The West

Earth, Wind, and Fire: Nature and History in America

The Spanish and Mexican West

Spanish & the environment

Little impact in Texas

Spanish & the environment

New Mexico

Transformation of Indian life

Sheep, weaving, new crops

Spanish land grants: the ranch

Vanishing grasslands

Grassland to sagebrush and creosote bush

20th century: takeover by downy brome (a.k.a. cheatgrass)

California: widespread transformation

Missions: Indians decimated

Sheep, grapes, olives, orchards, wheat

Land grants: ranches and ecology

Russians

Down the coast from Alaska to California

Following furbearing sea mammals

Virtual extinction of otter

Gold and Silver Rushes

Hydraulic Mining

Washing away of mountain topsoil

Floods in spring

Silt and boulders in farmers’ fields

Hydraulic mining, Wardner, Idaho

Malakoff Mine, California

Watkins, Nevada County, 1871

Dams for the dry months

Flumes to
deliver water

Mining debris floods towns & farms, and silts up rivers & harbors

Tailings

Mercury, arsenic, salt, toxic minerals

Timber needs

Smelters

Homestake gold mines & mills, Lead City, Dakota Territory, 1899

The Great Plains

Halt to westward expansion, 1850s

Water

Transportation

Fencing

Indians

Buffalo

Opening the West to settlement

The sad, bloody business of Indian war, 1860-1880

Rising market in buffalo hides

Hunters methodically wipe out the buffalo

The decade of cattle drives

Large herds of cattle in Texas after Civil War

Railheads push west

Abilene, Kansas, 1867

Then Wichita & Dodge City

Cattle driven up the plains

Shipped to Chicago packing plants

Stockyards

Technology brings the farmer

Barbed wire solves the wood problem, 1874

Windmills solve the water problem

Railroads solve the transportation problem

“Rain follows the plow,” 1880s

First Harvest

Farming the Plains

New technology for wide open spaces

Riding plows

Mowing machines

Reapers & twin binders

Farming the Plains

New technology for wide open spaces

1880: the combine

Need for migrant workers

Farm as factory

Steam tractor, South Dakota

Threshing with steam, Kansas, 1921

Dust Bowl

World War I: “Wheat Will Win the War!”

Cultivated acreage rises

1920s, acreage grows again

Poor farming methods: deep tilling; bare soil in winter

1930s: record drought

Up to 75% of topsoil blows away

One of history’s worst environmental disasters