grip on the numbers earlier but youre absolutely right. It will not imply the significant introduction going on for a long time. I was struck in the southwest of texas and didnt go into the area of the great plains until around 1780 where was 1780 or 83 or he had the horse so that that time that the horse have so many gets in the southwest and runs away they would either die or no longer be communicated to. Its just the distance itself which is viewing the interior and what the horse culture is established and some people get there by horse adjusts sweeps across the west. An enormous losses the population but in the 30s, malaria was in the Pacific Northwest as separate was a very Deadly Strike during this period during the 18 sixties and those are relatively later. They had their own diseases and none of the diseases who are most familiar with and our overall bought by them and had their own but what im saying here is, these trails again, are perfectly designed with far more people going to these indian lands and are coming from all of these different places and are drawing on the reservoirs that are coming through here and thousands of them are in conditions that are a vast lay near patronage where it cultivates and so thats the difference. Any other questions . What time do we have here . Well thanks very much. applause