1 10 34 https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/7251bc5e03c628b4611f06d03fce68aa.jpg 382e89ffa87569490b7f6b9d0eb7feee Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Omaha in the Anthropocene Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource A Collaborative Global Environmental History Exhibit https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/93c1469fdd84dd253f9ecdd5d642f912.jpg f264ba94a03e9c3f1130b423e0bdbd2c https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/b4cb9117eb7015b460d9697f0810b841.jpg 24265a1902b37caeb3460427bc647c6c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figure 3 Description An account of the resource Picture of the Omaha's Parlin Orendorff and Martin Plow Company from 1911. This building was used for to produce plows and other farm equipment until 1964. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Photo Courtesy of the Durham Museum Archive Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Commercial use or distribution of the image is not permitted without prior permission of the copyright holder. Please contact The Durham Museum for permission to use the digital image. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived https://durhammuseum.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15426coll1/id/22206/rec/36 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Taming the Landscape Subject The topic of the resource The Early Anthropocene <img src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4740/38752446300_776a102fdd_o.jpg" 100="" width="100% height=" /> Description An account of the resource When did people begin to take control of the global environment? Humans have shaped their local environments for hundreds of thousands of years. As populations increased, their impacts expanded. Two changes greatly accelerated human influence on a global scale: the movement of hunting societies and the development of agriculture. By the end of the last ice age, humans had migrated across much of Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Whenever humans appeared, a wave of extinctions followed. In the Americas, large animals such as the Mastodon and Giant Beaver went extinct shortly after the arrival of people. Although scientists debate the origin of these mass extinctions (changing climate likely played a role), hunting was a significant factor. The development of agriculture played an even more important role in global environmental change. People began domesticating plants and animals around the world roughly 12,000 years ago. The stone (“lithic”) tools in our exhibit speak to this dramatic change. Agriculture often required clearing forested lands, irrigating, or fertilizing landscapes to make them suitable for crops. These changes were the foundation for settlement and later the rise of complex civilizations all over the world. Agriculture and hunting continue to reshape environments on a global scale today. The bison in this exhibit represents the consequences of modern overhunting and the single-wheel hoe represents our continued reliance on agriculture. These objects remind us that “taming the landscape” revolutionized societies, but they also produced global environmental consequences. They connect us to a deep past and symbolize a transformation that continues to shape the modern world. Physical Object An inanimate, three-dimensional object or substance. Note that digital representations of, or surrogates for, these objects should use Moving Image, Still Image, Text or one of the other types. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Subject The topic of the resource Humans spent thousands of years hunting and gathering before the development of agriculture. Scientists call this change the “Neolithic Revolution.” Many argue this was the start of the Anthropocene. Plows and hoes have been a part of this story for over 4000 years. The “single wheel hoe” on display was handmade and likely built during the twentieth century. It overturns soil, buries weeds, and mixes nutrients. Nebraska’s agriculture grew as it industrialized in the nineteenth century. Farmers looked to companies in Omaha to supply necessary tools. Agriculture became the state’s basic source of wealth, and Omaha grew alongside it. As industrial agriculture grew globally in the 20th century, environmental consequences came with it, such as during the Dust Bowl in the 1930s or the USSR in the 1940s. The single wheel hoe predates this global shift towards agriculture. This hoe reminds us that agriculture takes many forms. Description An account of the resource Reliable food sources have been a major aspect of human life since the dawn of our existence. Humans spent thousands of years hunting and gathering until a new way of life emerged; the settled lifestyle of the agriculturalist. As agriculture became a widespread practice and the populations grew, human societies needed to find new ways to cultivate the land faster and more efficiently. Plows became increasingly popular as one of the main tools used to aid in the expansion of farming. Many farmers used plows to overturn the soil leaving the fertile earth on top, bury weeds, and mix soil. Small, hand held plows developed into to horse and oxen-drawn plows, which, by the nineteenth century progressed to larger industrial plows. Plowing has left an indelible impression on global landscapes and the Nebraskan environment. In the nineteenth century, “sod-busting” became synonymous with the idealized, American frontier ethic. It represented the pioneering spirit, the “progress” of westward expansion, and improvement and mastery of nature. More recent historians have viewed sod-busting with a more critical gaze. Geoff Cunfer has gone so far as to call plowing “ecocide” due to the disastrous effects humans and the implements we use have had on the ecosystem. (Cunfer, 2005) Our object reminds us that agriculture need not be synonymous with environmental “destruction.” The plow did not inevitably “break the plains.” However, many farmers throughout the nineteenth century and still today use a variety of agricultural implements, many of which confute these characterizations. Smaller, handheld plows, for instance, used in “backyard” farms promote healthier agricultural practices. These rudimentary plows are some of the least environmentally invasive yet beneficial instruments used in farming history. The plow is an important artifact in Omaha’s environmental history due to its contribution to the agricultural foundation on which Omaha and the greater Nebraska area was built. It links Omaha’s environmental history to the global history of the Anthropocene through the worldwide shift towards farming which has changed many aspects of the world we live in. The story of the plow begins after the Neolithic revolution. Early plow prototypes first appeared nearly 4,000 years ago in Sumar and Egypt in a dry environment that required moisture in the soil. (Pryor, 1985) These plows had rudimentary structures that would be barely recognizable if compared to the plows of present day. Many advancements took place over the years including the addition of wheels and improved handles to make maneuvering the plow through the fields easier. By the nineteenth century, farmers