The Mountains That Remade America: How Sierra Nevada Geology Impacts Modern Life

by Craig H. Jones

Overview

From ski towns to national parks, fresh fruit to environmental lawsuits, the Sierra Nevada has changed the way Americans live. Whether and where there was gold to be mined redefined land, mineral, and water laws. Where rain falls (and where it doesn’t) determines whose fruit grows on trees and whose appears on slot machines. All this emerges from the geology of the range and how it changed history, and in so doing, changed the country.
 
The Mountains That Remade America combines geology with history to show how the particular forces and conditions that created the Sierra Nevada have effected broad outcomes and influenced daily life in the United States in the past and how they continue to do so today. Drawing connections between events in historical geology and contemporary society, Craig H. Jones makes geological science accessible and shows the vast impact this mountain range has had on the American West.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520325500
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	02/25/2020
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	360
Sales rank:	1,135,737
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Craig H. Jones is Professor of Geological Sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder. His work is published in Science and Nature, and he is the coauthor of Introduction to Applied Geophysics. 

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Introduction

1 • An Asymmetric Barrier
2 • A Golden Trinity
3 • A Placer for Everyone
4 • Fossil Rivers, Modern Water
5 • Lode Gold
6 • “A Property of No Value”
7 • Granite, Guardian of Wilderness
8 • Big Trees, Big Battles
9 • Mountains Adrift
10 • What Lies Beneath
11 • Paradoxes and Proxy Wars

Notes
References
Illustration Sources
Index

Editorial Reviews

"This book serves both as a deep dive into how the Sierra Nevada range was formed (Jones is a geology professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder) and the montains' importance in American history (the Gold Rush, the perservation of Yellowstone and Yosemite, and more)."

Landscape Architecture Magazine

"This book details a remarkable example of the lived human history of a place and its intersection with the natural."

Environment

"This book details a remarkable example of the lived human history of a place and its intersection with the natural."

Environment