| This dissertation explores how mining, milling, and logging on the Comstock Lode, the largest silver strike in American history, transformed the United States national economy and the American West's mosaic of regional ecologies in the second half of the nineteenth century. From 1859 through 1880, the development of natural resources and the production of wealth in northwestern Nevada and eastern California reflected the need of industrial managers to coordinate and navigate a diverse set of economic and environmental variables such as labor, capital, water, wood, transportation, and technology. My research examines the meteoric impact of this economic and environmental event by applying the tools and insights of social, environmental, and economic history. Integrating these approaches helps provide a richer, more-nuanced narrative of the obstacles, successes, failures, and legacies of the individuals, corporations, and communities who helped transform industrial mining, organized labor, corporate investment, and desert and alpine environments. Ultimately, my dissertation argues that Comstock mining transformed extractive economies, natural environments, and natural resource law. The economic development of these mineral deposits also unleashed new environmental forces that forged new relationships between hydrology and industry, and danger underground demonstrated increasing tensions between economic opportunity and occupational risk for industrial labor. |