relied on local blacksmiths to produce the necessary farm tools. (Bonney, 1981) The plows produced during this time were made with metal bolts and bars, which attached the wood handles to the cultivators and wheels. In order to make a better furrow, blacksmiths incorporated cast iron parts into the plow design during the late 19th century to decrease the amount of soil that stuck to the plow. Prior to this development, plowing with an animal such as oxen required three farmers. The first to drive the plow, another to steer, and the last to clean the dirt off the blade. John Deere provided an even greater advancement of the plow through his creation of a steel plow. With Deere’s new steel design, the soil did not stick to the hoe and it pulled with less resistance. This decreased the amount of time, labor, and number of farmers needed to plow. Even with sharper pieces on the plows to cut through the soil easier, “a farmer walking behind a plow could only plow two acres a day.” (Bonney, 1981) By the end of the 19th century, machines pulled by horses were used instead of the human driven implements and farmers could plow up to seven acres a day. In 1903 there were different types of single wheel hoes and attachments available. These advertisements were used to display the prices varying from $3.75 to $11.00. With low prices like these, hoes were not limited to mass-production farmers, they could be used in the backyard. By 1911, the single wheeled hoe with one plows, multiple wheels, two hoes, three cultivator teeth, and rakes attached was selling for as little as $5.35 (Iron Age Farm and Garden Tools of 1903) (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/57" title="Figure 1" target="_self">Figure 1</a>). The single wheeled hoe is a type of plow, but one with a fundamentally different purpose. Rather than producing food to be sold in quantity, it would have been used for gardening. Plains farmers, even those with significant acreage planted in single crops, often cultivated large kitchen gardens. Farmers growing vegetables typically use wheel cultivators to aid in their gardening (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/56" title="Figure 2" target="_self">Figure 2</a>). These smaller plows are used to “loosen the soil, allow moisture to reach the roots of crops and to keep down the weeds." (Moulton, 1997) A single wheeled hoe is useful because farmers are able to plant seeds in more narrow rows compared to the rows created by using a double wheeled plow or a plow pulled by a horse. This allows more crops to be produced in a smaller space thereby increasing productivity. The tire used in this plow resembles that of a bicycle tire contributing to our argument that this was a homemade implement. The wooden arms of the plow appear to be screwed to the cultivator teeth. This single-wheeled hoe is made of a bike tire, two wooden handles, and steel cultivator teeth. The object is useful for both amateur and professional gardeners. Recreational gardeners use it to save time and decrease effort. Professional gardeners use this object because it is more precise. It is also sturdier and can be effective though “many sessions… The hoes are used for weeding, mulching, and shallow cultivation… The cultivator teeth or ‘duckfeet’ are for general cultivation. They have a narrow neck with a wide head for turning over the weeds. The plow is rugged enough to do real plowing or furrowing.” (History of the Wheel Hoe) This object is in The Durham Museum's collection because of the many agricultural supplies produced in Omaha as well as the numerous farms in the surrounding area. One place of this production in Omaha was the Parlin Orendorff and Martin Plow Co. This building of this wholesale company was located at 707 S 11th Street in Omaha and was built in 1906 (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/55" title="Figure 3" target="_self">Figure 3</a>). The railroad and nearby river were used to distribute the agricultural tools from this building. In 1903 the main interests in South Omaha included livestock and packing. At that time, Omaha “[had] some good agricultural lands outlying." (Wills, 1995) While it is believed that this object was handmade, it may have been inspired by products made in this building. In the territorial period, farming was limited in Nebraska. Farms were only about fifty acres, and the “tools and implements” were crude and simple. Markets for agricultural products were few, and capital for investment was in short supply. But after Nebraska was linked by rail to the East by 1869, farming was transformed into the state’s basic producer of wealth - the foundation of its economy.” (Traveler's Railway Guide, 1903) Plows became more common by the 1870s. “Nebraska farmers could buy a variety of new and improved plows… [and] cultivators." (Luebke, 2005) The plows used during this time allowed farmers to produce large quantities of crops that stimulated economic growth and the personal wealth of these farmers. Due to this economic impact, the cities of Nebraska were able to develop homes and businesses that lead to the establishment of cities like Omaha”. This single wheeled hoe was used in both amateur and professional gardener: recreationally or occupationally. The Anthropocene highlights a history of human impact on the environment that is commonly seen in a negative light. Plows can easily be added to the list of man-made implements that produce disastrous environmental changes and threaten the future of the earth. Major events such as the Dust Bowl have been attributed to the overuse of plows and show the disastrous effects the plow can have on the environment. (Plow that Broke the Plains, 1936) Areas of land that are continuously plowed can quickly become useless for farming due to soil erosion and nutrient depletion from the earth that continues long after the land is abandoned. (Ciampalini et al, 2012) As the soil erodes it is carried away by water runoff or wind and becomes pollution in the air and water. Some soil and nutrients end up in nearby ponds or lakes making them dirty and reducing photosynthesis. (Lal, Reicosky, and Hanson, 2007) The pH of the soil is also affected by long-term plowing as well as the hydration of the soil which affects the soil’s ability to sustain crops over time. (Hester and Marrison, 2012; Percy, 1992) In addition to these more tangible effects, other consequences of plowing affect the earth’s atmosphere (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/58" title="Figure 4" target="_self">Figure 4</a>). Carbon dioxide and nitrogen emissions play a major role in the environmental change. As these harmful substances are released from the soil, they go into the atmosphere where they contribute to holes in the ozone and global warming. As shown in the following chart, plowing and other farming practices have had a major impact on environmental change. (Gilbert, 2011) However, single wheeled plows such as this one must be viewed from a different perspective. These smaller plows are used to participate in small scale, oftentimes organic farming that produces far fewer emissions and soil disruption than the large-scale plows. (Wu and Xie, 2011) They oftentimes do not use pesticides which helps decrease the runoff