Francaviglia: Hardrock Mining’s Effects on the Visual Environment of the West
1 — 39
Hardrock Mining’s Effects on the
Visual Environment of the West
Richard V. Francaviglia
F
OR reasons that are partly historical and partly
geological, mining and the American West have
long been synonymous. The nearly legendary
“Forty-niners” helped to establish California as the
Golden State, and many of the fabled locations in the
interior West — Tombstone, Virginia City, Butte — res-
onate with images of mining. Nevada’s “Silver State”
and Arizona’s “Copper State” nicknames also reveal the
enduring power of metals mining in Western history,
folklore, and popular culture.
Several factors conspire to link mining with the histo-
ry of the American West. Throughout much of the area,
mineralization left a series of lodes or deposits that by any
standards were rich. These bonanzas were often in fairly
isolated locations that were difficult to access. They
echoed to the clatter of pickaxes and then to the whistle of
locomotives and the din of industry only after much
effort. Since they were often located in areas of relatively
light precipitation and where vegetation was scarce, min-
ing activity tended to stand out quite starkly, its conse-
quences remaining visible on the land for many years.
Other cultural and historical forces also came into play.
Because much mining activity in the West occurred in the
form of “rushes” as miners flocked to new and ever more
isolated areas, mining in the West has tended to be asso-
ciated with risk-taking and adventure. Once-remote
places like Leadville and Telluride were originally associ-
ated exclusively with mining. They formed an important
part of a distinctive and characteristically Western
urban/industrial frontier that today is increasingly asso-
ciated with tourism and amenity visitation.
In reality, of course, the East and Middle West also
had their share of metals mining districts: for example,
Minnesota’s iron ranges, Michigan’s copper country,
and the fabulous “Tri-State” lead and zinc mining dis-
trict of Oklahoma, Missouri, and Kansas, not to mention
the first (early 19th century) “gold rush” area in the
United States — the Carolinas and Georgia — as well as
the even earlier copper mines of Pennsylvania and Con-
necticut. In the East and Middle West, however, land-
scape and history are not as vividly associated with min-
ing by the public, in part because nature in these more
well-watered and heavily forested areas has tended to
obscure or erase the visible evidence of mining.
Nevertheless, it should be noted that much of the capi-
tal, and a considerable amount of the expertise, that
fueled Western mining activity originated in the cities
JOW, Winter 2004, Vol. 43, No.
and mining areas to the east, the impact of Michigan
copper enterprises on Arizona and Montana copper min-
ing being but one example.
The Look of the Land
This essay will focus on the lasting visual legacy of
hardrock mining on the West — a legacy that is palp-
able in the region’s history and evident in its landscape.
To do so, I will first identify the characteristic features
associated with the exploitation of metal ores. These, to
use language borrowed from my fellow geographers, are
landscape “signatures” that serve to brand a location as
mining country. To a person traveling through the land-
scape, mining communities in the West have a look that
reveals their mining past as effectively as any published
statistics or written historical records might: the very
topography itself, not to mention the design of settle-
ments, is reshaped in bold patterns unlike those of other
settlements. An example of this mining topography
leaps into view on an otherwise scenic drive through
southern Colorado’s stunningly scenic Purgatoire River
Valley. Near the appropriately named town of Cokedale,
huge coal dumps and impressive rows of coke ovens
stand as testimony to a once highly industrialized coal-
mining and coke-producing locale. The mining-induced
landscape features seen throughout parts of the West are
readily apparent from many angles; the view from
almost any commercial flight over the region, for ex-
ample, reveals the past workings of miners who have
left their mark in the form of waste dumps and open pits.
The history of the region is indeed often inseparable
from its mining activity, which occurred in a series of
boom and bust cycles that have left their imprint both on
the landscape and in the region’s folklore.
Travelers in the West in the 1960s and 1970s often
expressed amazement that historic mining communities
had vanished as more modern mining activities “gob-
bled them up.” Mining activity is not confined to the dis-
tant past, but continues to this day in many Western
locales. The landscapes associated with mining suggest
an increasingly rapid pace and larger scale of that activ-
ity through time. Whereas historic photographs often
reveal a cluster of small mining operations in 1880, by
the 1960s, the scale may have increased a hundredfold
as huge tailings piles and pits developed, often a result
of higher metals prices stimulated by wars that de-
manded strategic metals.
40 — JOW, Winter 2004, Vol. 43, No. 1 Francaviglia: Hardrock Mining’s Effects on the Visual Environment of the West
Historical and Cultural Roots of Western Mining
There are significant cultural as well as historical rea-
sons for this change in scale through time. In contrast to
the Native Americans, whose early mining activities
were localized and of relatively minimal impact, both
Hispanic and Anglo cultures supported the right to
transform the land by mining. Although written several
thousand years ago, the following verses from the Book
of Job hint at the transformation of landscape that would
ultimately rearrange a considerable portion of the West:
Man puts his hand to the flinty rock, and overturns
mountains by the roots. He cuts out channels in the
rocks, and his eye sees every precious thing. He
binds up the streams so that they do not trickle,
and the thing that is hid he brings forth to light.1
Whereas the writer(s) of Job used mining as a metaphor
to caution readers of the folly of materialism as truth, the
words also validated an aggressive relationship to na-
ture. The consequences of mining activity’s power to
transform are especially evident in the landscape of the
West, a landscape whose overturned mountains and cut-
out channels seem literally to embody Job’s prophetic
words. The Judeo-Christian values underlying the in-
dustrial revolution that swept the American continent
left an imprint in places as distant as Butte, Montana;
Ajo and Globe, Arizona; Tyrone, New Mexico; and
even south of the border in Cananea and Nacozari
(Sonora) Mexico, where American mining interests
flourished during the rule of Porforio Diaz. Culture as
well as technology are at work here, as mining reflected
deeply held values about the right to transform the land
(separating metals from ores is still called “winning” in
mining engineering circles). To conservationists, mining
landscapes seem a nightmarish expression of technolo-
gy run amok; but to mining engineers, they are a more
or less “natural” result of technology and economy. To
the historical geographer, whose goal is to interpret the
landscape, the topography left in the wake of mining
sheds light on both the behavior and the value of mining
enterprises, as well as the larger cultures in which they
operated.
