Murder of a Landscape: The California Farmer-Smelter War, 1897-1916

Norman, OK: The Arthur H. Clarke Company, 2010. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Near Fine/No Jacket. 8vo. Western Lands and Waters Series XIV. Orig. brown cloth. 233 pp. B&W photos and maps in text. Fine. Between 1896 and 1919, air pollution from large-scale copper smelting in northern California's Shasta County severely damaged crops and timber in a 1,000-square-mile region, completely devastating a core area of 200 square miles. The poisons from these smelters created the nation's largest man-made desert -- a shocking contrast to the beauty of the surrounding Cascades and Trinity Alps. This book traces the development of that environmental catastrophe and explains a long struggle that involved several corporations, hundreds of farmers and ranchers, and all levels of government. The author shows how the copper industry posed serious environmental threats from the beginning. He tells of hardscrabble settlers and gentleman farmers who rose up repeatedly in unsuccessful efforts to either clean up or shut down the smelters. What appears today as an environmental cause was really a struggle to save individual property and a way of life. Yet the farmers never had a chance against wider public opinion and the many financial interests that benefited from copper production. Profit and power won out, and posterity was left with a mess. California still contends with the toxic legacy. [WorldCat].