of toxins into the surrounding water and air. Smaller farms also commonly practice crop rotation which fosters healthier soil that does not require nearly as many fertilizers to grow healthy crops. The use of smaller plows such as this single wheeled hoe helps increase carbon storage and decreases nutrient depletion. (Bengtsson, Ahnstrohm, and Weibull, 2005) While the scale of these positive environmental impacts of farming with a single wheeled hoe are varied based on location and climate of the region, it is clear that this local farming avoids many of the harmful impacts of commercial farming. Additionally, urban farming does not require the removal of natural environments such as forests that oftentimes accompanies larger rural farming. This object is connected to the Anthropocene by the themes of agriculture, industrialization, and the growth of industry. The plow is deeply rooted in the history of agriculture, as it has remained a major contributor to the success of farming. The plow has been used in many cultures across the world for thousands of years. Preceded by the use of a digging stick, plows have changed the scale on which humans interact with the land. The plow’s association with agriculture assisted in creating an environmental impact that included the selection of species, indirect influences, ecosystem change, population pressure, climate change, and farming pressure. The environmental impact of the plow accelerated during the nineteenth century as a result of industrialization and the expansion of resource frontiers . via railroads, linking increasingly distant farmlands to growing cities. The farming implements themselves were also transported on these rail networks after the Industrial Revolution. As time went on, according to historian Michael Kopsidis, “demand from cities generated incentives for an intensification of agriculture. In this view, the urban dwellers that specialized in commerce, crafts, proto-industry, trade, and later on industry, were important and concentrated sources of demand for the output of farms.” (Kopsidis and Wolf, 2012) Companies were created for the sole purpose of selling this groundbreaking equipment to farmers. One of the most famous farm equipment companies, the John Deere Corporation, was founded due to their creation of a self-scouring steel plow. In addition to their popularity in the retail market, the plow’s capacity to strip soil of its nutrients has resulted in the need to quickly replace the lost nutrients of the soil. (Gregg, 2015) The plow has played a significant role in the history of agriculture as well as the emergence of the Anthropocene. Through its utility the plow has become one of the most influential instruments used in the farming community today. From the time people first began using plows, their usage had progressively increased. Farmers now rely heavily on plows to efficiently increase their crop production by burying weeds and previously planted crops and increased soil fertility. While historically most plows looked similar to this one, the farming equipment industry has exploded and today most plows are massive machines pulled by tractors used to cultivate hundreds of acres of farmland. The advancement of plows, although more efficient, have unfavorable impacts on the environment. However, plows similar to this single wheeled hoe have had a more positive effect on the environment through their promotion of organic farming methods that reduce the amount of toxins released into their environments. Our single wheeled hoe, thus, reflects a more hopeful view of the Anthropocene. Lately the focus has shifted to finding ways to use the plow responsibly to reduce its negative impacts. Recognizing the capacity of the land and shifting to the use of smaller plows such as this one could help reduce the emissions produced by large-scale farming. Farmers could also plant trees and shrubs surrounding their farms to reduce the wind erosion that is supported by the plowing 18 . These steps must be taken to reduce the impacts of the plow on the earth that can be seen through the Anthropocene. The plow has played a major role in the environmental history of Omaha through its contribution to the agriculture both within Omaha and the surrounding area. The effects of the plow must be considered with looking at the global history of the Anthropocene as it directly relates to the widespread shift towards farming which has greatly influenced our world. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Abigail Klick Michaela Peck Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bengtsson, Janne, Johan Ahnström, and Ann-Christin Weibull. "The effects of organic agriculture on biodiversity and abundance: a meta-analysis." Journal of Applied Ecology 42, no. 2 (2005): 261-69. Bonney, Margaret Atherton ed., “Plowing in the Past: A Look at Early Farm Machinery,” The Goldfinch 2, no. 3 (February 1981): 8-11.Cunfer, Geoff. On The Great Plains. TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2005. Ciampalini, Rossano, Paolo Billi, Giovanni Ferrari, Lorenzo Borsellini, and Stephane Follain. "Soil erosion induced by land use changes as determined by plough marks and field evidence in the Aksum area (Ethiopia)." Agriculture, Ecosystems, & Environment 146 (1) (2012): 197-208. Gilbert, Natasha. "Summit Urged to Clean Up Farming." Nature 479, no. 7373 (2011): 279. Gregg, Sara M. "From Breadbasket to Dust Bowl: Rural Credit, the World War I Plow-Up, and the Transformation of American Agriculture." Great Plains Quarterly 35, no. 2 (Spring 2015): 129-66. Hester, R. E., and Roy M. Harrison. Environmental impacts of modern agriculture. Cambridge: RSC Publishing, 2012. "History of the Wheel Hoe." Hoss Tools. https://hosstools.com/history-of-the-wheel-hoe/. "Iron Age Farm and Garden Tools of 1903." Farm and Garden Tools of 1903, 1903, 108. Kopsidis, Michael, and Nikolaus Wolf. “Agricultural Productivity Across Prussia During the Industrial Revolution: A Thünen Perspective.” The Journal of Economic History 72, no. 3 (2012): 634–70. Lal, R., D. C. Reicosky, and J. D. Hanson. "Evolution of the plow over 10,000 years and the rationale for no-till farming." Soil and Tillage Research 93, no. 1 (March 2007): 1-12. Luebke, Frederick C. Nebraska: an illustrated history. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. Moulton, Candy Vyvey. Roadside history of Nebraska. Missoula, MT: Mountain Press Pub. Co., 1997. Percy, David O. "Ax or Plow?: Significant Colonial Landscape Alteration Rates in the Maryland and Virginia Tidewater." Agricultural History 66, no. 2 (1992): 66-74. Prelinger Archives: The Plow That Broke the Plains (Part I) (1936). 