Technology and Culture

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 609 The Conrey Placer Mining Company: A Pioneer Gold-dredging Enterprise in Montana, 1897—1922. By Clark C. Spence. Helena: Montana His­ torical Society Press, 1989; distributed by University of Washington Press, Seattle. Pp. x+ 161; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $19.95. Few industries produced technological innovation comparable to that of the western mining industry in 19th-century America. Whether directly related to the extraction of minerals or tangentially affecting society and culture on the mining frontier, dramatic changes in technology characterized the industrial West at the turn of the century. Clark Spence’s The Conrey Placer Mining Company: A Pioneer Gold-dredging Enterprise in Montana, 1897—1922 documents one of the little-known industrial frontiers in the Rocky Mountain region. Gold dredging, a highly mechanized way of extracting placer gold from the gravel of streambeds, offered western mining companies an oppor­ tunity to “apply the mass production of Henry Ford’s America to placer deposits” (p. 3). In so doing, dredge mining revolutionized the mining industry. Spence places the Conrey Placer Mining Company in perspective with the international development of dredge mining during the late 19th century. The Conrey Company’s first dredging efforts in Alder Gulch, one of Montana’s earliest mining districts, borrowed heavily from technology developed in New Zealand during the 1860s and California during the 1890s. With its transition from steam to electric dredges in 1907 and completion of its largest dredge, “No. 4,” in 1911, Conrey demonstrated that it had successfully adapted the best of dredge design to its Montana experience. Conrey also experimented with dredging techniques that were specifically adapted to the harsh Montana environment. Principal among these were procedures for thawing equipment and loosening frozen ground that allowed the company to operate year-round. The company found that the practice of spreading water on ground to be worked in the fall helped to slow the formation of frost. It also experimented with pumping steam into dredge ponds to keep the dredge working under extreme conditions. So successful was the company in perfecting dredges and dredging techniques that its four dredges “furnished the bulk of the placer gold in Montana” in 1914 (p. 68). The Conrey Company operated continuously in the Alder Gulch area until 1922. By that time, much of the recoverable gold was gone, although the No. 4 dredge continued to work the tailings left by earlier dredges. During the period 1897—1922, estimates of the company’s earnings total approximately $13 million. Roughly 10 percent of those profits were paid to Harvard University through its ownership of stock by one of the early Conrey investors. 610 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE The profits reaped from dredging Montana streams offer little consolation to those who must live with the environmental degrada­ tion wrought by these machines. Few Montanans today would relish a return to the unregulated practices at work in Alder Gulch during the early 1900s. Although Spence notes some Progressive Era criticism of dredge mining in California, he finds little contemporary comment about it in Montana newspapers. Spence has provided an interesting account of the technology employed by Montana’s largest dredge mining company. He ably describes the technical workings of a dredge and its various mechan­ ical components while not ignoring the financial and social workings of the company and its employees. A useful addition to the book would be a diagram of a typical Conrey dredge, illustrating the various terminology used to describe it. The Conrey Placer Mining Company should serve as a valuable reference work on dredge mining in America and fill a void in the literature of industrial development in Montana and the West. Alan S. Newell Mr. Newell is a principal in the Missoula, Montana, office of Historical Research Associates, Inc. He has prepared a number of historical studies of the mining industry in the Rocky Mountain West, including accounts of 20th-century gold-mining opera­ tions near Alder Gulch. He is currently working on a history of Indian forestry, to be published by the University of Colorado Press. Where the Sun Never Shines: A History ofAmerica’s Bloody Coal Industry. By Priscilla Long. New York: Paragon House, 1989. Pp...