Hardrock and placer mining have transformed the
Western landscapes, leaving vivid signatures on the land
as a testimony. The term “hardrock mining” refers to the
removal of ores from consolidated rock that is usually
igneous or metamorphic in origin. This removal often
involves considerable crushing and pulverization. On
the other hand, placer mining refers to the removal of
metals or ores from unconsolidated materials such as
sands and gravels, where nature has already done much
of the pulverization and where water alone may accom-
plish the separation of metal or ore from waste rock.
This article will focus on only two types of hardrock
mining, underground and surface, to demonstrate min-
ing’s impact on the topography and to answer two fun-
damental questions tied to the region’s history and geol-
ogy. First, how has mining actually shaped the land-
scape of the American West? And second, how can one
systematically read the mining landscape to determine
(and later interpret) what has occurred? Answering these
questions requires an understanding of the morphology
of mining-related landforms. Therefore, I shall first pre-
sent a basic classification system of mining-related
topography and then discuss how the topography
reflects sequential changes in technology and economy.
Being both a historian and historical geographer con-
cerned with the element of time, I shall also ask a decep-
tively simple third question: How have these mining
landscapes evolved or changed over time? As will be
seen, there is much method and order to what the unini-
tiated see as the seemingly spontaneous — even rapa-
cious — behavior of miners, who leave in their wake
a landscape that serves as a signature of their time-
honored occupation.
The Classification of
Hardrock Mining Landscapes
As noted elsewhere, mining landscapes often contain
four basic kinds of topographic features that result from
the specific processes used to extract, mill, concentrate,
smelt, and refine metals:2
1) Primary Extractive (that is, subtractive) fea-
tures, such as pits, stopes, tunnels, and shafts.
2) Secondary Accretionary (additive) features,
such as mine dumps and gob and overburden
piles that result from the physical or structural
breakdown of mined material.
3) Tertiary Accretionary (additive) features, name-
ly the wastes of chemical-concentrating pro-
cesses, for example, “tailings” in the proper use
of the term.
4) Quaternary Accretionary (additive) features,
such as cinder and slag piles, resulting from the
complete restructuring of materials through
heat, which is to say the smelting, fluxing,
and/or refinement of ores.
The environmental historian can use landscape fea-
tures that result from these processes to classify land-
scapes according to their physical properties (see
Classification System chart). Once they have been iden-
tified and classified, the features can then be mapped, an
exercise that reveals the position of each and, more
importantly, confirms their relationship in time as cor-
roborated by the written record and historical pho-
tographs.
Whether any particular mining-related landscape will
possess all four types of features depends largely on the
kind of ore mined and the technology used by the min-
Francaviglia: Hardrock Mining’s Effects on the Visual Environment of the West
Classification System of Metals Mining-Related Topographic Features (see Francaviglia, “The Ultimate Artifact,”
1988.)
ers. Historically, mining’s early impacts were quite lo-
calized and determined by how much rock could be
removed with hand tools. Nevertheless, early mining ac-
tivity created a distinctive type of topography that char-
acterizes mining country historically: holes of extraction
in the form of small open pits or mine shafts flanked by
piles of waste debris that may choke or redirect stream
channels and accelerate erosion. Yet even the “primi-
tive” miners removed and moved far more material than
the ore that they sought. The gangue, or waste rock, had
to be put somewhere. The ore had to be reduced to ob-
tain the valuable metals it contained, unless it was
nearly pure metal, a rare and unlikely scenario that char-
acterized only the very richest of the gold- or copper-
mining locations, and then only in the earliest stages of
mining.
Mining Landscapes through Time
As mining technologies developed, the scale of pits,
shafts, and especially debris piles increased dramatical-
ly, as did their cumulative impact. For example, Native
American peoples also conducted mining operations,
but on a small scale. These Native peoples left primary
extractive features at what are now archaeological sites,
such as the early copper and turquoise mines in the
JOW, Winter 2004, Vol. 43, No. 1 — 41
Southwest.3 However, they did little or no smelting and
thus did not produce significant accretionary landscape
features. By contrast, the Spanish mined and processed
silver and gold ores on an extensive scale, leaving far
more spectacular residual features, including quaternary
accretionary features such as slag piles, for they brought
with them the Old World technology of smelting.
Much of the Spanish mining heritage could be traced
to Iberia and Saxony; De Re Metallica, one of the first
accounts of contemporary mining technology, was writ-
ten by a Saxon, Georgius Agricola, and was published in
1556. The later Anglo-American mining legacy of the
United States is also linked to the British and northern
European Industrial Revolution, whose technology was
transported to the Eastern Seaboard before about 1800.