1936. Accessed October 10, 2017. Pryor, Frederic L. "The Invention of the Plow." Comparative Studies in Society and History 27, no. 4 (1985): 727-43. "The Garden Magazine." Grow Your Own Vegetables : 72. Travelers' Railway Guide, Western Section (formerly the Rand-McNally Railway Guide). American Railway Guide Company, 1903. Wills, Charles A. Historical Album of Nebraska. Brookfield, CT: Millbrook Press, 1995. "Parlin Orendorff and Martin Plow Co. Building." Omaha LHPC. Accessed October 03, 2017. Wu, Xingkuan, and Hao Xie. 2011. Green Building Technologies and Materials : Selected, Peer Reviewed Papers From the 2011 International Conference on Green Building Technologies and Materials (GBTM 2011), May 30, 2011, Brussels, Belgium. Durtne-Zurich, Switzerland: Trans Tech Publications, 2011. (accessed October 10, 2017). Title A name given to the resource Single-Wheel Hoe Agriculture Commodity Frontier Dust Bowl Erosion Greenhouse Gasses Industrialization Westward Expansion https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/bb0c7469df2650d90a32598e76921f82.JPG ee096f975bcdaf7221277308634efa72 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figure 1: Lithic Tools Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Durham Museum Collections https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/82bb5e80b5d9a4baff82531b61d72a1d.JPG dd654f3de94759e9b54a8926dd3911cd Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figure 2: Lithic Tools Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Durham Museum Collections Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Taming the Landscape Subject The topic of the resource The Early Anthropocene <img src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4740/38752446300_776a102fdd_o.jpg" 100="" width="100% height=" /> Description An account of the resource When did people begin to take control of the global environment? Humans have shaped their local environments for hundreds of thousands of years. As populations increased, their impacts expanded. Two changes greatly accelerated human influence on a global scale: the movement of hunting societies and the development of agriculture. By the end of the last ice age, humans had migrated across much of Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Whenever humans appeared, a wave of extinctions followed. In the Americas, large animals such as the Mastodon and Giant Beaver went extinct shortly after the arrival of people. Although scientists debate the origin of these mass extinctions (changing climate likely played a role), hunting was a significant factor. The development of agriculture played an even more important role in global environmental change. People began domesticating plants and animals around the world roughly 12,000 years ago. The stone (“lithic”) tools in our exhibit speak to this dramatic change. Agriculture often required clearing forested lands, irrigating, or fertilizing landscapes to make them suitable for crops. These changes were the foundation for settlement and later the rise of complex civilizations all over the world. Agriculture and hunting continue to reshape environments on a global scale today. The bison in this exhibit represents the consequences of modern overhunting and the single-wheel hoe represents our continued reliance on agriculture. These objects remind us that “taming the landscape” revolutionized societies, but they also produced global environmental consequences. They connect us to a deep past and symbolize a transformation that continues to shape the modern world. Physical Object An inanimate, three-dimensional object or substance. Note that digital representations of, or surrogates for, these objects should use Moving Image, Still Image, Text or one of the other types. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Lithic Tools Subject The topic of the resource Stone tools are among the most important evidence of early changes humans made to the earth system. Early humans (8000 BC – 1000 BC) used stone tools, like this mortar and scraper, to process food, hides, and other materials. These tools embody the “Neolithic Revolution,” which was the global shift in human culture from hunting and gathering to farming. Farming required humans to become more sedentary. This led to longer and more sustained interactions with the environment. The environmental (and social) impacts of this were profound. Early humans used tools like these to process and use natural resources in new ways. Their perception of the environment transitioned to one of consumption and extraction. This is due to larger settlements and more intensive interactions with the environment. Instead of living with the environment, they lived on it. Description An account of the resource Agriculture is a fundamental aspect of modern society. 90 million acres are dedicated to corn alone, the most productive mono crop (calories/acre), which accounts for one of the largest uses of land in the United States. (Capehart, 2017) No matter if you are the farmer in the tractor plowing the fields, or the consumer buying produce in the grocery store, agriculture pervades your life. Modern agriculture provides the caloric needs in order for humans to undergo their lives unburdened by these basic primal needs. Thousands of years ago, agriculture did not exist and providing suitable food resource for these basic needs was a fight for survival. Stone tools aided humans in obtaining these crucial resources. Stone tools are a technology that has changed human’s relationship with the environment. (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/79" title="Lithic1">Figure 1</a>) They allow humans to manipulate and process resources that would otherwise be less useful. The Durham Museum’s lithic tools are a window into transition from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle to the more sedentary lifestyle of a farmer. The use of these tools aided in the reshaping of human lives and their environments. Relating these tools to the anthropocene provides some contextual evidence as to how these tools, and more importantly, the role that agriculture played in the transition to a new epoch. Sustained interactions of the earth through agriculture have fundamentally impacted human relationships with the environment, which poses anthropogenic impacts through developing technology, changes in societal and cultural structure and subsequent ties to Omaha. The context of these particular stone tools has been lost in time. This is unfortunately the case with many similar artifacts in museums around the world. Once removed from the ground, archaeological evidence loses its context, and by consequence much of its history. The possibilities are practically endless for the history of these stone tools. The only provenance known regarding these tools is The Durham Museum acquired them from the Joslyn Museum in 1965. Even without this context what we can understand is the purpose and story surrounding these stone tools, which in turn, links us, and links Omaha, to profound change in the earth system. The availability of ground stone and the ease of manipulation of these rocks into tools make ground stone tool some of the most ubiquitous artifacts in human history. Almost every civilization or group of humans used ground stone tools at one point in time. Although sources of ground stone were static, early humans were nomadic and would often disperse these tools across the landscape. For example, the Western Comanche tribe traded extensively with the French in the 1700’s. Native American trade centers were the norm during these times and were critical in the exchange of technology. (Hämäläinen, 1998) These more modern trading systems are indicative of the trade systems of the past. In context of chipped stone tools, rigorous analysis of particular stone a tool is made of, one can predict