Rothstein, Arthur. Gold dredge floats on artificial lake in the desert. Nye County, Nevada. 1940. Photograph. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. https://www.loc.gov/item/2017774599/.
Students will use this photo to consider how communities are integrally connected with available economic opportunities, specifically in the context of 20th-century industrial mining. This resource will serve as the subject of students’ writer’s notebooks as well as the example for the subsequent lesson. Students will need to work individually and in a group to learn how once thriving communities were abandoned and what that can teach students about the needs of their own communities.
By the mid-20th century, dredging allowed for vastly larger-scale mining operations than individual mining ever had, drawing in greater numbers of people to create communities surrounding these operations. Once the gold hauls dropped off, however, these communities (and the dredges) were often abandoned.
Source: https://www.nps.gov/yuch/learn/historyculture/placer-mining.htm
https://jasontdunn.com/files/ghost_towns_big_cities.pdf
- From this photo, what can you tell about how gold mining has changed over time?
- What could the dangers of working on a gold dredge be?
- What clues from this photograph could point to how gold dredges affect the environment?
ELA Standard
11/12 Oral Communication 1: Engage in collaborative discussions about grade-level topics and texts with peers by promoting civil, democratic discussions and decision-making, establishing individual roles, and tracking progress on specific goals; propelling conversations forward by synthesizing comments and ideas of several speakers and responding to diverse perspectives with relevant observations and ideas, resolving contradictions when possible; and determining what additional information is required to deepen the investigation or complete the task.
Social Studies Standard
6-12.HT2.1: Evaluate how historical events and developments were shaped by unique circumstances of time and place and broader historical contexts.
Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).
- Writer’s Notebooks: Project the photograph of the dredge. Students will use this image as the prompt for their writing with the following assisting prompts:
- What is this picture of? What kind of work happens here? (If you don’t know, make it up!)
- What would it be like to work here? How much money would you have to make to be worth it?
- What kind of community exists around this place?
- Visual Analysis: In pairs, students talk about what they wrote and questions they may have.
- This may be a good place to include guided work, such as an “Observe–Reflect–Question” worksheet.
- Mini-Lesson: The teacher should explain the historical background of gold mining in the western US and its importance in American history, including the following:
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- The 1849 California Gold Rush
- Eventual spread into Nevada and Idaho
- Shifting away from panning to mechanized methods like dredging.
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Emphasize how towns boomed rapidly with mining investment but declined just as quickly when resources ran out.
- Class Discussion: Having covered the historical context, the whole class can discuss why they think many gold mining communities failed, the ethical and ecological impact of mining, and what economic mechanisms the students’ own communities rely on.
- Group Research and Gallery Walk: Students will now work in small groups to research one former mining town (e.g., Rhyolite, NV; Bodie, CA; Custer, ID). Together they will create a small poster or digital slide with: (1) when the city was founded, (2) what kind of mining took place, (3) population peak, and (4) why/when it declined. Students should present in a quick gallery walk format.
- Exit Ticket: Ask students: In one sentence, explain why so many mining communities became ghost towns.
Rothstein, Arthur. Gold dredge. Nye County, Nevada. 1940. Photograph. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. https://www.loc.gov/item/2017774538/.