Download Free Settlement And The Mining Frontier Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Settlement And The Mining Frontier and write the review.

"Long out of print, this study of western mining is now available with three new chapters by Elliott West. When originally published in 1963, Professor Paul's book offered the first comprehensive view of western mining as an integral part of the settlement process. In his supplemental chapters, Professor West presents a social history of mining camps - encompassing discussions of gender, class, race, labor, and the environment. The combined scholarship of Paul and West makes a strong case for the transforming effects of the mining frontier on western society in particular and American society in general. This revised, expanded edition continues to offer a distinctively vivid voice and an unusually keen eye for telling detail."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Reprint of the work originally published by Indiana University Press in 1967, with a new, brief preface. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
California’s history is rich and diverse, with numerous fascinating stories hidden in its past. Before the discovery of gold in the Sierras, San Francisco (Yerba Buena) and its surroundings comprised a sparsely populated frontier on the edge of the old Spanish realm. After 1848, the area rapidly transformed into a settled urban system as a tremendous influx of prospectors and settlers came to seek their fortune in California. A wave of gold miners, merchants, farmers, politicians, carpenters, and many others from various backgrounds and corners of the world migrated to the area at that time. Interrelated social, geographic, and economic processes led to a very quick metamorphosis from frontier settlement to a firmly established system with ingrained economic patterns. The development of San Francisco’s outlying region from a wilderness into a prosperous village and farming mecca shows how quickly in-migration coupled with economic diversification can establish a stable settlement structure upon the landscape. Otterstrom describes an intricately woven tapestry of interrelated people who were contributing creators of a wide variety of prosperous northern California environs. He uncovers the processes that converted this sleepy post-Mexican outpost into a focal point of nearly hyperactive youthful growth. The narrative follows this crucial story of settlement development until the dawn of the twentieth century, through the interconnected framework of individual and family ingenuity, migration trajectories, and diverse geographical scales. Multiplying individualistic experiences from across far-flung appendages of the Northern California system into larger and larger scales, Otterstrom has achieved a matchless historical and sociological study that will form the basis for any future studies of the area.
The genuine creative achievements of nineteenth-century western women have often been obscured by sentimental tributes to their devotion and diligence, while men are praised as pathfinders, entrepreneurs, and community builders. But the nineteen narratives in So Much to Be Done by women of diverse status and background reveal women's involvement in every aspect of settlement. Their part in making hard decisions, producing essential income, and developing new communities was as important as their flexibility, humor, and sense of adventure. This collection describes the experiences of pioneer women responding in individual ways to the challenge of frontier hardships. The letters, diaries, and memoirs presented here offer glimpses of women's courage, physical strength, and independence that were the equal of any man's, even as they also reveal the failures, weaknesses, and tragedies that beset both sexes during the complex settlement process. Women describe their multiple daily tasks, the ingenuity by which they asserted themselves or circumvented patriarchal authority, the networks of relatives and friends who made the survival of both men and women possible. Such information is seldom found in men's narratives. Women's words provide rich veins of new material for social historians.