Euro-American technology was very eclectic and bor-
rowed from many sources, including Spain, Saxony,
and Mexico, as well as from mining centers such as
Cornwall and Wales. An individualist ethos gave a sense
of urgency to the Anglo-American search for wealth, as
miners explored the West for gold, silver, and other
minerals. Although it is generally true that the Western
mining landscapes created during the last 200 years
were largely the result of the westward move of Euro-
American culture, it should be noted that many mining
42 — JOW, Winter 2004, Vol. 43, No. 1 Francaviglia: Hardrock Mining’s Effects on the Visual Environment of the West

districts in the West were actually developed by miners The demand for metals (and, for that matter, coal)
heading eastward after their initial exposure to the was spurred by a rapidly growing population that eager-
California goldfields in the late 1840s and early 1850s. ly consumed natural resources. Thus mining landscapes
Nevada’s silver mines in the vicinity of Virginia City areare evidence of our growing affluence and changing
examples of this, as is the early mining activity in social structure as a nation.
Montana. If the technology associated with mining increased
By the mid-19th century, Anglo-Americans were dramatically in scale and impact since 1890, the topo-
rapidly developing new mining technologies to meet the graphic changes that resulted from the adoption of new
challenges of extracting, milling, and smelting ores. technologies are nothing short of phenomenal. Certain
They had learned some of these techniques in the East, 20th-century mining districts have primary extractive
in locations such as Pennsylvania, but they soon discov- features: the huge open-pit copper mines of Morenci and
ered that the refractory (or difficult to treat) ores in some
Bisbee, Arizona, for example, have completely altered
parts of the West called for new techniques. The enter- the sites where in the late-19th century mining towns
prises of this era have left a full-blown legacy of all four
once stood. There, secondary and tertiary accretionary
types of landscape features in the West. Through an features, such as huge overburden piles and tailings
increasingly sophisticated and aggressive sequential ponds, have developed over decades. These changes
process, the bonanzas were mined first, and then newer completely reordered the geography as earlier mines,
industrial/metallurgical technologies were applied to and even entire “historic” communities, were obliterat-
gather up that which was missed in the first round(s) of ed in response to the increasing scale of mining activi-
exploitation. The president of the Homestake Mining ties. This happened as well in Morenci, Arizona, and
Company accurately summarized the process that Tyrone, New Mexico, to name just two locations. As
shaped the landscape of America’s mining districts: geographer Benjamin Richason put it, the landscapes
associated with open-pit mining provide an “example of
An amazing, rapid succession of mineral districts man and his machine as the greatest erosive force on
of first rank in the world was found as the west- earth today.”5
ward exploration of the continent progressed. Visually, mining produces some of the most dramatic
Then, a half century or so later, as the richer ores landscapes on earth. The already stark, barren Western
were running out, deposits of far lower grade but landscapes have been made to appear even more barren
with even greater gross value were profitably and inhospitable. Thus, although there is a seemingly
exploited as the base of immense enterprises by “timeless” quality to man’s digging holes into the earth
application of new methods of mining and by con- and dumping mining wastes upon the surface, the geo-
centration on scales that dwarfed any such activi- morphological model permits us to interpret mining
ties in the past.4 landscapes as assemblages of age-specific artifacts tied
to specific cultures. These artifacts result from a power-
ful and rapidly evolving
industry that reshapes the
land by turns. The net effect
of this activity is to make
such areas more productive
economically in the short run
and less habitable in the long
run, as surface and ground
waters are both consumed
and polluted. This is the
situa-tion presently facing
residents of Butte, Montana,
where groundwater has been
affected adversely by mining.
Water percolating through
rock shattered by miners is
contaminated by pollutants
such as heavy metals. And
although metals and salts
may have been present natu-
rally throughout parts of the
The landscape of a typical hardrock underground mining district characterized by
localized topographical disturbances. Conical ore dumps and tailings veneer the West, even in quantities that
landscape near Virginia City, Nevada. might exceed current EPA
Richard Francaviglia, 1978
Francaviglia: Hardrock Mining’s Effects on the Visual Environment of the West JOW, Winter 2004, Vol. 43, No. 1 — 43

activities. The size, shape,

and even the coloration of the
man-made topography is awe
inspiring. In the West, begin-
ning in the early 20th cen-
tury, copper mining began
to be carried out on this
large scale, as extraction re-
moved entire mountains of
low-grade porphyry ores.
Such open-pit mining is
attributable to the genius of
engineering-oriented miners
like Daniel Jackling, who
pioneered similar efforts in
Utah as early as 1908. With
large-scale earth-moving
equipment and sophisticated
blasting techniques at his dis-
posal, Jackling realized that
Open-pit mining creates awesome topography. Here, the Morenci Pit in Arizona an entire mountain of low
has removed a mountain and is excavated nearly 500 feet into the countryside
(background) and expands toward the foreground. grade ore could be blasted
Richard Francaviglia, 1983 apart and put through the
concentrator — an activity
standards, their presence is clearly exacerbated by min- that mining engineers matter of factly note had “enor-
ing. mous impact” on the landscape. The topographic map of
Bingham Canyon, Utah, on the following page, provides
Landscape Effects of Mining a good example of the activities of three generations of
The Western American landscape is dotted with the mining engineers. Like most large open-pit mines,
surface evidence of underground metals-mining activity, Bingham Pit consists of a deep, roughly circular, exca-
much of it found in areas of fault-block mountain for- vated depression surrounded by a series of benches
mation. Many of these underground mines developed in about 50 feet high, a classic large-scale landscape of
the mid- to late-19th century, although their activity substraction. Railway lines or roads run along these
often continued well into the 20th century as, for ex- benches, permitting the systematic removal of ore and
ample, in the Tonopah-Goldfield area of Nevada. The waste rock. The pit is more than two miles in diameter
localized or concentrated underground mining opera- and over 1,500 feet in depth, often touted as the largest
tions honeycombed the ore body and left in their wake open-pit copper mine in the world and developed so
ore dumps and waste piles, as well as tailings — the extensively that it is visible from satellites orbiting the
refuse or dross — resulting from the pulverization and earth.
