Winner of the Mining History Association Clark Spence Award for the Best Book in Mining History, 2017-2018Brian James Leech provides a social and environmental history of Butte, Montana’s Berkeley Pit, an open-pit mine which operated from 1955 to 1982. Using oral history interviews and archival finds, The City That Ate Itself explores the lived experience of open-pit copper mining at Butte’s infamous Berkeley Pit. Because an open-pit mine has to expand out...

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Revenant—the basis for the award-winning film starring Leonardo DiCaprio—tells the remarkable story of the worst hard-rock mining disaster in American history.A half-hour before midnight on June 8, 1917, a fire broke out in the North Butte Mining Company's Granite Mountain shaft. Sparked more than two thousand feet below ground, the fire spewed flames, smoke, and poisonous gas through a labyrint...

William Kittredge's stunning memoir is at once autobiography, a family chronicle, and a Westerner's settling of accounts with the land he grew up in. This is the story of a grandfather whose single-minded hunger for property won him a ranch the size of Delaware but estranged him from his family; of a father who farmed with tractors and drainage ditches but consorted with movie stars; and of Kittredge himself, who was raised by cowboys and saw them become obsolete, who floundered through th...

While copper seems less glamorous than gold, it may be far more important. Copper proved vital to the industrial revolution and indispensable for electrification of America. Kennecott Copper Corporation, at one time the largest producer of copper in the world, thus played a key role in economic and industrial development. This book recounts how Kennecott was formed from the merger of three mining operations (one in Alaska, one in Utah, and one in Chile), how it led the way in mining techno...

Nevada’s Comstock Mining District has been the focus of legend since it first burst into international prominence in the late 1850s, and its principal settlement, Virginia City, endures in the popular mind as the West’s quintessential mining camp. But the authentic history of the Comstock is far more complex and interesting than its colorful image. Contrary to legend, Virginia City spent only its first few years as a ramshackle mining camp. The mining boom quickly turned it into a thriving...

Lesser known than the gold and silver mines of Western lore, Southern Colorado�s extensive coal mines fueled the engines for Western industrialization in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Of the numerous companies operating the mines, the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) was king. With a total of 62 mines, the majority of them in Colorado�s Las Animas, Huerfano, and Fremont Counties, CF&I ruled the lives of countless miners in company towns scattered throughout Southern Colorado...

When it comes to Nevada history, men get most of the ink. Comstock Women is a collection of 14 historical studies that helps to rectify that reality. The authors of these essays, who include some of Nevada’s most prominent historians, demographers, and archaeologists, explore such topics as women and politics, jobs, and ethnic groups. Their work goes far in refuting the exaggerated popular images of women in early mining towns as dance hall girls or prostitutes. Relying primarily ...

Downwind is an unflinching tale of the atomic West that reveals the intentional disregard for the inhabitants and the environment in nuclear testing by the federal government and in uranium extraction by mining corporations during and after the Cold War.Sarah Alisabeth Fox interviews residents of the Great Basin region affected by environmental contamination from the uranium industry and nuclear testing fallout. Those residents tell tales of communities ravaged by cancer e...

Montana comes alive from 1840 to 1870 in this mesmerizing second volume of the state's history, Priests and Prospectors.Montana in 1840 was a very quiet place. Indians roamed about as they wished and there were few white men around. The 1850s saw some increased activity, but things largely stayed the same. Then on a hot summer day in 1862 one man struck gold and everything changed.Discover the journey that Montana took from a sleepy backwater of less than 700 people to a th...

The image of Old West saloons as sites of violence and raucous entertainment has been perpetuated by film and legend, but the true story of such establishments is far more complex. In Boomtown Saloons, archaeologist Kelly J. Dixon recounts the excavation of four historic saloon sites in Nevada’s Virginia City, one of the West’s most important boomtowns, and shows how the physical traces of this handful of disparate drinking places offer a new perspective on authentic life in the m...

The Cortez Hills Expansion Project archaeological excavations uncovered a wealth of information about the Cortez Mining District, from its beginning in 1863 to the government-mandated end to the mining of precious metals in the district during World War II. Obermayr and McQueen use archaeological data as a foundation to tell the story of life in one of Nevada’s most intriguing, long-lived mining districts. Archaeologists excavate and analyze many thousands of artifacts, uncovering the home...

When brothers Ethan and Hosea Grosh left Pennsylvania in 1849, they joined throngs of men from all over the world intent on finding a fortune in the California Gold Rush. Their search for wealth took them from San Francisco into the gold country and then over the Sierra into Nevada’s Gold Canyon, where they placer-mined for gold and discovered a deposit of silver. The letters they sent back to their family offer vivid commentaries on the turbulent western frontier, the diverse society of t...