Letters to the President:  Westerns Confront Mining Pollution in the Early 20th Century

Katherine G. Morrissey, associate professor of history, University of Arizona, is a scholar of western U.S. and environmental history. Her talk is part of a larger book project, entitled "The Nature of Conflicts", that investigates conflicts over the alterations of the environment by mining practices in the 20th-century North American West. Over the last century, westerners have increasingly categorized air and water as dirty and have begun to care about these categorizations in new ways. These changes in environmental perceptions emerged in part out of struggles among different users of the same natural resources. In the early 20th century, local farmers, ranchers, urban residents, miners, and smelter operators engaged in political and legal fights over the region's water, land and air. Through their letters to the president and other activities, locals drew national attention to issues which continue to have important implication in the 21st-century West.  

Dr. Morrissey's lecture was held Friday, October 27, 2000, followed by a reception in the American Heritage Center Loggia, Centennial Complex, 2111 Willett Drive, University of Wyoming.

Katherine G. Morrrissey