Video Introduction

The Mining Boom

The western mining boom had begun with the California Gold Rush of 1849. When the Gold Rush ended, miners looked for new opportunities. The merest rumor sent them racing east in search of new strikes.

Gold and silver strikes

In 1859, two young prospectors struck gold in the Sierra Nevada. Suddenly, another miner, Henry Comstock, appeared. "The land is mine," he cried, and demanded to be made a partner. From then on, Comstock boasted about "his" mine. The strike became known as the Comstock Lode. A lode is a rich vein of gold or silver.

Comstock and his partners often complained about the heavy blue sand that was mixed in with the gold. It clogged the devices used for separating the gold and made the gold hard to reach. When Mexican miners took the "danged blue stuff' to an expert in California, tests showed it was loaded with silver. Comstock had stumbled onto one of the richest silver mines in the world.

Miners moved into many other areas of the West. Some found valuable ore in Montana and Idaho. Others struck it rich in Colorado. In the 1870s, miners discovered gold in the Black Hills of South Dakota. In the late 1890s, thousands rushed north to Alaska after major gold strikes were made there.

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Boom towns and ghost towns

Gold and silver strikes attracted thousands of prospectors. Miners came from across the United States, as well as from Germany, Ireland, Mexico, and China. Towns sprang up near all the major mining sites.

First, miners built a tent city near the diggings. Then, thousands of people came to supply the miners' needs. Traders brought mule teams loaded with tools, food, and clothing. Merchants hauled in wagonloads of supplies and set up stores.

Soon, wood frame houses, hotels, restaurants, and stores replaced the tents. For example, it took less than a year for the mining camp at the Comstock Lode to become the boom town of Virginia City, Nevada.

Most settlers in the boom towns of the mining frontier were men. However, enterprising women also found ways to profit. Some women ran boarding houses and laundries. Others opened restaurants, where miners gladly paid high prices for a home-cooked meal.

Many boom towns lasted for only a few years. When the gold or silver ore was gone, miners moved away. Without miners for customers, businesses often had to close. In this way, a boom town could quickly go bust and turn into a ghost town.

Still, some boom towns survived and prospered even after the mines shut down. In these towns, miners stayed and found new ways to make a living.

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Impact of the boom

The surge of miners into the West created problems. Mines and towns polluted clear mountain streams. Miners cut down forests to get wood for buildings. As you will read, they also forced Native Americans from the land.

Foreign miners were often treated unfairly. In many camps, mobs drove Mexicans from their claims. Chinese miners were heavily taxed or forced to work claims abandoned by others.

Few miners got rich quickly. Much of the gold and silver lay deep underground. It could be reached only with costly machinery. Eventually, most mining in the West was taken over by large companies that could afford to buy this equipment.

Governing the mining frontier

Lawlessness and disorder often accompanied the rapid growth of a town. In response, miners sometimes resorted to organizing groups of vigilantes. These self-appointed law enforcers tracked down outlaws and punished them, usually without a trial. A common punishment used by vigilantes was lynching.

Informal methods of government gradually gave way to more formal arrangements. In 1861, Colorado, Dakota, and Nevada were organized into territories. Idaho and Arizona followed in 1863 and Montana in 1864. The process of more permanent settlement and government had begun.
The populations of these territories continued to grow as other types of settlers moved west. Colorado became a state in 1876, North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington, and Montana became states in 1889. And Wyoming and Idaho were admitted to the Union in 1890.

Video Review

THE TASK

Standard:  Answer the five questions below.

• Open a new Microsoft Word document.
• Type your answers.
• Be sure to answer in complete sentences. Some may require more than one sentence.
  • Do NOT retype the questions.
  • Be sure to clearly identify the subject(s) of your answers.
  • Be sure to use the "spell checker" and to use proper capitalization and punctuation.

    Example:

    • If the question was, "When did the western mining boom begin?"
    • An appropriate answer would be, "The western mining boom began with the California Gold Rush of 1849."

• You may want to read more about it before beginning to write your answers.

1. How did gold and silver strikes encourage western settlement?
2. Why did “boom” towns sometimes become “ghost” towns?
3. Intolerance refers to the refusal to accept as equal people who are in some way "different." What examples of intolerance were evident on the Mining Frontier?
4. Why was mining eventually taken over by large companies?
5. Who were vigilantes? Why were they necessary?

- OR -

Challenge:  Create a new page for your scrapbook about western settlement titled, "The Mining Frontier."  Use information from the reading and videos above, your textbook, and your notes.

Your page must include...

• at least one historically appropriate illustration
• one or more well-written paragraphs detailing how the search for gold, silver, and other valuable metals contributed to the settlement of the American west.
• Be sure to use the following terms: prospector or prospectors, strike, boom town, ghost town