Bill Gates in 1997 – When asked about establishing businesses online, said the following:

“The Internet today is much like the mining communities established around the mines. Most

people who made money from mining were the stores established around the mines. They made money off

the miners.”

What does this quote below mean? How does this relate to the history of this area?

Settling the West – Mining

– Boomtowns– Ghost towns– Vigilance committees (hang-man’s hill)– Mining: placer, sluice, hydraulic, quartz, and open-pit

** Importance of mining to establishment of the American West:

From SDPB: http://listen.sdpb.org/post/exploring-black-hills-ghost-towns

Placer Mining2

• Early prospectors utilized placer mining, getting at the shallow deposits close to the soil using picks, shovels, and pans.

Sluice Mining3

• Water is diverted from a riverbed to a box with metal “riffle” bars that caused heavier materials to settle at the bottom of the box and a screen at the end of the box, which prevented minerals from escaping with the water and sediment.

Hydraulic Mining4

• When deposits at the surface ran out, hydraulic mining, was used to remove large quantities of earth, as water was sprayed at high pressure against a hill or mountainside, removing the dirt, gravel, and rock and exposing the hard minerals beneath.

Quartz Mining5

• Mine shafts are dug and people go underground to extract the materials

Open-pit Mining6

• A surface mining technique of extracting rock or minerals from the earth by removal from an open pit

• Rock quarries• Copper mines• Coal• Marble• Uranium

7

8

9

10

11

12

13