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.In contrast to the agricultural societies that they developed in eastern andsouthern North America, Montana's Native Americans before European ar-rival remained hunter-gatherers, even in areas where agriculture and herd-ing are practiced today.One reason is that Montana lacked native wild plantand animal species lending themselves to domestication, so there were noindependent origins of agriculture in Montana, in contrast to the situationin eastern North America and Mexico.Another reason is that Montana layfar from those two Native American centers of independent agriculturalorigins, so that crops originating there had not spread to Montana by thetime of European arrival.Today, about three-quarters of Montana's remain-ing Native Americans live on seven reservations, most of which are poor innatural resources except for pasture.The first recorded Europeans to visit Montana were the members of thetranscontinental Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804-1806, which spentmore time in what was later to become Montana than in any other state.They were followed by Montana's second economic phase involving themountain men," fur trappers and traders coming down from Canada andalso from the U.S.The next phase began in the 1860s and was based onthree foundations of Montana's economy that have continued (albeit withdiminishing importance) until the present: mining, especially of copper and gold; logging; and food production, involving raising cattle and sheepand growing grains, fruits, and vegetables.The influx of miners to Mon-tana's big copper mine at Butte stimulated other sectors of the economy tomeet the needs of that internal market within the state.In particular, muchtimber was taken out of the nearby Bitterroot Valley to provide power forthe mines, to construct miners' houses, and to shore up the mine shafts; andmuch food for the miners was grown in the valley, whose southerly locationand mild climate (by Montana standards) give it the nickname of "Mon-tana's Banana Belt." Although the valley's rainfall is low (13 inches per year)and the natural vegetation is sagebrush, the first European settlers in the1860s already began overcoming that disadvantage by building small irriga-tion ditches fed by streams draining the Bitterroot Mountains on the valley'swest side; and later, by engineering two sets of large-scale and expensive irri-gation systems, one (the so-called Big Ditch) built in 1908-1910 to take wa-ter from Lake Como on the west side of the valley, and the other consistingof several large irrigation canals drawing water from the Bitterroot River it-self.Among other things, irrigation permitted a boom in apple orchardsthat began in the Bitterroot Valley in the 1880s and peaked in the early de-cades of the 20th century, but today few of those orchards remain in com-mercial operation.Of those former bases of Montana's economy, hunting and fishing haveshifted from a subsistence activity to a recreation; the fur trade is extinct;and mines, logging, and agriculture are declining in importance, because ofeconomic and environmental factors to be discussed below.Instead, the sec-tors of the economy that are growing nowadays are tourism, recreation, re-tirement living, and health care.A symbolic landmark in the BitterrootValley's recent economic transformation took place in 1996, when a 2,600-acre farm called the Bitterroot Stock Farm, formerly the estate of the Mon-tana copper baron Marcus Daly, was acquired by the wealthy brokeragehouse owner Charles Schwab.He began to develop Daly's estate for veryrich out-of-staters who wanted a second (or even a third or fourth) home inthe beautiful valley to visit for fishing, hunting, horseback riding, and golf-ing a couple of times each year.The Stock Farm includes an 18-hole cham-pionship golf course and about 125 sites for what are called either houses orcabins, "cabin" being a euphemism for a structure of up to six bedroomsand 6,000 square feet selling for $800,000 or more.Buyers of Stock Farmlots must be able to prove that they meet high standards of net worth andincome, the least of which is the ability to afford a club membership initia-tion fee of $125,000, which is more than seven times the average annual in- come of Ravalli County residents.The whole Stock Farm is fenced, and theentrance gate bears a sign, MEMBERS AND GUESTS ONLY.Many of the ownersarrive by private jet and rarely shop or set foot in Hamilton, but prefer to eat atthe Stock Farm club or else have their groceries picked up from Hamilton byclub employees.As one local Hamilton resident explained to me bitterly, "Youcan spot coveys of the aristocracy when they decide to go slumming downtownin tight packs like foreign tourists."The announcement of the Stock Farm's development plan came as a shock tosome Bitterroot Valley long-timers, who predicted that no one would pay somuch money for valley land, and that the lots would never sell.As it turned out,the long-timers were wrong.While rich out-of-staters had already been visitingand buying in the valley as individuals, the Stock Farm's opening was asymbolic milestone because it involved so many very rich people buyingBitterroot land at once.Above all, the Stock Farm drove home how much morevaluable the valley's land had become for recreation than for its traditional usesof growing cows and apples.Montana's environmental problems today include almost all of the dozen typesof problems that have undermined pre-industrial societies in the past, or thatnow threaten societies elsewhere in the world as well.Particularly conspicuousin Montana are problems of toxic wastes, forests, soils, water (and sometimesair), climate change, biodiversity losses, and introduced pests.Let's begin withseemingly the most transparent problem, that of toxic wastes.While concern is mounting in Montana about runoff of fertilizer, manure,septic tank contents, and herbicides, by far the biggest toxic waste issue is posedby residues from metal mining, some of it from the last century and some of itrecent or ongoing.Metal mining especially of copper, but also of lead,molybdenum, palladium, platinum, zinc, gold, and silver stood as one of thetraditional pillars of Montana's economy [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.In contrast to the agricultural societies that they developed in eastern andsouthern North America, Montana's Native Americans before European ar-rival remained hunter-gatherers, even in areas where agriculture and herd-ing are practiced today.One reason is that Montana lacked native wild plantand animal species lending themselves to domestication, so there were noindependent origins of agriculture in Montana, in contrast to the situationin eastern North America and Mexico.Another reason is that Montana layfar from those two Native American centers of independent agriculturalorigins, so that crops originating there had not spread to Montana by thetime of European arrival.Today, about three-quarters of Montana's remain-ing Native Americans live on seven reservations, most of which are poor innatural resources except for pasture.The first recorded Europeans to visit Montana were the members of thetranscontinental Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804-1806, which spentmore time in what was later to become Montana than in any other state.They were followed by Montana's second economic phase involving themountain men," fur trappers and traders coming down from Canada andalso from the U.S.The next phase began in the 1860s and was based onthree foundations of Montana's economy that have continued (albeit withdiminishing importance) until the present: mining, especially of copper and gold; logging; and food production, involving raising cattle and sheepand growing grains, fruits, and vegetables.The influx of miners to Mon-tana's big copper mine at Butte stimulated other sectors of the economy tomeet the needs of that internal market within the state.In particular, muchtimber was taken out of the nearby Bitterroot Valley to provide power forthe mines, to construct miners' houses, and to shore up the mine shafts; andmuch food for the miners was grown in the valley, whose southerly locationand mild climate (by Montana standards) give it the nickname of "Mon-tana's Banana Belt." Although the valley's rainfall is low (13 inches per year)and the natural vegetation is sagebrush, the first European settlers in the1860s already began overcoming that disadvantage by building small irriga-tion ditches fed by streams draining the Bitterroot Mountains on the valley'swest side; and later, by engineering two sets of large-scale and expensive irri-gation systems, one (the so-called Big Ditch) built in 1908-1910 to take wa-ter from Lake Como on the west side of the valley, and the other consistingof several large irrigation canals drawing water from the Bitterroot River it-self.Among other things, irrigation permitted a boom in apple orchardsthat began in the Bitterroot Valley in the 1880s and peaked in the early de-cades of the 20th century, but today few of those orchards remain in com-mercial operation.Of those former bases of Montana's economy, hunting and fishing haveshifted from a subsistence activity to a recreation; the fur trade is extinct;and mines, logging, and agriculture are declining in importance, because ofeconomic and environmental factors to be discussed below.Instead, the sec-tors of the economy that are growing nowadays are tourism, recreation, re-tirement living, and health care.A symbolic landmark in the BitterrootValley's recent economic transformation took place in 1996, when a 2,600-acre farm called the Bitterroot Stock Farm, formerly the estate of the Mon-tana copper baron Marcus Daly, was acquired by the wealthy brokeragehouse owner Charles Schwab.He began to develop Daly's estate for veryrich out-of-staters who wanted a second (or even a third or fourth) home inthe beautiful valley to visit for fishing, hunting, horseback riding, and golf-ing a couple of times each year.The Stock Farm includes an 18-hole cham-pionship golf course and about 125 sites for what are called either houses orcabins, "cabin" being a euphemism for a structure of up to six bedroomsand 6,000 square feet selling for $800,000 or more.Buyers of Stock Farmlots must be able to prove that they meet high standards of net worth andincome, the least of which is the ability to afford a club membership initia-tion fee of $125,000, which is more than seven times the average annual in- come of Ravalli County residents.The whole Stock Farm is fenced, and theentrance gate bears a sign, MEMBERS AND GUESTS ONLY.Many of the ownersarrive by private jet and rarely shop or set foot in Hamilton, but prefer to eat atthe Stock Farm club or else have their groceries picked up from Hamilton byclub employees.As one local Hamilton resident explained to me bitterly, "Youcan spot coveys of the aristocracy when they decide to go slumming downtownin tight packs like foreign tourists."The announcement of the Stock Farm's development plan came as a shock tosome Bitterroot Valley long-timers, who predicted that no one would pay somuch money for valley land, and that the lots would never sell.As it turned out,the long-timers were wrong.While rich out-of-staters had already been visitingand buying in the valley as individuals, the Stock Farm's opening was asymbolic milestone because it involved so many very rich people buyingBitterroot land at once.Above all, the Stock Farm drove home how much morevaluable the valley's land had become for recreation than for its traditional usesof growing cows and apples.Montana's environmental problems today include almost all of the dozen typesof problems that have undermined pre-industrial societies in the past, or thatnow threaten societies elsewhere in the world as well.Particularly conspicuousin Montana are problems of toxic wastes, forests, soils, water (and sometimesair), climate change, biodiversity losses, and introduced pests.Let's begin withseemingly the most transparent problem, that of toxic wastes.While concern is mounting in Montana about runoff of fertilizer, manure,septic tank contents, and herbicides, by far the biggest toxic waste issue is posedby residues from metal mining, some of it from the last century and some of itrecent or ongoing.Metal mining especially of copper, but also of lead,molybdenum, palladium, platinum, zinc, gold, and silver stood as one of thetraditional pillars of Montana's economy [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]