YOUR ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO THE GOLD RUSH ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT
Gold mining is the work of dismantling the landscape. And it came with colossal costs to the environment. “Nothing but flood and fire is so ruthless as the miner,” wrote one miner from Yukon’s Bonanza Creek in 1898.
Mining birthed a host of industries with a voracious appetite for the earth’s natural resources. From city-building and commercial agriculture to logging and hunting, from iron working to steam transportation, gold rush societies deforested their local areas, decimated animal populations, and quite literally turned the
