Aida Larson
Mrs. Mendenhall
First hour English
March 6, 2014
The Berkeley Pit: The history and future
Where the minerals that America uses came from? Americans use and waste large amounts of substance and material every day. Most people disregard and ignore the places where this material may come from. Putting little to no time into researching on the subject, makes it difficult to ever figure out and appreciate the stories and history behind our beloved substance and consumption of it. But actually putting the effort of working and looking into it, someone may be pleasantly surprised at the amount of backstory on it, and may find it rather interesting. So if someone were to say, look into the history of the Berkeley pit. They would most likely find plenty of sources explaining how it supplied copper and many minerals for the U.S. for years. Of course anyone who already knew information on the pit could tell you its amazing and introcut stories of how it came to be, and how it has been doing over the years. The pit is a “toxic attraction” in the town of Butte. Being the town’s income and source of tourism. Most people in Butte Montana, the home of the pit, could tell how amazing it is.
The excitement for mining and excavating for minerals was sparked in prospectors and people looking for an easy way of profit in the 60’s.This second gold rush of speaks, despite most of the minerals they were after was more on the lines of copper, nickel, iron and the like, brought high hopes of those wanting to get rich fast. Though thousands had hope in making money from mining on their own, many excavators found little gold on their own efforts. Most needed to actually find work in mines. But, they almost got something even better. The v...
... middle of paper ...
.... After a year or so of research, it was found that this black algae like organism, actually was a magnet of sorts to minerals in the water. Other sponges and efforts to clean out the water were nothing compared to what this could clean from the water. Minerals such as gold, iron, copper and silver were extracted from the pit because of it. After an even more extensive research on the algae alone, it was found that there was only one other place that it had ever been found. In the intestinal swabs of geese.
The Berkeley Pit is still undergoing much research on its minerals and life in it. Many have thought to believe that it holds substances that could cure cancer and the like. The town came to love the pit as it provided for them even after mining had left. The once thought deadly pit now held life and much more potential than anyone would have expected.
party in the past placed hazardous wastes there. ( The seller of a foundry was
Approximately forty-five miles east of Sacramento, California, is the friendly town of Placerville, which marks a major “Gold Rush” historical landmark in the United States. In the early days of this small gold mining boomtown, Placerville was known as “Hangtown.” If you come into town, you will see the sign of Placerville, and underneath it you will see its nickname reading, “Old Hangtown.” Nooses can be seen all over town, on police cars, on historical landmark signs – even at the firehouse and on the Placerville City Seal. Placerville has a great deal of history behind its name. Many people who pass through the town, or even those that live there, don’t realize the history behind the town.
The Making of a Hardrock Miner written by Stephen M. Voynick, describes his own personal experiences as a hardrock miner in four different underground mines in the western United States, the Climax molybdenum mine in Colorado, Hecla Lakeshore Project a copper mine in Arizona, and two uranium mines in Wyoming. Rather than a book telling of the fortunes gained and lost, this book was about the relationships gained, but then also lost through mining. Stephen M. Voynick’s direct words and simple writing style provided a book that was an easy read and educational about mine work and safety.
...ing the conditions faced by coal miners and their families in addition to events leading up to the uprising. However, some additional research should be done in regards to the West Virginia Coal Wars and the Battle of Blair Mountain.
Eller, Ronald D. Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880-1930. Knoxville: University of Tennessee, 1982. Print.
