| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 37.1

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 37.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Mechanics of Optimism: Mining Companies, Technology, and the Hot Spring Gold Rush, Montana Territory, 1864–1868. By Jeffrey J. Safford. (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2004. xvi + 185 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. $34.95.)

Mining history has many stories. Unfortunately, most of us don't get past James Marshall and Sutter's Mill. But thanks to people like Jeffrey Safford, the detail of western mining is coming out. Safford examines one location in Montana, the Hot Spring Mining District, a not very productive or famous area, to see how it went from boom to bust. This is not a story about a "riotous, brawling environment" (p. xv). Instead, as Safford says, it is about the "mechanics" of how businessmen became interested in the Hot Spring District, of how they brought processing mills to the area, and of how they failed. The eastern investors who lost their money did so because their hope or "optimism" for potential wealth outweighed their common sense.

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