Thomas J. Noel | Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.4

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Thomas J. Noel | Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

For Wood River or Bust: Idaho's Silver Boom of the 1880s. By Clark C. Spence. (Moscow and Boise: University of Idaho Press and the Idaho Historical Society, 1999. xii, 260 pp. $29.95, ISBN 0-89301-215-7.)

This book is no environmental scream or shout at those wretched white guys. It is traditional mining history focused on the characters, camps, and production in a remote south central Idaho silver region that the artist and author Mary Hallock Foote called "the darkest part of darkest Idaho." Of a dozen mining towns, only Bellevue, Hailey, and Ketchum survive in an area better known today for a native son, the poet Ezra Pound, and the Sun Valley ski resort. 1

Clark C. Spence, a founder and first president of the Mining History Association, was also a founder and president of the Western History Association, as was his wife, Mary. A professor of history emeritus at the University of Illinois, Spence has published eleven books and fifty-five articles, primarily on mining in the United States. Rather than condemn the greed and environmental insensitivity of the pioneer swarm of silver grubbers, Spence admires their stamina and drive, while acknowledging their prejudices. . . .

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