this class was part of a seminar for high school teachers hosted by the gilder lehrman institute of american history. professor west: good morning. >> good morning. professor

this class was part of a seminar for high school teachers hosted by the gilder lehrman institute of american history. prof. west: good morning. >> good morning. prof. west: much better. i hope everyone had a good day yesterday. i certainly did. today, we will look at the environmental impact of the california gold rush. i would like to begin, as i said, by trying to think larger than we normally do. what is going on? my advisor, university of colorado he said, historians only ask one question, what is going on here? i nodded and thought, that is about the dumbest thing i have heard a smart man say. it is the only question we have to go back to an earlier time. the past as a foreign country, this time in the past and we look around and say, what is going on? what is going on? lots of stuff. i hope you are getting that idea so far. one of the things is the place itself, the environment itself is being fundamentally transformed, remade. this is an episode in american westward expansion, expansion that starts here on the atlantic coast and moves across the country, a dramatic develop and come 18

this class was part of a seminar for high school teachers hosted by the gilder lehrman institute of american history. professor west: good morning. >> good morning. west: i hope everyone had a good day yesterday. i certainly did. we can talk about it later. today, we look at the environmental impact of the california gold rush. , he said, you know, the story only asks one question. what's going on here. he is absolutely right. thing we have. we go back and say, what's going on. lots of stuff. i hope you are getting that idea so far. the environment itself was being fundamentally changed, remade. was an episode of expansion . --s a very dramatic with the gadsden purchase. we have the contiguous 48 states. but whatis part of it, i want to begin, the california the rush will and all of california gold rush and silver rushes were fundamentally different as western expansion into ways. first of all, they transform the environment in radically new ways, different ways. the bulk of the presentation will deal with that. we will go back to our hypothetical frontier family moving from north carolina i

this class was part of a seminar for high school teachers hosted by the gilder lehrman institute of american history. prof. west: good morning. >> gmo