solution-recovering of metals. These landscapes abound Because most open-pit mines involve the exploitation
in the precious metals mining districts of the interior of low-grade ores — perhaps as low as only 1 or 2 per-
West, such as the Mojave Desert of California or the cent copper — much waste rock must be removed and
Great Basin of Nevada, where the arid and semiarid cli- placed out of the way of active mining. Topographic
mate and sparse vegetation conspire to make them all maps in the vicinity of open-pit mines also show major
the more visible. Such historic mining landscapes are areas of deposition or accretion: the overburden or waste
usually found only where all or most of the ore was rock consists of coarse material scraped or blasted away
removed historically and where no recent mining activ- from the barren (non-mineralized) zone that covered the
ity has occurred. They remain as “islands” of intensely ore body. This overburden may consist of boulder-sized
modified land where the “scars” of mining are visible in fragments of rock, most of which were hauled to the
areas immediately surrounding the long-abandoned edge of the pit and dumped in huge ridges. In the case of
underground mines. Western copper mines, the material to be leached is usu-
These localized mining landscapes are developed ally piled up so that water can be passed through it to
on a smaller scale than their later (mid 20th-century) further remove concentrations of copper that is config-
surface-mined counterparts, the open-pit metals mines ured into huge “leach dumps.” These impressive, stark,
that are part of a long tradition of surface mining. The accretionary topographic features consist of a rather
traveler driving into a region where open-pit mining has heterogeneous mixture of rubble and coarse, shattered
been conducted is likely to be shocked by the scale of porphyry rock. At the top of these leach dumps one finds
44 — JOW, Winter 2004, Vol. 43, No. 1 Francaviglia: Hardrock Mining’s Effects on the Visual Environment of the West

Topographic map of Bingham Canyon, Utah, reveals the bowl-shaped depression created by open-pit mining. Note
that overburden and lower-grade waste materials of accretion are dumped nearby to reduce transportation costs.
Interior-Geological Survey, Reston, VA, 2002
Francaviglia: Hardrock Mining’s Effects on the Visual Environment of the West
shallow ponds or cells into which acidic water is
pumped. After percolating through the leach dump, this or deposited in metallic form on scrap iron. In many
A leach dump located near the open-pit copper mine at Ely, Nevada, is a local
topographic landmark and one of the features commonly associated with large-
scale copper mining in the West.
Tailings are one of the most distinctive topographic
features associated with ore processing. Seen from
the air, this tailings dam near San Manuel, Arizona,
consists of terraces, about 40 feet in height, behind
which thick solutions of waste settle and evaporate.
Richard Francaviglia, 1981
JOW, Winter 2004, Vol. 43, No. 1 — 45
water becomes rich in copper, which is then precipitated
Western copper-mining districts, such as near Ruth,
Nevada, and Bisbee,
Arizona, leach dumps are
among the more impressive
accretionary features in the
landscape.
In most Western copper-
mining districts, another
impressive accretionary
topographic feature is
encountered: the tailings
ponds, or tailings dams. “Tail
water,” a mixture of pulver-
ized, slimy, non-metallic
wastes from which virtually
all metals have been
removed, is piped from the
copper concentrator and
dumped into huge ponds to
evaporate. These tailings
dams consist of terraces
about 20 feet high, each suc-
Richard Francaviglia, 1989
cessive terrace indicating the
front of an earlier dam. By
sequential growth, such tailings dams can tower more
than a hundred feet above their surroundings. In the arid
and semiarid West, these tailings are landmarks; their
light-colored, symmetrical terraces are seen from
Montana to Arizona. Their closest natural counterpart is
the alluvial terrace, but they can usually be distinguished
from these natural features by their lighter color and
near absence of vegetation. These tailings features can
also be associated with environmental pollution, as in
Bisbee, Arizona, for sulfates and other chemicals may
find their way into groundwater. Additionally, because
the material in the tailings is so finely pulverized, it may
blow into the air after it dries out, forming an air-pollu-
tion hazard. Environmentalists have identified mining
areas of total suspended particulates (tsp) in the vicinity
of tailings dams, again Bisbee, Arizona, being a case in
point.
In most Western metals-mining districts, yet another
manmade topographic feature is found, namely quater-
nary accretionary landforms called slag piles or slag
heaps that result when ores are smelted. Slag is usually
deposited as molten dross or waste from the smelter and
can be identified by its dark, glassy consistency. In
many cases, these slag piles outlast the smelters them-
selves and remain as dark, steep-sided hills or table-
lands, as is the case in Douglas, Arizona, where only a
slag pile marks the site of a copper smelter that was
demolished in 1987. Sometimes deeply eroded, these
vitrified, cindery wastelands are common at smelter
sites throughout the region, such as Anaconda,
Montana; Clifton, Arizona; and Eureka, Nevada.
46 — JOW, Winter 2004, Vol. 43, No. 1 Francaviglia: Hardrock Mining’s Effects on the Visual Environment of the West
A spectacular slag pile marks the location of smelting
Montana.
In hardrock mining country, then, the manmade
topographic features, such as open-pit mines, ore
dumps, and slag piles, are diagnostic. Their overall form
or morphology (conical, tabular, irregular) helps to
define the visual geography of the mining district. Some
of the more spectacular features may be incised hun-
dreds of feet into the landscape or tower hundreds of feet
above it. They become landmarks that impress, even
awe, visitors and help to orient the local population.
Landscapes of this type become comprehensible when
they are viewed as topographic features that result from
specific processes.