Several men extricated around 70 ounces of gold from the mines every day. Now and again, the pockets of gold were so immaculate they didn't require refining, so laborers enclosed them wooden containers and dispatched them straight to the proprietors. The Russell Mine likewise had various pits, vertical shafts, and audits, which were borrowed through a belt of very mineralized shake. Men who made 90 pennies for a 12-hour workday, frequently with simply a flame connected to their caps for light, hand-delved the biggest pit in the Russell Mine. The Big Cut was 60 feet profound, 300 feet long, and 150 feet
The tar creek mining site originally was owned by a Native American tribe, the Quapaw. The Quapaw wanted to keep these lands, but the Bureau of Indian Affairs deemed members opposing a transaction to mining companies “incompetent” (1). In such a case the business could continue and the Bureau of Indian Affairs sold the lands to mining companies. In essence these lands were stolen from the Quapaw because they were ripe for mining. These mines were then used from approximately 1891 to 1970. In the 79 years the mines were open 1.7 million metric tons (~3.75 billion pounds) of lead and 8.8 million metric tons (~19.4 billion pounds) of zinc were withdrawn from the mine (2). The entire area around Tar Creek is known as the tri-state mining area. This tri-state area was a massive source of metals. This area accounted for 35% of the all worldwide metal for a decade. It also provided the majority of metals the United States used in World wars I and II (3).
Smith-Baranzini, Marlene, Richard J. Orsi, and James J. Rawls. A Golden State: Mining And Economic Development In Gold Rush California. Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1999. eBook (EBSCOhost). Web. 26 Mar. 2014.
Forsythe, Mark. The Trail of 1858 : British Columbia’s gold rush past. Canada: Harbour Publishing Co. Ltd., 2007.
In the year 1989, Mr. David Walsh founded the company Bre-X Minerals Ltd., a Canadian firm specializing in mineral exploration. Within the same decade as the founding, the firm would become involved in what became labeled as the ‘world’s biggest mining scam’ and caused shareholders to lose approximately three billion dollars. Four years after the company’s establishment, Walsh purchased a plot of land in Indonesia bordering the Busang River based on information provided by John Felderhof, a geologist, of the potential profit that could be secured in the area. In 1994 core drilling of the property began and lab results agreed with the promise of gold mineralization; however, these results had been skewed by project manager Michael De Guzman who had been adding gold fragments to samples.
Throughout history, humans have been in search of ways to get rich quick. All around the world, people have been looking for and coming up with ways to make money quickly and easily. In the 1800’s that way was panning for gold. Nowadays, the lottery, and the stock market prove as a way to get rich quick, if the odds are in your favor! In California during what’s known as the California Gold Rush, men from all around the world traveled there in search of gold. Unfortunately, almost all of the men who went panning for gold returned home poor, only a few actually struck it rich.
On Page 99 the documentary “An Injury to One (Travis Wilkerson)”, the film tells the history of a town whose mines are owned by a company named ARCO. A lake which happens fill the open-pit
For hundreds, even thousands of years, human beings have mined for metals and stones, and with the advent of greater technology as well as greater needs, the demands for these resources continue to grow. While these resources benefit our lives in many ways, the effects of mining can be detrimental, and one such effect is the topic of this essay, acid mine drainage (A.M.D.). The causes of A.M.D. will be discussed, along with some of the physical and biological problems associated with it. Some prevention and remediation treatments will also be considered.
Warhurst, A. (1999). Mining and the environment: case studies from the Americas. Ottawa, ON, Canada: International Development Research Centre.
4). What this is trying to state, is that mining has no benefits and rides on the success of the economy. Although this is very understandable for people to feel this way, especially when looking into the downside of mining or the environmental impact alone could bring many to believe mining has no positives. These are things that many will agree on.Now if this were so, then mining would have never had the major success that it did when it first began. For some countries, mining has become the main source of their income and is the most successful market for trade. The extraction of natural resources from mining creates products or goods that can be sold in domestic and international markets. Many of these goods are exported around the world or for consumption by other nations. This creates GDP, and brings in money for the country. This then becomes a large factor in a countries economy, because it has now become a good for trade or for selling. Another thing to note, the economy can be heavily affected by the success of mined minerals used for trade. If another country stops buying the product, then the value of this good drops, creating a change on the market. Nonetheless, mining also creates hundreds of thousands of jobs in the U.S. alone. The U.S. has many mining operations