Everyone is welcome to the next installment of the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology Colloquium Series.

Moorpark College Professor, Joshua McGuffie, will be presenting “Mountains of Capital: Private Power Production in the Sierra Nevada.”

Over the course of 1905, the Nevada Power, Mining and Milling Company

constructed a hydroelectric power system on Bishop Creek in the Sierra Nevada.

Transmission lines crossed Owens Valley, traversed the White Mountains, and then

meandered eastwards to the silver fields around Tonopah, Nevada. By 1920, the

Company’s hydroelectric power flowed southward to the burgeoning cities of San

Bernadino, Riverside, and Redlands.

This talk analyzes the role of private power production in the environmental and

scientific histories of the Sierra Nevada. The Company, in its many iterations, built

infrastructure to transform flowing Sierra creeks into profit. Flowing water became

kilowatt hours. Trees became power poles. Glacial till and granodiorite boulders became

fill for dams. As the company transformed the mountains to produce power, its leaders

and workers developed the notion that they, as private, corporate actors, served as the

range’s natural caretakers. The Company fought the Los Angeles Bureau of Water and

Power and its Los Angeles Aqueduct. The Company worked to produce a privately-

owned paradise for employees who vacationed at creek side cabins. In company hands,

the Sierra acted as a bulwark against creeping socialism. Accounting for private power

production in the eastern Sierra enriches regional histories that traditionally emphasize

state actors and public lands.

See you in the History of Science Room or via Zoom
https://ucla.zoom.us/meeting/register/vLI7S0I3TsioQQj7GYDNZQ.