The Sequential Development of Mining Landscapes
The challenge to historical geographers goes beyond
simply describing the landscape observed today, in order
to determine how, and why, it has been so shaped
through time. Transformation — a technologically dri-
ven change in design, structure, or physical appearance
— is one of the constants of the historical geography of
mining districts.6 With improvements in technology, the
transformation occurs on a larger scale, culminating in
mining-related topographic features occupying square
miles instead of acres. This means that surface mining
may obliterate or bury earlier evidence of mining, as its
impact spreads across the landscape. In mining districts,
large-scale manmade topography is episodic, resulting
from technological change that usually occurs in an
orderly progression. Each successive stage is normally
larger in scale than the one immediately preceding it; the
resulting landscape features allow both the mining engi-
neer and environmental historian to determine the age of
a district. Like all such evidence, however, the dates of
mining-related topography should be confirmed by
other records, such as mining reports and aerial- or
ground-based photography, if available.
If the task seems
daunting, it should be
remembered that there is usu-
ally order in what may seem
at first chaotic. All mines,
and the mining districts in
which they occur, have “life
cycles.” Geographer Homer
Aschmann outlined four
seemingly inevitable stages
in the development of a mine:
1) prospecting and ex-
ploration, 2) investment and
development, 3) stable opera-
tion, and 4) decline.7 During
the life history of a mine, the
resulting topographic fea-
tures are developed neither
randomly in space, nor ran-
activity at Anaconda,
domly through time. Each is
Richard Francaviglia, 1989 a result of technological pro-
cesses introduced at some point in history. Such activity
is usually well documented in the mining engineering
literature and visible in both historical photographs and
the landscape itself.
In the case of two Arizona mining districts — the
Warren Mining district8 and the Clifton-Morenci district9
— historical geographers determined that each econom-
ic phase of mining activity produced distinctive land-
forms that were, in effect, landmarks at any particular
time. By employing historical maps, historical photog-
raphs, corporate records, oral histories, archaeological
techniques, and an analysis of the current landscape fea-
tures, historical geographers can illustrate sequentially
the topographic changes that have occurred in particular
mining districts. This spatial approach is important be-
cause “each episode of mining activity that takes place
potentially destroys part or all of existing archaeological
sites.”10 One may thus have to deduce the presence of a
now-vanished feature based on the presence of other
related features. For example, mining historian Otis
Young, in describing the decline of Nevada’s Comstock
mining district, noted that new cyanidation processes
generated new mining activity that radically trans-
formed the landscape. Young concluded that
the tailing heaps of the original mills were fas-
tened upon, run through the vats, and pumped
away. Therefore, although the original waste
dumps are still visible in place, the tailing heaps
which once were found below them are gone.11
The changes that Young described in Virginia City-
Gold Hill, Nevada, are common elsewhere, for miners
are constantly evaluating all materials, not just natural
ores, for their mineral content. Thus, older tailings and
dumps may be “worked” once again, in order to reclaim
Francaviglia: Hardrock Mining’s Effects on the Visual Environment of the West
minerals left by earlier, less efficient, processes. In other
words, miners may actually mine the wastes of an
earlier generation, a practical if unromantic process that
is inevitable when technologies improve and/or the price
of metals increases. These new activities create new
landscape features, but in so doing must obliterate older
features. This helps to explain why few mining district
landscapes offer simple, unbroken linear chronologies.
The fact that many have been reworked or scavenged at
different times helps to make their interpretation more
challenging and more interesting. If reading the land-
scape of any area is a type of detective work, then the
reader of mining landscapes must be prepared to inter-
pret scenes of considerable violence.
At the level of the overall mining district, the features
associated with specific mining processes, such as tail-
ings and leach dumps, can be interpreted and evaluated
in space and time to tell the history of the district. Be-
cause the large-scale topographic changes affecting min-
ing districts occur in an evolutionary manner, any par-
ticular district can be treated in time-dated sequences.
The series of several “time exposures” for the Warren
Mining district (p. 48) are maps that illustrate the major
land-use patterns in several critical “watershed” years.12
These time exposures or “freeze frames” exemplify how
technology shaped the landscape up to particular points
in time (in this case, 1885, 1912, 1931, and 1974). They
include all major developments from the early hardrock
mining activities in the early 1880s to the closure of the
open-pit mines in the mid-1970s.
Mining engineering literature confirms that the topo-
graphic change that occurs in a mining district is a re-
flection of the changes in both the quality of the ores
mined and the techniques used in their processing. It is the
taste of the mining engineer and metallurgist to separate,
in the most efficient manner, the metal from the impuri-
ties. Separation technology has improved dramatically
over the last century, and this improvement has meant that
lower-grade ores can be mined. In the case of copper, for
example, ore that was economically feasible to mine in
the late 1800s would average at least 25 percent copper.
By about 1915, lower-grade deposits of less than 5 per-
cent copper were profitable, and by the 1940s this had
dropped to about 2 percent. This means that in recent cop-
per-mining operations, more than 98 percent of the
deposit is waste material. Mining such low-
grade deposits required large machinery and sophisticated
ore-treatment technology. Flotation — the counter-intu-
itive process by which ores are pulverized and their heav-
ier metallic constituents separated by floating on top of
the liquid as they are collected on minute bubbles of oil
— revolutionized the mining industry after about 1910. It
also revolutionized the landscape. The mining of lower-
grade ores throughout the West in the mid-20th century
gave a new lease on life to mining communities like
Jerome and Bisbee, Arizona, but also meant the accretion
of thousands of acres of waste material.
