Description
Book SynopsisFrom ski towns to national parks, fresh fruit to environmental lawsuits, the Sierra Nevada has changed the way Americans live. Where there was gold to be mined (and where there was not) redefined land, mineral, and water laws. Where rain falls (and where it doesn't) determines whose fruit grows on trees and whose appears on slot machines. All this emerges from the geology of the range and how it changed history, and in so doing, changed the country. The Mountains That Remade America combines geology with history to show how the particular forces and conditions that created the Sierra Nevada have effected broad outcomes and influenced daily life in the United States in the past and continue to do so today. Drawing connections between events in historical geology and contemporary society, Craig H. Jones makes geological science accessible and shows the vast impact this mountain range has had on the American West.
Trade Review"This book details a remarkable example of the lived human history of a place and its intersection with the natural." * Environment, Space, Place *
"This book serves both as a deep dive into how the Sierra Nevada range was formed (Jones is a geology professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder) and the montains' importance in American history (the Gold Rush, the perservation of Yellowstone and Yosemite, and more)." * Landscape Architecture Magazine *
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Introduction
1 • An Asymmetric Barrier
2 • A Golden Trinity
3 • A Placer for Everyone
4 • Fossil Rivers, Modern Water
5 • Lode Gold
6 • “A Property of No Value”
7 • Granite, Guardian of Wilderness
8 • Big Trees, Big Battles
9 • Mountains Adrift
10 • What Lies Beneath
11 • Paradoxes and Proxy Wars
Notes
References
Illustration Sources
Index
