The Mechanics of Optimism

For every successful mining district celebrated in history, there were failed dozens whose stories have been largely forgotten. The Mechanics of Optimism documents, in rare detail, the boom-bust cycle of Hot Spring District, a mid-1860s Montana gold camp that did not pay, despite early predictions of a sure thing. Historian Jeffrey J. Safford examines how gold mining ventures were developed and financed during and after the Civil War, and how men, primarily Easterners with scant knowledge of min