the site in which it came from. One can then track the dispersion of stone tools across landscapes from the Folsom, Davis, Cody, and Clovis sites. (Irwin and Wromington, 1970) Paleo-Indians created these tools anywhere where ground stone is/was abundant. If these tools were discovered in the Midwest, the approximate source of stone used to construct these tool would have been the Rocky Mountains. Similar tools have been unearthed by archaeologists and their classification offer insights into their use and environmental implications. The tool which resembles a bowl is called a mortar, which would have been used to process and store plants and other food materials by crushing them with another rock called a pestle. (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/80" title="Lithic2">Figure 2</a>) People also used these tools to process and store paints and dyes. The other tool could have been used as a scraper in which the edge would have been used to soften hides or to clean meat off of animal hides while seemingly primitive, these basic tools remain in widespread use today. The modern mortar and pestle, for instance, is often used in the kitchen to process certain food items. The first lesson these tools offer is that the history of technology (which cannot be divorced from narratives of the Anthropocene) is as much the history of modification as it is radical innovation. Stone tools transcend the divide between ancient humans nomadic subsistence strategies and later agricultural sedentism. Paleo-Indians brought stone tools with them when they settled North America. “To colonize the Americas, modern humans had to learn to subsist in the extreme environments of the Siberian Arctic.” (Goebel, Waters, and O'Rourke, 2008) These modern humans were the first to colonize the Americas by crossing the ice bridge of Beringia approximately 15,000 years ago. According to Barton et al, these Paleo-Indians were characterized as mobile hunter-gatherers that used high-quality stones, like chert and obsidian, which were highly curated and had multiple functions. (Barton, 2004) The main purpose of these tools was to aid in the hunting and processing of animals, such as the woolly mammoth, giant ground sloth, or the mastodon, in order to obtain better utility of these resources. Paleo-Indian cultures, for instance, are even named after the locations where these stone tools were first discovered, the most famous being Clovis and Folsom. Although the popular Clovis and Folsom assemblages are not notable in the Nebraskan soil layers, two nearby dig sites have led to evidence of Paleo-Indian activities. According to Holen and May, the La Sena and Shaffert mammoth sites, both located in Frontier County, Nebraska, have fossil evidence of mammoth bones that were processed by humans by breaking them open in order to obtain the bone marrow of the mammoth. (Holen and May, 2002) The descendants of the early Paleo-Indians, Native Americans, continued to use this stone tool technology to obtain and process food for thousands of years to come. In fact, the keystone species of the Great Plains, the bison, is attributed as a key to survival of the Paleo-Indians of the plains as early as 11,000 years ago, and often associated to the mainstay of the more modern Native Americans in Nebraska and the Great Plains. (Hofman and Graham, 1998) “The Lakota and Cheyenne, for instance, are described as relying heavily on bison meat for food and living a nomadic lifestyle in tune with the movements of the Bison. More sedentary farming societies, such as the Mandan, Hidatsa, Pawnee, Oto, and Kansa, incorporated seasonal long-distance bison hunts into their annual subsistence." (Ritterbusch, 2002) Stone tools were crucial in aiding early Native Americans in utilizing large mammals, such as the bison, as a vital resource. They used the stone technology, like the scrapper, to make the resources already available to them, more fruitful. Respectively, lithic tools are an important piece of technology used by the Paleo-Indians and later used by more local Native American tribes in the Great Plains that was key to the survival of these peoples. Hunter-gatherer cultures used lithic technology to hunt more efficiently and process the animals they were using as a food source. However, not all lithic technology was used in the hunting and processing of animals, and in fact, lithic technology is often associated with sedentism and the rise of agriculture. Early humans were nomadic due to the nature of their food source. They would follow their food in the form of herds of mastodons, woolly mammoths, and even bison across the land. The stone tools they used were often cumbersome and difficult to travel with. In order to move more effectively with their food, they would leave the stone tools at their campsite with the assumption they would create new tools wherever they would live next, or come back to them when the herd moves back to the original campsites. This is why there are large deposits of stone tools left in the earth and not an even distribution of them. (Price and Bar-Yosef, 2011) It was not until domestication of crops, the Neolithic Revolution 10,000 BC, which more sedentary lifestyles became common. Agriculture, incentivized communities to settle in order to tend their fields, this allowed people to keep their stone tools and use them for a longer time and create larger stone tools once too cumbersome and hard to transport. These stone tools aided in the cultivation of crops and processing of the subsequent products, such as the mortar. According to Weisdorf, “The rise of Neolithic agriculture is unquestionably one of the most important events in human cultural history." (Weisdrof, 2005) It is often assumed that farming was much easier and the preferred method of obtaining food for the early humans. In reality, it was labor-intensive and backbreaking work for the same amount of calories compared to hunting. Historical ecologist Jack R. Harlan poses the question the best: “Why farm?”8 There are many proposed answers for this question. Economic historians North and Thomas believe it is as simple as a comparative static model that explicitly considers the influence of property rights and population growth upon a man’s behavior. Smith argues it was a decision born of necessity due to the large-scale extinction of certain mega fauna species approximately 10,000 years ago (itself possible the result of excessive hunting). (Smith, 1975) Many more theories try to illustrate the exact causation of the transition to agriculture. (Weisdrof, 2003; Trigger, 1989; North and Thomas, 1977) Whatever the motivations for its development, agriculture has become a defining component of our society today through the feature of innate sedentism and excess of calories that it provides. Farming has been the most direct and uninterrupted interaction between human beings and their environment. The innate goal of farming is to divert and alter natural resources in order to fulfill human goals of creating a sustainable food source. “Farming is a way of obtaining food that involves the cultivation of plants and the controlled herding of animals." (Harlan, 1992) The new systems of obtaining food were much more than cultivation, herding, or the ensuing