JOW, Winter 2004, Vol. 43, No. 1 — 47
Just as any individual mine may have a life cycle, so
too does a particular district when viewed through time.
This life cycle is expressed in the landscape of the dis-
trict, as new features emerge and others are either aban-
doned or obliterated. If we were to study sequential
maps for numerous mining districts over a 50- or 100-
year period, an overall pattern of landscape evolution
would emerge as outlined below:
1) Exploration. The prospecting phase in which
areas showing “color,” or promise, are opened; ini-
tial probings reveal information about the extent of
the ore body; and a rapidly changing localized
mining topography begins to take shape.
2) Initiation. After the quality of the ore and the
general parameters of the ore body are understood,
the investment of capital and energy is applied to
the site and successful exploitation results. Only
the richest ores are mined because they must just-
ify the high expenses of shipping them to smelters.
The rest of the mined material goes to the waste
dumps, which are usually located adjacent to the
mines. Most of the features associated with explo-
ration are obliterated during this period, which
may last about 15 years in the typical mining dis-
trict. This is the “bonanza” or boom period, and
mining wastes are often dumped with little regard
to future activities. However, those mine dumps
may prove to be valuable to miners later on, as
technology improves or as metals prices increase.
3) Diversification. Improvements in mining tech-
nology lead to the exploitation of different or
somewhat lower-grade ores in this stage. Efficient
smelting and processing of ores, and the develop-
ment of concentration technologies suited to spe-
cific ores, characterize operations. The landscape
becomes increasingly dominated by waste piles
and tailings. This phase may last 25 years.
4) Intensification. Development of large, low-
grade ore bodies adjacent to the richer deposits
exploited in earlier stages occurs during this phase.
The method most often selected to develop the ore
body is open-pit (surface) mining, which depends
upon the availability of large-scale earth-moving
equipment and technologies that reduce the costs
of concentrating. Massive reworking of the land-
scape occurs, and detritus (overburden) or waste
materials such as tailings may cover thousands of
acres. Tailings and dumps from earlier periods
may be reworked. Solution-mining (leaching)
operations are conducted on leach dumps or leach
heaps. This type of activity may last 40, perhaps
50, years, depending on the economy, the ore
body, and other conditions.
48 — JOW, Winter 2004, Vol. 43, No. 1 Francaviglia: Hardrock Mining’s Effects on the Visual Environment of the West

A series of maps showing the evolution of land use and mining-related topography in Arizona’s Warren Mining
District reveals an increasing scale of operations — and resulting landscape modification — over nearly a century.
Richard Francaviglia, “Copper Mining and Landscape Evolution,” 1982
Francaviglia: Hardrock Mining’s Effects on the Visual Environment of the West
5) Cessation. Exhaustion of the ore body and/or
rising costs of production bring an end to mining
operations. Major corporate investments are liqui-
dated. Mine shaft pumps cease operation, thus
flooding the mines. The economic processes in the
development of topography is superseded by the
natural factors of erosion/attrition, or the stabiliza-
tion of the topography through reclamation.
Attitudes Toward Mining Landscapes
The impacts of these changes may seem local or per-
haps regional in nature, but they are actually national or
even international in scope. They usually result from
“outside” forces being exerted on a particular mining
district after the initiation of aggressive, heavily capi-
talized mining operations. One corporation may operate
in several parts of not only the American West, but
throughout the world. Moreover, mining engineering
technological expertise tends to spread from one com-
pany to another as trade secrets are not kept for long.
This helps to explain why the topography of mining dis-
tricts has such a “familiar” look. Similarities are found
in places as distant as Arizona, Montana, and Chile,
because mining companies have operated worldwide,
responding to worldwide economic conditions. The
mining engineers who transformed the landscape were
part of a fraternity that traveled widely and maintained
close contact with technological developments by visit-
ing other properties, reading mining and metallurgical
journals, and attending conferences. Just as the price of
metals/minerals helps to determine the speed with which
change will occur, the technological subculture of min-
ing engineers helps to determine its actual form. Mining
engineers often view their handiwork as functional, if
not actually beautiful — a manifestation of technology
and landscape design that symbolizes the power of man
to increase the productivity of the earth. They often say,
matter of factly, that mining improves otherwise “unpro-
ductive” land.13
The landscape features in a mining district are so
large and significant that they define its topographic
character and shape the perceptions of residents and
visitors alike. Consider, for example, Eureka, Utah,
where conical mine dumps and localized tailings brand
the landscape as the handiwork of underground silver
miners and provide sites for recent housing develop-
ment; Bodie, California, where the silver-mining efforts
of a long period (ca. 1875-1935) have been preserved as
a state park rich in mining topographic features (recent-
ly threatened by plans to expand mining activities near-
by); Butte, Montana, where one sees left in the wake of
mining what a mining engineer called that “most con-
spicuous disturbance of the surface,” the “cookie cutter
topography” associated with open-pit copper mining.
An industrial archaeologist tells us that large-scale
“earthworks” of all kinds require vast expenditures of
human effort; they are a measure of a civilization’s abil-
JOW, Winter 2004, Vol. 43, No. 1 — 49
ity to organize human activity “and produce both in-
tended and unintended consequences for social and nat-
ural systems.”14
Of all the topographic features associated with min-
ing, none has captured the imagination more than the
“desolation” left by the open-pit mining. These are pop-
ular places. Most open-pit mines have sites where trav-
elers can gaze into the pit and read almost incompre-
hensible statistics while huge machines are dwarfed in
the bowl-shaped, terraced canyon-landscape below.
