{"product_id":"hard-places-by-richard-v-francaviglia-reading-the-landscape-mining-districts","title":"Hard Places by Richard V Francaviglia Reading the Landscape Mining Districts","description":"\u003cbody\u003e\n\u003c!-- HTML Generated by Auction Wizard 2000 - http:\/\/www.AuctionWizard2000.com\/ --\u003e\n\n\n   \u003cmeta charset=\"UTF-8\"\u003e\n   \u003cmeta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0\"\u003e\n\n\n\u003c!-- AW2KLOT#:169153 --\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ctable style=\"width:98%;padding:2px;margin:auto;border:5px outset #673434;background-color:#FDF3D0\"\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd style=\"border:1px inset #673434;margin:5px;\"\u003e\n\u003ctable style=\"width:100%;border:0px;padding:5px;\"\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\n\u003c\/td\u003e\u003c\/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd style=\"padding:5px\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:center\"\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial Black;font-size:1.5em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration: underline;\"\u003eRailroadTreasures\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial Black;font-size:1.5em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration: underline;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial Black;font-size:1.5em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration: underline;\"\u003eoffers the following item:\u003c\/span\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:1.0em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003e  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\u003c\/td\u003e\u003c\/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd style=\";padding:5px\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:center\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;font-size:1.13em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003eHard Places by Richard V Francaviglia Reading the Landscape Mining Districts\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:center\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;font-size:1.13em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003e  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Calibri;font-size:1.13em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003eHard Places by Richard V Francaviglia\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Calibri;font-size:1.13em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003eReading the Landscape of America's Historic Mining Districts\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Calibri;font-size:1.13em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003eSoft Cover\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Calibri;font-size:1.13em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003e237 pages\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Calibri;font-size:1.13em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003eCopyright 1991\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Calibri;font-size:1.13em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003eCONTENTS\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Calibri;font-size:1.13em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003eAcknowledgments, ix\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Calibri;font-size:1.13em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003eForeword by Wayne Franklin, xi \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Calibri;font-size:1.13em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003eIntroduction, xvii\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Calibri;font-size:1.13em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003eCHAPTER ONE Reading the Landscape, 1\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Calibri;font-size:1.13em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003eCHAPTER TWO Interpreting the Landscape, 63\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Calibri;font-size:1.13em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003eCHAPTER THREE Perceiving the Landscape, 169 Notes, 217\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Calibri;font-size:1.13em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003eBibliography, 225\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Calibri;font-size:1.13em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003eIndex, 233\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Calibri;font-size:1.13em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003eFOREWORD by Wayne Franklin That stone lieth there yet, and much burnt slag nigh.-EON Saga\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Calibri;font-size:1.13em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003eIn this fascinating excavation of America's mining landscapes as cultural and historical resources, Richard Francaviglia shows us how to read the massive physical evidence that mineral extraction has left all across the land. More than anything else, his book reveals the order in the disorderly landscapes of Hibbing or Bisbee, the coal towns of Pennsylvania or the gold towns of California. These are places that have a distinct and distinctive history. And they reveal, if we look aright, the causes that have brought them into being and the technical and social processes that have given them their shape. The rubbish that clutters the ground and even the very holes that penetrate it become, under Francaviglia's gaze, an impressive historical text.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Calibri;font-size:1.13em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003eThe resulting insight gives a new clarity to the settings within which the almost mythic events of American mining took place. In reading the physical and social remains of this industry, we thus are led to recall more elusive remains. These include the stories that miners, especially those seeking precious metals, have always told or have had told about them. Like all toilers in elemental scenes-the sailor is another-miners enjoy an almost primitive communion with the durable things of the world. We finger their stories as if they were gold coins.