Sponsor
Portland State University. Department of History
First Advisor
William Lang
Term of Graduation
Fall 2005
Date of Publication
2005
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (M.A.) in History
Department
History
Language
English
Subjects
Gold mines and mining -- Oregon -- History, Hydraulic mining -- Oregon, Athapascan Indians -- Oregon, Gold mines and mining -- Oregon -- Sixes River, Gold mines and mining -- Oregon -- Rogue River Valley (Klamath County-Curry County)
Physical Description
1 online resource (2, iv, 132 pages)
Abstract
Environmental historians have researched, analyzed, and concluded that gold mining significantly altered the environment in Southern Oregon. Environmental case studies have examined mining's impact on the watersheds in the Rogue Valley, but none have analyzed the effect gold miners had on the Southern Oregon coast. While gold mining occurred on the South Coast from the 1850s to the 1940s, on a smaller scale, the impact from environmental change is just as significant. The purpose of this study is to understand how mining changed the landscape of the South Coast, and how this change affected the human populations that lived in the area.
This study demonstrates how mining shaped the landscape of the South Coast by describing the lands before human populations settled the region and analyzing how Native Americans shaped the environment for thousands of years. A chapter on Euro-American settlement and industry demonstrates how quickly the landscape changed within just thirty to fifty years after Euro-Americans arrived in the region. An examination of three socio-economic phases of gold mining from the 1850s to the 1940s, demonstrates the techniques used by miners and their subsequent shaping of the land. Finally, an analysis of the Rogue and the Sixes Rivers concludes how mining significantly altered the environment of the South Coast, primarily by damaging riparian and salmon habitats. These changes had consequences for many people who lived in the region including Native Americans in the 1850s, and later sports fishermen and anglers in the early 1900s, whose fishing habitats were destroyed by mining debris.
Further analysis of the region shows that the South Coast is a complex and unique environment, which shaped the mining industry and hindered and accelerated environmental change at the same time. Miners had difficulty entering and setting up claims in the rugged landscape, but once they did they exacerbated environmental change in a relatively small and isolated part of the state. By understanding this dichotomous relationship between mining and the land, this paper demonstrates how a new awareness of the South Coast's environmental history and its current development as a region may be attained.
Rights
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Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/44504
Recommended Citation
Hyatt-Evenson, Tania Louise, "Sluice Boxes on the Shores: An Environmental History of Gold Mining on Oregon's South Coast" (2005). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 7001.