CHAPTER 1 CHANGING WINDS

• Jurisdiction: United States

Surface Use for Mineral Development in the New West
(Feb 2008)
CHAPTER 1
CHANGING WINDS
Patricia Nelson Limerick
University of Colorado
Boulder, Colorado

I. The clearest and most accurate way to think about Western American history is to think of it as a big process of a) drawing lines and boundaries on the earth and around its resources, and b) stretching and reshaping the idea of "property" to fit a wide variety of resources, ranging from beaver skins to cattle, grass lands to town lots, mining claims to rights of way. This process began two centuries ago, and remains far from complete today; the issue of surface use for mineral development provides one of the most telling case studies in this central theme of regional history.

II. Laws that govern the claiming and developing of resources are our inheritance from our ancestors and predecessors, and those laws have shown varying flexibility in adapting to massive historical changes in American attitudes toward nature and land. One of the most consequential aspects of this change...