Chapter 5, Section 4 THE MINING BOOM

WESTERN MINING While farmers and ranchers were spread out across the Great Plains, miners raced across the continent to the West coast. Gold was found at Pikes Peak in Colorado in late 1858. The Carson River Valley in Nevada offered tons of silver for miners. This was the home of the Comstock Lode which was one of the world’s richest silver veins. $500 million of precious metals was extracted from the Comstock Lode over a 20 year period.

WESTERN MINING Hispanics who had been mining silver since the mid-1700s introduced the patio process to the American southwest. This process used mercury to separate silver from ore.

NORTHERN MINING VENTURES Secretary of State William H. Seward negotiated the US purchase of Alaska in 1867. The price was about 2 cents/acre. Seward was criticized but later praised when more than $1 million of gold was discovered in Alaska’s Klondike Territory.

MINING COMMUNITIES Mining communities were harshly discriminatory against Southern and Eastern Europeans, Hispanics, and Chinese. These were places full of violence as there were no law enforcement officers to keep the peace. Hydraulic mining and hard-rock mining