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Calibri;font-size:1.13em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003eSome are tales of enormous finds and great, sudden riches. But mining is richest of all in a kind of narrative slag that clutters its old haunts. Particularly when the minerals sought after are precious, it is not so much the durability or desirability of gold or silver that creates the value of ores; it is instead the enormous waste of labor and resources and lives that gives the ores their worth. They are valuable because it costs so much to find them and haul them out. Hence for every single tale of success the memory of the culture is filled with hundreds of tragic or tragicomic stories of failure.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Calibri;font-size:1.13em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003eThe very earliest voyagers to the New World brought with them the \"mineral men\" whose job it was to locate and prove and bring back the promising ores of future wealth. Most of them, alas, were masters of golden tongues more than of metallurgy. In the far North, Martin Frobisher, thinking that samples taken home earlier had yielded good gold, loaded more than a thousand tons of worthless rock onto his ships in the late 1570s. Pointlessly refined at great cost in England, it ultimately was used to pave roads there. (Frobisher should have listened to the writer who chronicled his second voyage. Speaking of the natives of the regions they visited, that man wrote with considerable irony that \"their riches are not gold, silver or precious drapery, but their said tents and boats, made of the skins of red deer and seal skins; also dogs like unto wolves.\")\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Calibri;font-size:1.13em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003eThe absurdity of importing American rock for paving English roads, or looking for European-style riches where Europeans could see only poverty, suggests a larger absurdity in the lore of mining. Nor was that theme symptomatic merely of the early centuries. A few tales culled from the most recent of North America's big \"rushes,\" in the Klondike, may help to underscore the madness almost endemic to it.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Calibri;font-size:1.13em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003eNot a hundred years ago, in July 1897, a filthy ship called the Excelsior flung ashore at San Francisco a former YMCA instructor named Thomas Lippy who carried in his grip two hundred pounds of gold that neither physical fitness not clean living but simple luck had let him find. Two days later the Portland, a ship once seized by the government of Haiti for running ammunition to rebels there, and then by the United States for smuggling opium and illegal Chinese immigrants, docked in Seattle with two tons of the same bright hope aboard.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Calibri;font-size:1.13em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003eTimes were tough in Seattle and indeed the nation then, and word spread quickly about the strike in the Klondike. Individually and in groups, people quickly began to fall into the absurd patterns that mineral wealth has often stimulated. The mayor of Seattle, W. D. Wood, was in San Francisco when the Excelsior docked and immediately wired his resignation to the city council back home: \"I resign. Stop. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Calibri;font-size:1.13em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003eKlondike. Stop.\" It was his plan to charter a ship with money taken in from would-be miners, then use the surplus to buy cheap supplies that he later would be able to sell (to those same men, of course) at vastly inflated prices once the ship with its cargo and captive passengers and ex-mayor arrived in the North. Wood's first mistake was buying so many supplies that the Humboldt was too cramped to allow his passengers any space for their own gear. Only when they threatened to lynch him even before the ship left San Francisco did he reconsider.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Calibri;font-size:1.13em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003eThat did not end the Humboldt's troubles. When it reached the clapboard illusion called St. Michael's, on the Yukon delta, it found no dock to unload its goods on. As if in exasperation, it simply shuddered to a halt. The ex-mayor put his passengers to work building a new vessel that with a touch of nostalgia he dubbed the Seattle Number One. But soon the men nicknamed it the Mukluk: for it had the shape of a shapeless Eskimo boot and Seattle lay too far behind them now, for the ex-mayor's simple magic words to work here.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Calibri;font-size:1.13em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003eAhead of them lay the Yukon. It led back through vast, cold spaces to no source known to these European interlopers. They were intent on doing what their kind have always done with these places so far from home-reduce them to coin of the old realm by seeking out the portable commodities their eyes can detect as they miss all the strange, silent beauty around them. Almost as soon as the Mukluk plashed down into the Yukon, the river froze against its stammering bow. So the Klondike was lost to the miners, who were anything but miners yet, for 1897 at least. And these men, icebound as none of them had dreamed of being while the vision of gold warmed their minds in San Francisco, once more turned against their captain. At first, it was a matter of names again. A shantytown called Woodworth, after Captain Wood and Captain Worth (commander of another iced-in vessel), had sprung up around the two sad hulks. The men called it Suckerville instead. And soon their wit had a sharper, more dangerous edge. As their own supplies ran low, Wood began to sell them his (which, of course, their money had paid for once already), and at prices that further chilled the shivering miners. With a kind of verbal justice, they once more talked of mutiny until he agreed to sell them all they needed at-for he still remained mayor of a city afloat-yes, Seattle prices.