The Mining Law of 1872: Past, Politics, and Prospects

by Gordon Morris Bakken

History has left us a classic image of western mining in the grizzly forty-niner squatting by a clear stream sifting through gravel to reveal gold. What this slice of Western Americana does not reveal, however, is thousands of miners doing the same, their gravel washing downstream, causing the water to grow dark with debris while trout choke to death and wash ashore. Instead of the havoc wreaked upon the western landscape, we are told stories of American enterprise, ingenuity, and fortune. The General Mining Act of 1872, which declared all valuable mineral deposits on public lands to be free and open to exploration and purchase, has had a controversial impact on the western environment as, under the protection of federal law, various twentieth-century entrepreneurs have manipulated it in order to dump waste, cut timber, create resorts, and engage in a host of other activities damaging to the environment. In this in-depth analysis, legal historian Gordon Morris Bakken traces the roots of the mining law and details the way its unintended consequences have shaped western legal thought from Nome to Tombstone and how it has informed much of the lore of the settlement of the West.

Genres: History, Legal

268 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Erica · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first, I thought this book was going to be on the anti-mining side of things - but hats off to GB for presenting a very even keeled, unbiased and great look at the Mining Law. This is really about the only book that I could find on the Mining Law, so you don't have a lot of choices if you want to learn about it. It is fairly well done - and I did learn a lot. My complaints were however, that it was obviously written by a man who is used to turning out lots of books and therefor you didn't get the sense that he put a lot into it. There was many typo's, an obviously accidentally repeated passage, and a general sense of rushed writing. Way to many ideas were presented unexplained. He throws events from mining law history out as if you are already very familiar with mining law cases....without ever bothering to explain what happened with them. That being said, there was also a lot to learn from this book, and I came away with a much better sense of something that is oft talked about in mining, but little understood(on my part). I still have a lot of questions - things that I think should have been covered. But overall, I think it was a very approachable interesting read. I am glad that it covered the past as well as current (up to 2007 anyway), proposed bills/acts/amendments considered. A good read, and perhaps the only read, to get a view into mining law. I definitely recommend, but think it could have been written much much better.