Signs at views above the pit often recite a litany of
incredible statistics regarding the amount of material
removed. These statistics remind us how much material
can be moved by modern machinery, after it is liberated
through the explosive force of dynamite. Within their
lifetimes, people can experience change that might take
eons of geological time, or as geographer Benjamin
Richason put it, “within three-quarters of a century,
man has accomplished what nature would have taken
hundreds of thousands of years to do.”15 Although all
mining-related topography reminds us that a resource is
disappearing for good, no place reminds us of this
more than an open-pit mine, for it alters the original
landscape so thoroughly. Even abandoned open pits,
such as the Berkeley Pit just east of Butte, Montana,
attract visitors. There, terraces are slowly collapsing and
the pit filling with an imperceptibly rising emerald green
lake of toxic water that, paradoxically, threatens the
city’s water supply while also serving as a tourist attrac-
tion.
This attrition and erosion — the effects of time and
physical processes in creating the landscape — is in part
what draws people to the brink of such open-pit mines,
perhaps as it draws people to the rim of the Grand Can-
yon. The scenery of the open-pit mines and that of the
Grand Canyon are in fact somewhat similar: a rather
denuded, erosion-scarred landscape of nearly vertical
cliffs, stratified into a series of benches much like the
canyon lands of the Southwest. Conservationists may
reject the idea that mining landscapes are “beautiful,”
but they do so not on aesthetic grounds but rather in light
of real or imagined impacts to the natural environment
or attitudes toward the mining industry that created such
“wastelands.”
Looking objectively at mining-related topography,
we can see that it does mock certain natural features
seen in the West. The visual parallels between tailings
dams and the large truncated alluvial fans in the South-
west are fascinating, as are the barren, eroded mine
dumps that, to the uninitiated, resemble Western “bad-
lands” topography. Discussions with residents and trav-
elers in the West reveal that many cannot tell the differ-
ence between “natural” and “manmade” topography. In
the public mind, mining-related topography may fit so
well into a stereotypic visual image of rugged, denuded
Western landscapes that it seems “natural” — a sobering
thought for conservationists who often illustrate the
50 — JOW, Winter 2004, Vol. 43, No. 1 Francaviglia: Hardrock Mining’s Effects on the Visual Environment of the West

ably will be visible for at

least that long — provided
that they are not further trans-
formed by mining activities
or aggressively reclaimed
and thus “softened.”
The British call land-
scapes despoiled by all types
of industry, including min-
ing, “derelict lands,”17 but we
have no similar term in the
United States. In many ways,
our mining landscapes are
both a startling commentary
on our attitudes toward na-
ture and an honest expression
of our belief in material
wealth and our faith in tech-
nology. For more than 125
years, the mining industry
has fought to keep the per-
missive 1872 Mining Law in
N a t u r a l o r m a n m a d e t o p o g r a p h y ? T h e t o p o g r a p h i c w o r k s o f m a n , s u c h a s t h i s t a i l-
ings pile near Ruth, Nevada, often emulate the natural topography of arid and place. Only where mining’s
s e m i - a r i d a r e a s . W h e r e a s s u c h w o r k s a r e c o n s i d e r e d f u n c t i o n a l l y b e a u t i f u l b y m i n- impact is so extensive, as in
ing engineers, and nightmares of environmental abuse by conservationists, the late-19th-century hydraulic
general public often considers them to be more or less natural “badlands” in the
context of the surrounding desert landscapes. Richard Francaviglia, 1989 placer mining that disrupted
entire river systems in Cali-
desecrated landscapes in an attempt to convince the pub- fornia, do we find strict laws governing it. Nevertheless,
lic of corporate wrong-doing and government apathy. conservation appears to be an important factor in what
happens to mining lands. With the rise of a strong pub-
The Persistence of Mining Landscapes licly supported conservation ethic in the mid-1960s,
However grand their scale, nature begins to reclaim demands have been placed on mining companies to
even the most ambitious topographic works of miners reclaim mined landscapes. Such reclamation efforts tend
shortly after they are “completed” — that is, abandoned. to reduce erosion, mitigate air and water pollution, and
Attrition is a factor in the way a mining landscape looks, return the land to productive uses such as grazing or
reminding us that, like all topography, these landscapes agriculture. For better or worse, however, they also
are further transformed by sedimentation, erosion, and obliterate many truly historic mining-related landscapes
revegetation. From their inception, mining-related topo- that were created over as much as a century or more as
graphic features are exposed to, and become part of, the a direct result of the management philosophies and poli-
natural environment. Historian Phil Notarianni charac- cies of mining companies. Despite conservation efforts,
terized this interrelationship for the Tintic Mining dis- many mining-related landscapes go unreclaimed, and
trict in Utah by noting that “years of mining have because Western mining districts are often isolated from
parched the land, leaving twisted cedars and hardened large population centers, public outcry for conservation
conical mine dumps, weathered with age, yet monu- and rehabilitation measures have tended to be minimal.
