Like seriously you can go to visit old Gold Rush mining camps "These barracks were designed to sleep 16 white workers apiece, or 48 Chinese"
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Replying to @arthur_affect
Have you ever visited the tourism center for the big borax pit in Death Valley? That's a trip
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Replying to @arthur_affect
It was where the Chinese immigrants went after the Gold Rush was over - a much less profitable mine in a much worse location
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Replying to @arthur_affect
It was my favorite stop on our family West Coast National Park trip bc I enjoy cynical history facts much more than I enjoy nature
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Replying to @arthur_affect
Death Valley in the summer is the worst place in the world and mining borax one of the worst jobs in the world
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Replying to @arthur_affect
That tourism center is a little historical snapshot of hell
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Replying to @arthur_affect
They straight up tell you the "economic miracle" of the borax mines was finding those deposits at a time w very cheap surplus labor
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Replying to @arthur_affect
When Chinese immigrants (who were, essentially, victims of debt-based human trafficking) were cheap to hire and replace when they died off
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Replying to @arthur_affect
And willing to do jobs that even poor and desperate white workers refused to do en masse
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Replying to @arthur_affect
In previous eras it had been known there were borate deposits only reachable w underground tunnel mining, but who would agree to do that
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To keep in mind w "model minority" bs - "200 years ago we weren't 'natural' engineers or scientists, we were disposable ore hauling units"
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Replying to @arthur_affect
The science side of this is borate is water-soluble so it accumulates in dried-up former lakebeds in places that are now deserts
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Replying to @arthur_affect
So old-school borax mining involved working in big open pits in the desert and, after that, digging tunnels under the desert
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