From the Ground Up: A History of Mining in Utah

About this book

Mining had an enormous role only partly measurable in the history of Utah. Its multidimensional impact continues today. Economically it made a major long-term contribution to the wealth employment and tax base of the state and stimulated a seemingly endless range of secondary businesses and enterprises. It helped shape the states social history determining the location distribution and composition of many communities and bringing transportation systems and a wide variety of institutions to them. It developed cultural diversity by drawing miners and families from otherwise underrepresented ethnic and national backgrounds to Utah. It ignited strife particularly between labor and management but those issues often spread into or connected with other conflicts in and between communities classes and factions. It influenced political platforms generated candidates and helped decide elections. Throughout the state mining dramatically transformed the landscape most obviously at what has been called the worlds largest open-pit mine which removed much of a mountain on the west side of Salt Lake Valley but at innumerable other places too. Despite all mining has done and meant there has not been until now a book that surveyed its history in Utah. From the Ground Up fills that gap in a collection of essays by leading experts among them historians Thomas G. Alexander Martha Sonntag Bradley-Evans James E. Fell Jr. Laurence P. James Brigham D. Madsen Philip F. Notarianni Allen Kent Powell W. Paul Reeve Raye C. Ringholz and Janet Burton Seegmiller and geologists J. Wallace Gwynn and William T. Parry. The book is divided into three comprehensive parts. The first looks at "The Ground of Utah Mining": the geology that has produced extractable minerals the economic history of the industry "father of Utah mining" Patrick E. Connor and the lore of mines and miners. Part II reviews the history of a handful of particularly significant mineral industries: salines coal uranium and beryllium. The last part takes a region-by-region approach to survey the importantprimarily for hard-rock miningareas of the state including places from Silver Reef to Alta the East Tintic Range to the Uinta Basin and Park City to Frisco.