mental remnants of days past.”16 The West is dotted with thousands of unreclaimed “or-
Whereas the original design of the manmade topog- phan” mines of the type recently described by environ-
raphy of a mining district is attributable to technology mental analysts, Leisa Huyck and John Reganold.18
and economy, its persistence after the cessation of min-
ing is a result of weathering under various climatic Epilogue
regimes. In well-watered (humid) forested areas, the It is not surprising that mining-related topography —
legacy of mining may be harder to detect, as brush and if not reworked by mining interests or “reclaimed”
trees return after mining activity ceases. In deserts, how- through conservation efforts — may be the most endur-
ever, the topographic features created by miners may ing of all the vestiges of human activity in a mining dis-
last for centuries. The scars of mining activity dating trict. Mining-related topography may outlast all other
back nearly three millennia are reportedly still visible in above-ground features, such as settlements, structures,
the desert regions peripheral to the Mediterranean Sea. and transportation systems. Thus, mining-related topog-
Some of our mining landscapes in the arid West prob- raphy is more than unpleasant or awesome scenery: it
Francaviglia: Hardrock Mining’s Effects on the Visual Environment of the West JOW, Winter 2004, Vol. 43, No. 1 — 51

may be the only remaining tangible record of the major
activity that flourished in a particular place. Along with
written and oral sources of information, then, environ-
mental historians can consider the landscape features
associated with mining to be yet another important piece
of evidence in the everchanging relationship between
people and place in the American West.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author wishes to thank the miners and scholars who provided
information and inspiration for this essay, including Warren Witry of
the Missouri Mines Historic State Park; Phil Notarianni of the Utah
Historical Society; John Webb of the State University of New York,
Albany; Arnold Alanen of the University of Wisconsin at Madison;
Donald Hardesty of the University of Nevada, Reno; the late Homer
Aschmann of the University of California, Riverside; and Ed Lehner
of Bisbee, Arizona. Darlene McAllister and Lois Lettini, of the
University of Texas, Arlington, helped with the typing and editing of
the revised manuscript.
NOTES
1. The Book of Job, Ch. 28, v. 9-11, The Holy Bible (New York:
Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1953), 407.
2. Richard V. Francaviglia, “The Ultimate Artifact: Interpreting and
Evaluating the Man-Made Topography of Historic Mining
Districts,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society
for Historical Archaeology, Reno, Nevada, Jan. 16, 1988; for a
general geomorphic classification of landscapes of excavation,
refer to Andrew Goudie, Human Impact on the Environment
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), 204-211.
3. Homer Milford, “Turquoise Mining History” (Santa Fe: New
Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department
unpubl. ms., 1994).
4. Donald H. McLaughlin, “Man’s Selective Attack on Ores and
Minerals,” in William Thomas, ed., Man’s Role in Changing the
Face of the Earth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956),
855.
5. Benjamin Richason, Atlas of Cultural Features: A Study of Man’s
Imprint on the Land (Northbrook, IL: Hubbard Press, 1972), 46.
Although agriculture may have a more extensive, large-scale
impact on soil erosion, mining creates the most heavily eroded
localized landscapes.
6. Richard V. Francaviglia, Hard Places: Reading the Landscape of
America’s Historic Mining Districts (Iowa City: University of
Iowa Press, 1991).
7. Homer Aschmann, “The Natural History of a Mine,” Economic
Geography, 46, 2 (Apr. 1970): 171-190.
8. Richard V. Francaviglia, “Copper Mining and Landscape
Evolution: A Century of Change in Arizona’s Warren Mining
District,” Journal of Arizona History, 23, 2 (Autumn 1982): 267-
298.
9. Udo Zindel, “Landscape Evolution in the Clifton-Morenci
Mining District, Arizona, 1972-1986,” Master’s thesis (Arizona
State University, Tempe, 1987).
10. Donald Hardesty, “Industrial Archaeology on the American
Mining Frontier: Suggestions for a Research Agenda,” Journal of
New World Archaeology, 6, 4 (1986): 51.
11. Otis E. Young, Western Mining: An Informal Account of Precious
Metals Prospecting, Placering, Lode Mining, and Milling on the
American Frontier from Spanish Times to 1893 (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1970), 265.
12. Richard V. Francaviglia, “Time Exposures: The Evolving
Landscape of an Arizona Copper Mining District,” Harley
Johansen, Olen P. Matthews, and Gundars Rudzitis, eds., Mineral
Resource Development: Geopolitics, Economics, and Policy
(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987).
13. Examples of the mining engineers’ literature include Mining and
Scientific Press, published weekly in San Francisco, California,
from 1860 to 1922, and bulletins issued by the U.S. Bureau of
Mines. For an example of a metallurgical engineering text, see
Carl Schnabel, Handbook of Metallurgy, 3rd. ed. (London:
Macmillan, 1921).
14. Jeffrey L. Brown, “Earthworks and Industrial Archaeology,” IA:
The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archaeology, 6, 1
(1980): 1.
15. Benjamin Richason, Atlas of Cultural Features, 44.
16. Philip F. Notarianni, Faith, Hope, and Prosperity: The Tintic
Mining District (Eureka, UT: Tintic Historical Society, 1982),
13.
17. Kenneth Wallwork, Derelict Land: Origins and Prospects of a
Land-Use Problem (London: David and Charles, 1974).
18. Leisa M. Huyck and John P. Reganold, “Environmental Policies
and Issues Surrounding Holden Mine Tailings: A Case Study of
an Orphan Mine,” Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 9
(1989): 97-123.

Richard V. Francaviglia is an historian and geographer

interested in the way environments change through time,
and how this change is depicted in maps, literature, muse-
um exhibits, and popular culture. His background includes
experience as a regional planner, historical resources con-
sultant, college professor and administrator, and historic
preservation program manager. He has written seven books
including: Believing in Place: A Spiritual Geography of the
Great Basin (2003); The Cast Iron Forest: A Natural and
Cultural History of the North American Cross Timbers
(2000); Hard Places: Reading the Landscape of America’s
Historic Mining Districts (1991); and The Mormon
Landscape: Existence, Creation and Perception of a
Unique Image in the American West (1978). Francaviglia has served as president of the
Mining History Association (2002), and is president-elect of the Society for the History
of Discoveries, and the Association for Arid Land Studies. He is currently director of
the Center for Greater Southwestern Studies and the History of Cartography at the
University of Texas, Arlington.