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Book Review
| Changing Mines in America. By Peter Goin and C. Elizabeth Raymond. Santa Fe, N.M.: Center for American Places: Distributed by University of Chicago Press, 2004. xxxii + 207 pp. Bibliographical references and index. Cloth $55.00, paper $27.50.
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| Americans have long had an ambiguous view of mining, often simplifying mine sites as historically static moments in time, or defining them as forbidding places of waste and environmental destruction. In an innovative approach to mining history, Changing Mines in America examines eight mine areas, exploring not only the physical alterations to the land over time but the changing attitudes and uses connected to these places. This work is a collaboration between historian C. Elizabeth Raymond and photographer Peter Goin. Raymond provides an overview of the evolution of American views toward mining and a thorough historical background and analysis of changing perceptions for each mine site, while Goin contributes a wide array of high-quality photographic images taken on location. The photographs are not meant solely to illustrate the written text but, together with the essays, to argue that the multiplicity of activities and cultural meanings of any given mine site counter a simple narrative of American mining and reveal the complexity of mining landscapes. |
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The eight places depicted cover a variety of minerals and a range of locations and address how cultural perceptions both affect and reflect the landscape. Minnesota's Mesabi Iron Range illustrates paradoxical attitudes toward mining, as reclamation projects work to hide the physical effects of iron mining by planting trees and filling in recesses, while tourist enterprises celebrate the achievements of large-scale extraction that created those very effects. The examination of restoration efforts in Wyoming Valley, Pennsylvania, challenges readers to question what constitutes a natural landscape. Reshaping the anthracite coal culm banks and planting grasses that turn yellow during the summer months conflict with what residents view as a "natural" backdrop of black hills that is central to their identity. Mining is often short-lived and post-mining activities can be surprising. Goin's fascinating images of people relaxing on benches in deep mine tunnels of former uranium mines in Boulder-Basin, Montana, reveal how some people believe that inhaling radon will restore their health. |
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This work would be of interest to a wide range of disciplines, from landscape study, geography, and cultural history to those who focus on regional and local identity and on past and present mining issues. Trying to cover so much ground in one work leaves inevitable gaps. Although the authors argue that cultural attitudes are contingent upon a number of factors including gender, class, and ethnicity, they do not always analyze these components. Scattered throughout the book, for example, are photos of women modeling next to large mining equipment, leading mine tours, and greeting customers for radon treatments, leaving one to wonder if these participants help to temper what has traditionally been a heavily masculinized landscape. To their credit, the authors have not set out to interpret every photographic image for the reader nor do they profess to have produced a comprehensive work on mining. What they admirably succeed in doing is to demonstrate the need to rethink dramatically human-altered areas as "places of beauty and curiosity, as well as apocalypse" (p. xiv). |
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Christina Rabe Seger lives in Tucson, Arizona. Her interests include mining history. She is writing a book on the political and economic uses of Alaskan mining images and ideals for the University Press of Kansas. |
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