domestication of various species. The differences in lifestyles, hunter-gatherer vs. farming, necessitated changes to societal structures. The fundamental difference between the hunter-gatherer and the farmer is the way in which calories are obtained. The hunter-gatherer must be nomadic, whereas the farmer remains sedentary. Cultural and societal structures reflect the differences in these lifestyles. Agriculturalists intensively modified the land around them in order to create a milieu that suits their needs. The basic goal of a farmer is to alter the plant community in order to favor the preference of a few plant species that produce food. This produced, in the best of circumstances, fantastic amounts of energy in the form of food, but it likewise necessitated new relationships with their surroundings, transforming the environment. In the face of these developments and resulting population increases of sedentary societies, nomadic lifestyles slowly waned and a rise of sedentary lifestyle ushered in a new culture. Hunting and gathering has been the way to make a living for hundreds of thousands of years. It was not until recently, geologically speaking, agriculture has taken its roots, and an exponential amount of changes have accompanied it. The sheer amount of changes the past thousands of years necessitates the idea there is a fundamental difference in these two points in time, and this idea is prevalent in early Anthropocene hypothesis thinkers. Early anthropogenic traits have been observed with the presence of cultivated plant remains in archaeological collection sites, in which researchers first noted these changes in radiocarbon-dated soil deposits. Interglacial core samples provide evidence of the rising atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane levels as anomalous in comparison to previous trends. During the Industrial Revolution, 150 years ago, a large spike in these levels is observable. Recent collection of interglacial core samples provide insight that the start of the rising spike in greenhouse gases spanning from 7000-2000 years ago. Rise in carbon dioxide and methane levels display trends that had risen one standard deviation point above previously recorded levels in interglacial core samples. This upward trend strongly suggest that the rising greenhouse gas levels were not naturally, but in fact were the result of developed agricultural fields and livestock accumulation which poses anthropogenic traits. (Ruddiman, 2013) Certini and Scalenghe argue the start of the Anthropocene is, “...the period when human activity acts as a major driving factor in modifying the landscape and the environment." (Certini and Scalenghe, 2011) It is undeniable the Industrial Revolution is a possible golden spike for this new geological epoch, however, there was a large change in the earth system preceding this revolution and therefore the golden spike should be placed prior. (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/81" title="Dates">Figure 3</a>) The development and advancement of agriculture promoted the manipulation of the environment and a shift in human diets. That transition is reflected in our stone tools, whether represented by the stone scraper and its connections to the exploitation of mega fauna, or our mortar and pestle, crushing cultivated grains. As human lives became more complex, the impact on the Earth grew even further. The study of environmental history furthers uncovers the impact of agriculture in relation to the anthropocene. “Environmental history examines the evolving relationship between people and nature - it is rooted in place. From this perspective humans exist within nature, not apart from it, and like all animal species, our survival depends upon the health of the habitat in which we live. We both shape and are shaped by the world around us." (Dant, 2016) This has rapidly changed as societies formed and evolved. Similar tools are transformative as their complexity was shaped to suit human needs. The complexity of technology and the shifting of lifestyles exhibit anthropogenic traits as the composition of the earth as the evolving human cultures become more complex and the manipulation of the earth intensifies. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Adam Luton Will Norskov Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Capehart, Thomas. “Background”. United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn/background.aspx (accessed December 12, 2017) Hämäläinen, Pekka. "The western Comanche trade center: Rethinking the plains Indian trade system." Western Historical Quarterly 29, no. 4 (1998): 485-513. Irwin, Henry T., and H. Marie Wormington. "Paleo-Indian tool types in the Great Plains." American Antiquity 35, no. 1 (1970): 24-34. Goebel, Ted, Michael R. Waters, and Dennis H. O'rourke. "The late Pleistocene dispersal of modern humans in the Americas." science 319, no. 5869 (2008): 1497-1502. Barton, C. Michael, ed. The settlement of the American continents: a multidisciplinary approach to human biogeography. University of Arizona Press, 2004. Holen, Steven R., and David W. May. "The La Sena and Shaffert Mammoth Sites." In Medicine Creek: Seventy years of archaeological investigations, pp. 20-36. University of Alabama Press Tuscaloosa, 2002. Hofman, Jack L., and Russell W. Graham. "The Paleo-indian cultures of the Great Plains." Archaeology on the Great Plains(1998): 87-139. Ritterbush, Lauren W. "Drawn by the Bison: Late Prehistoric Native Migration into the Central Plains." Price, T. Douglas, and Ofer Bar-Yosef. "The origins of agriculture: new data, new ideas: an introduction to supplement 4." Current Anthropology 52, no. S4 (2011): S163-S174. Weisdorf, Jacob L. "From foraging to farming: explaining the Neolithic Revolution." Journal of Economic surveys 19, no. 4 (2005): 561-586. Smith, Vernon L. "The primitive hunter culture, Pleistocene extinction, and the rise of agriculture."Journal of Political Economy 83, no. 4 (1975): 727-755. Weisdorf, Jacob L. Stone age economics: The origins of agriculture and the emergence of non-food specialists. No. 03-34. 2003. Trigger, Bruce G. A history of archaeological thought. Cambridge University Press, 1989. North, Douglass C., and Robert Paul Thomas. "The first economic revolution." The Economic History Review 30, no. 2 (1977): 229-241. Harlan, Jack Rodney. Crops and man. No. Ed. 2. American Society of Agronomy, 1992. Ruddiman, William F. “The Anthropocene.” The Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Science 45, (2013): 45-68. Certini, Giacomo, and Riccardo Scalenghe. "Anthropogenic soils are the golden spikes for the Anthropocene." The Holocene 21, no. 8 (2011): 1269-1274. Dant, Sara. Losing Eden: An Environmental History of the American West. John Wiley & Sons, 2016. Agriculture Greenhouse Gasses Hunter-Gatherer Lithic Tools Neolithic Revolution https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/2b2f89653fc0231cc74b330a688be351.jpg c4e5bbc72ad5b3891b4c316de0212baa Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Samantha Arrowheads Description An account of the resource Images of the arrowheads located at the Durham museum. From the shape of these, it can be determined what region of the United States they most likely came from. Photograph by Ali Cunningham. