Snow lectures about Idaho’s Silver Valley in next ‘American West’ talk

From MSU News Service
The effect of mining and modern industry on Idaho’s Silver Valley is the subject of the next talk in the Ivan Doig Center for the Study of the Lands and Peoples of the North American West’s Perspectives on the American West Lecture Series set for 6pm Monday, December 3rd, at the Museum of the Rockies’ Hager Auditorium. It is free and open to the public. Doors open at 5:30pm.
         Bradley Snow, an assistant teaching professor in the Department of History and Philosophy in the College of Letters and Science, will speak about “Idaho’s Silver Valley and the Promise and Perils of Industrial Modernity.” Snow’s lecture is the fifth and final talk in the center’s 2018 series of lectures.
In his talk, Snow will examine the costs and benefits of a century of mining, milling and smelting in Idaho’s Silver Valley, a once-remote area that quickly modernized in the late 19th century and deindustrialized even more rapidly a century later.
The Silver Valley, a 25-by-10-mile portion of the Idaho panhandle, is home to one of the most productive mining districts in world history. Historically the globe’s richest silver district, and also one of the nation’s biggest lead and zinc producers, the valley’s legacy also includes large-scale environmental pollution. For decades, local waters were fouled with tailings from the mining district’s more than 100 mines and mills, and the air surrounding Kellogg, Idaho, was laced with lead and other toxic heavy metals issuing from the Bunker Hill Company’s smelter.
Snow received his doctorate in history from MSU in 2012. His areas of concentration are environmental history and the history of the American West. His first book, Living with Lead: An Environmental History of Idaho’s Coeur d’Alenes, 1885-2011, was published in 2017 by the University of Pittsburgh Press. He has taught extensively as a non-tenure track instructor in MSU’s Department of History and Philosophy since 2013.
The lecture will be followed by a reception and book-signing in the museum lobby. A limited number of books will be available for purchase by cash or check only.
The Perspectives on the American West Lecture Series features experts from around the country discussing the history, literature and culture of the West; issues affecting the wildlife and fisheries of the region; and the West’s geography, geology and resources. The series is co-sponsored by the Burton K. Wheeler Center for Public Policy and is a program of the Ivan Doig Center for Study of the Lands and Peoples of the North American West, an interdisciplinary research center within the MSU College of Letters and Science that is focused on the places and peoples of the western United States and Canada.