3. Sierra Ecosystems

4. Sierra Wildlife

5. Sierra Foothills and Valleys

• Indian Uses of the land.

• Indian, Chinese, and European gold miners.

• Columbia State Historic Park, Ca.
• Placer mining with sluice box and riffle bars.
• Most democratic form of mining; available to all.
• $87 million in gold. 1850-70.

• Columbia State Historic Park, Ca.
• Joaquin Miller, 1890, My Life Amongst the Modocs.
• Smoke pollutes the air, mine shafts pock-mark the earth, mercury pollutes streams.

• Hydraulic mine site near Nevada City, Ca.

• Monitor nozzle

• Carleton Watkins photograph

• Malakoff Diggins' State Park, Ca.
• Eroded rock to form vertical cliffs.
• River beds altered.
• Topsoil washed away.
• Fans of tailings.

• Geologist, 1843-1918.
• United States Geological Survey, Department of the Interior.
• "Hydraulic Mining Debris in the Sierra Nevada" (1917).

• Top: River valley flooded with mining debris (1908).
• Bottom: Tree trunks formerly innundated by debris reappear with erosion (1908).

• Left: Water fills entire creek bed (1908 photo).
• Right: Water confined to narrow channel except when flooded (1908 photo).

17. Sacramento River

• In 1880s was filled with debris from hydraulic mining.
• By 1902 tides had returned to Sacramento and by 1920 reached 20 inches (Were 2 feet originally).
• Trees began to regrow.

19. Gold Rush Ecological Impacts

• Impacts of Mining on Sierra Ecosystems.

• Stanford University.
• Author of The Roots of Dependency (1983); Its Your Misfortune and None of My Own (1991); The Organic Machine (1996).
• In Major Problems: "Salmon versus Fishers in the Northwest." 

• Energy links human and natural systems.
• Solar energy is captured in salmon and ingested by humans and other animals as caloric energy.
• Humans expend energy in the form of labor in catching and drying salmon.
• The river captures energy from the sun and wind as well as by gravity flow.

• White: "Salmon are a virtually free gift to the energy ledger of the Columbia. They bring [solar] energy garnered from [the ocean] outside the river back to the river."

• Celilo Falls, Columbia River.
• White: "Like us, rivers work. They absorb and emit energy; they rearrange the world. The Columbia has been working for millennia."

• Indian fishing sites.
• At traditional places where water is swift and where fish are forced into narrow channels.
• Men's work is to catch fish.

• To extend the energy of the salmon over time, they must be preserved by drying.
• Women's work is to dry the salmon caught by men.

• Gillnetters cast nets and float down the river.
• By 1883, 1700 gillnetters.
• Wind and human muscle are used to harvest the fish.

• Used on the Columbia between the Cascades and Celilo Falls after 1879.
• Use energy of the river to pump the fish out of the river.
• High efficiency: 20,000 to 50,000 pounds of fish per day.
• By 1890s salmon runs dramatically decline.

• "In their dying, salmon revealed constellations of competing social values."
• "Understanding the fate of salmon involves understanding complicated and particular social struggles and not some universal human nature at work in an undifferentiated commons."

• What is the environmental legacy of the Gold Rush? Can or should it be repaired?
• How are otters and salmon environmental actors? Is this approach to history useful?