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Durham Museum Permanent Collection Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Taming the Landscape Subject The topic of the resource The Early Anthropocene <img src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4740/38752446300_776a102fdd_o.jpg" 100="" width="100% height=" /> Description An account of the resource When did people begin to take control of the global environment? Humans have shaped their local environments for hundreds of thousands of years. As populations increased, their impacts expanded. Two changes greatly accelerated human influence on a global scale: the movement of hunting societies and the development of agriculture. By the end of the last ice age, humans had migrated across much of Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Whenever humans appeared, a wave of extinctions followed. In the Americas, large animals such as the Mastodon and Giant Beaver went extinct shortly after the arrival of people. Although scientists debate the origin of these mass extinctions (changing climate likely played a role), hunting was a significant factor. The development of agriculture played an even more important role in global environmental change. People began domesticating plants and animals around the world roughly 12,000 years ago. The stone (“lithic”) tools in our exhibit speak to this dramatic change. Agriculture often required clearing forested lands, irrigating, or fertilizing landscapes to make them suitable for crops. These changes were the foundation for settlement and later the rise of complex civilizations all over the world. Agriculture and hunting continue to reshape environments on a global scale today. The bison in this exhibit represents the consequences of modern overhunting and the single-wheel hoe represents our continued reliance on agriculture. These objects remind us that “taming the landscape” revolutionized societies, but they also produced global environmental consequences. They connect us to a deep past and symbolize a transformation that continues to shape the modern world. Physical Object An inanimate, three-dimensional object or substance. Note that digital representations of, or surrogates for, these objects should use Moving Image, Still Image, Text or one of the other types. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Arrowheads Subject The topic of the resource Arrowheads are one of the most recognized tools from the Native American tribes. Along with fire, tribes in Nebraska like the Omaha likely used them for hunting. Native Americans used fire and projectile weapons to herd and hunt animals. This resulted in significant environmental changes in the Omaha area. Fire use changed plant communities. Some became more fire-tolerant while large, long-lived trees declined. This turned large forests into grasslands. Scientists and historians argue that overhunting led to the endangerment or extinction of many species. This is part of a long, and contested, theory of overkill whose implications stretch back over 20,000 years. These changes were not only seen in Omaha. Arrowhead use and burning practices took place all over the world. If arrowheads are the start of the Anthropocene, this new age started tens of thousands of years ago. Description An account of the resource The Anthropocene is a new age defined by a changing environment, due to the presence of human action. Anthropocene discourse is largely Eurocentric, privileging changes wrought by European Empires, the expansion of global capital, or industrial transformations of the environment (Carrington, 2016). Global modifications of the environment have a deeper lineage, however. One such lineage is the use of Arrowheads and other tools by native American tribes. Arrowheads are an important artifact for many Native American tribes, including the Omaha tribe. Arrowheads are important in Omaha’s environmental history because they represent pre-Columbian management of the Plains landscape. These arrowheads link Omaha’s environmental history to the global history of the Anthropocene because they represent the changes produced by human hunting. The peoples of the Plains used projectiles and fire mold the environment to their needs. Although distinctly American, they point to the larger implications of these tools on global environments. The territory of Nebraska was home to diverse peoples long before the arrival of Europeans. The city of Omaha takes its name from the Omaha tribe who originally migrated west from modern Ohio (Wakeley, 1917). Originally, they were mainly hunters and farmers, then they took part in fur trading, and eventually came under the control of their powerful allies, the Pawnee tribe (Fletcher, 2013). During the tribe’s history they are noted to have faced hardships from the enemies of the Pawnee tribe, who were the Sioux tribe. They also faced hardships from smallpox and other disease. From war and disease, they had a population of under 300 in the early 1800s, from almost 3,000 a few decades earlier (Legends of America - The Omaha Indians). The arrowheads were used for hunting by most indigenous people who lived on the Great Plains of North America, like the Omaha. Arrowheads are made in a variety of shapes, most often based on the region in which they were made. Based on the size and color of the arrowheads presented at The Durham Museum (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/admin/files/show/229">Figure I</a>), our arrowheads are most likely Samantha Arrows, which are primarily found in the Northern Plains of the United States (Samantha Arrowhead). Arrowheads are historically important because many tribes were migratory, which required that they find ways to carry their belongings and possessions with them. They often camped near rivers where they hunted for bison and found edible plants in the spring (Fagan, 1994). These indigenous people used a wide variety of materials to produce arrowheads. Obsidian, for example, was a volcanic glass found in the Rocky Mountains. Chert, a crystalline quartz, had razor-sharp edges which was also used to make arrowheads. Antler was also used to make arrowheads when suitable rock material wasn’t available. Some arrowheads were also reusable. Analysis from the Gila River in Arizona found that some arrow points were used to hunt large animals and they could be retrieved and used again while other unnotched points were only used one time and were usually used to kill people (Loendorf, 2015). This gives more context behind how the arrowheads were used. Most often though, these Indigenous people of the plains found use for the arrowheads in hunting, specifically for bison. Hunting was integral to Native American culture and it tied Plains peoples to the land in diverse material and spiritual ways. Anthropologist David Lewis argues that Plain peoples built relationships with the land that transcended settlement; relationships that proved central to their identities (Lewis, 1995). Perhaps due to this close connection to the land, they used the environment as tools for many purposes. They planted many types of crops to feed themselves and their animals, they used the skin of hunted animals for clothing and shelter, hunted