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Calibri;font-size:1.13em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003eWith the spring and the crushing thaw of the Yukon River, the min ers turned once more toward their increasingly loathed goal. They reached Dawson City 314 days after they had left San Francisco. Any of them that had the wherewithal quickly turned around and booked passage home; the rest lingered on, too poor and too wearied by hope to turn back. But eventually they gave up, too; none of them ever made a strike. Ex-captain or ex-mayor or whatever he was, Wood himself already had slipped away from Suckerville and walked back alone to St. Michaels in the frigid winter. One may fancy this as a kind of justice. He was not to be Klondike-rich either.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Calibri;font-size:1.13em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003eThomas Lippy, who started it all, did make a fortune. He dug two million dollars' worth out of his claim on Eldorado Creek before releasing it for cash in 1903. He and his wife, Salome, sailed around the world, then went to a high house in Seattle, where sunshine played on the muraled ceiling of the ballroom through ornate stained-glass windows. He was generous, probably too generous, with his many relatives-and with many charities, including the YMCA, the Methodist Church, the Anti-Saloon League, the General Hospital, even the pompous-sounding Fund for Seattle's First Swimming Pool. He also held many honorific positions, including the presidency of both the YMCA and the hospital, and at one point was the Pacific Northwest's senior golf champion. But Lippy's money was being spent unwisely in these years. First came the crash of 1929, and then his death in 1931. His widow, who inherited nothing from him, lived on $50.00 per month through the 1930s; their home finally housed the followers of Father Divine.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Calibri;font-size:1.13em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003eAll in all, some 100,000 men set out on the trail to Dawson City. Maybe a third of them reached their destination, and only half of that group actually looked for gold. Perhaps 4,000 found some, but only 300 of them ever became rich. Twenty of those fortunate souls were lucky enough to die rich. It was the labor of all the luckless ones that bought them prosperity; it was the failures of so many that paid for the few successes. With other minerals, the results were not often so dramatic. But the extremes of the Klondike expressed well the mine-madness (as the eighteenth-century Virginian William Byrd II termed it) that afflicted the European imagination as it sought to comprehend-and thus control and exploit-the potential resources of the continent.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Calibri;font-size:1.13em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003eThese are a few of the other tailings that mining has left on the landscape of America. They share with those so well studied by Richard Francaviglia an oddly compelling beauty beneath their repulsive surfaces. In human terms, as in the landscape, we have scattered much ruin to mark our values in this New World.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;font-size:1.0em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003eAll pictures are of the actual item.  There may be reflection from the lights in some photos.   We try to take photos of any damage.    If this is a railroad item, this material is obsolete and no longer in use by the railroad.  Please email with questions. Publishers of Train Shed Cyclopedias and Stephans Railroad Directories. Large inventory of railroad books and magazines. Thank you for buying from us.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:center\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;font-size:1.13em;color:#CE0000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003eShipping charges\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;font-size:1.0em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003eUS Shipments:  Ebay will add $1.25 each additional items, there are a few exceptions.    \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;font-size:1.0em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003eEbay Global shipping charges are shown. These items are shipped to Kentucky and forwarded to you. Ebay collects the shipping and customs \/ import fees.   Refunds may be issued if you add multiple items to your cart and pay with one payment.    For direct postage rates to these countries, send me an email.   Shipping varies by weight.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:center\"\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;font-size:1.13em;color:#CE0000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003ePayment options\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;font-size:1.13em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;font-size:1.0em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003ePayment must be received within 7 days. Paypal is accepted. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:center\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;font-size:1.13em;color:#CE0000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003eTerms and conditions \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;font-size:1.0em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003eAll sales are final. Returns accepted if item is not as described.  Contact us first.  No warranty is stated or implied. Please e-mail us with any questions before bidding.   \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:center\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family:Arial;font-size:1.5em;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;\"\u003eThanks for looking at our items.   \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:left\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\u003c\/td\u003e\u003c\/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd style=\";padding:5px\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align:center;width:99.9%;margin:auto\"\u003e\n\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/td\u003e\u003c\/tr\u003e\n\u003c\/table\u003e\n\u003c\/td\u003e\u003c\/tr\u003e\u003c\/table\u003e\n\n\u003c\/body\u003e","brand":"RailroadTreasures","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44241598480580,"sku":"394151478812","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/2232\/7333\/files\/57_555195e7-8261-4226-b29f-24af81c0816b.jpg?v=1727913230","url":"https:\/\/railroadtreasures.com\/products\/hard-places-by-richard-v-francaviglia-reading-the-landscape-mining-districts","provider":"RailroadTreasures","version":"1.0","type":"link"}