| Dr. Maeve A. Boland is a research assistant professor in the Department of Geology and Geological Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines where she works on the history and public policy aspects of economic geology. Dr. Boland received a M.Sc. in 1985 from Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, and a Ph.D. in geology from Colorado School of Mines in 2005.
Dr. Boland’s project as a Majewski Fellow examines the origins and evolution of geological mine maps. She places their development in a social and scientific context and explores how geological mine maps affected scientists’ perception of the earth. Dr. Boland has been studying the many geological mine maps and other documents relating to mine mapping contained in the Anaconda Collection held by the American Heritage Center.
Butte, Montana, was known as the “Richest Hill on Earth” by the late 1890s. Competition for the immense wealth generated by the Butte copper deposits led to serious disputes -- court rulings shutdown almost all mining in Butte in 1903, and underground warfare between rival groups of miners threatened many lives. The Anaconda Copper Mining Company set up a Geology Department in 1900 to use science to resolve the many legal disputes. They developed the “Anaconda Method” of geological mine mapping which has been a cornerstone of economic geology for more than 100 years. This talk examines how social, economic, and legal pressures influenced the emergence of economic geology as a new science.
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Legal Warfare, Underground Warfare, and the New Science of Economic Geology in Butte, Montana, 1890-1910 