large game like bison, and fished river systems. They lived with, but also manipulated the land to provide food and shelter for themselves. Plains natives employed fire as one of these environmental tools. Charcoal layers provide archeological evidence that Native American populations all over the Midwest and in Omaha used fire regularly (Roos, 2018). The multiple charcoal layers’ present suggest frequent, large-scale burning around the time period when the Omaha tribe were present in the area. Archeologists often speculate as to the purpose of such wide-ranging fire use. Some argue that natives burned landscapes in spiritual traditions, to improve the range of sight over the landscape, or to open migration pathways (Lewis, 1993). Most agree they were used for hunting though (Delcourt and Delcourt, 1997). Tribes used controlled burning to drive the megafauna (including bison) into hunting areas. They controlled the migration of animals; thus, increasing the impact and effectiveness of hunting. This practice was especially important before the re-arrival of horses when hunting was done on foot (Hämäläinen, 2003). Fire opened diverse resources to human use such as animal meat, bones, buckskin, hair, rawhide, stomach, and horns; all of which had multiple uses including clothing, shelter, tools such as arrowheads, and many more (Natives - Native Americans). Plains burning drastically changed the composition of the land. Fire promotes plant species that are fire-tolerant, which tend to be fast-spreading, short-lived plants such as the prairie grasses that dominated much of the Midwest. Fire also suppressed large tree species that now are more prevalent (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/admin/files/show/230">Figure II</a>). In addition to promoting fire tolerant species, anthropogenic fire regimes cleared brush, promoted seed germination, and increased resources yields (Klimaszewski-Patterson and Mensin, 2016). All of these had a large impact on the environment of the prairies in and around Nebraska for centuries. In short, this increase in fire improved soil fertility, which favored native species. This increased biodiversification of plants, including grasses, forbs, and trees. Biodiverse vegetation promoted faunal biodiversity as well. Beyond hunting, fire use was beneficial for soil fertility, which improved Native agriculture. Arrowheads used for hunting had global impacts such as the overkilling of animals like American bison. This extinction not only included bison, but also the extinction of species such as birds, lemmings, and salamanders. It is unknown how many mammalian species disappeared, but it is estimated that at least thirty-five mammalian genera had vanished. Most mammals that weighed more than one hundred pounds became extinct because of how they would have been seen as attractive to hunters. Tusked mammoths and mastodons, ground sloths, rhinoceros-sized pampatheres, and giant armadillos also vanished. Other herbivores also vanished (Krech, 2018). The overkill hypothesis states that extinction is a result because of human hunting which in turn causes death rates to exceed birth rates. This implies that humans have a direct impact on overhunting and the extinction of animals. Koch and Barnosky (2006) similarly found that about fifty thousand years ago, ecosystems all over the world were populated with large animals, but they are now extinct. They stated that worldwide, 90 genera of mammals that weighed over 44 kg had disappeared. Specifically, in North America, there used to proboscideans, giant sloths, camels, saber-tooth cats, beavers, etc. By about 10,000 years ago, most of these animals had vanished. The extinction of these large animals provides strong support that humans contributed to the extinction of these animals and this shows the relation of mass extinctions to the Anthropocene. (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/admin/files/show/id/231">Figure III</a>) In addition, this extinction happened on a global scale. The Native American hunting patterns did influence the species composition, though not as much as other mass extinctions. Plains peoples have shaped the environment for centuries, but it is important to consider the dynamic world that the hunters were operating in during that time. For example, Isenberg (2000) looks at how the destruction of bison as the result of a complex process that involves the natural environment of Great Plains, the invasion of the Euro Americans, as well as the economy of the Plains Indians. There were natural causes of death such as fires, drowning, and competition from other grazers that all affected the population of bison on the plains. Natural mortality also could have aided in the catastrophic decline in the population of bison. The combination of the hunting practices in the Great Plains as well as the volatility of the natural environment both aided in the destruction of these herds of animals which is important to keep in mind. North American Native Americans were not the only peoples who used fire or projectiles to change and manipulate the landscape around them. In fact, use of fire as a tool for hunting likely predates the evolution of the species (Guthrie, 1970). Human communities on every inhabited continent wielded fire and many developed projectile hunting tools (James, et. al. 1989). All over the world there was environmental changes cause by fire because the fire was being controlled by humans. Indicating global environmental, anthropogenic changes. These changes, while not representing a traditional “golden spike” should be considered when talking about the anthropocene for several reasons. Some include that it was not localized to one area, there were large scale environmental effects, and the changes were caused by human influence. The ecological changes represented in the transition to increased fire regimes is something that has continued to be studied today. The “Anthropocene” designation claims that the earth has entered the “Age of Humans”. It is important, therefore, to consider the full measure of humanity’s long history of environmental impact. These arrowheads represent the impact of fire and hunting on the global environment. Current conservation efforts in the United States and Canada have been increasingly focused on restoring the landscape to its “pristine condition, which is often defined by the absence of people (Wooster, 1996). This has the unfortunate consequence of erasing the long history of people from the landscape. If the arrowheads teach us anything, it’s that people have played an integral part in creating these “pristine” areas. The modernist bias of the Anthropocene debate threatens that as well. Where the focus is on increasing fire regimes and megafaunal grazers such as bison. While increasing megafauna like bison would be considered more like when there were no humans, increasing fire use would actually be characteristic of when Native Americans were present, not when there were no humans in North America (Matlack, 2013). Despite these minor inconsistencies, it is evident that the impact of the Native American tools used for hunting, arrowheads and fire, have caused a global impact, which is why they should be considered when discussing the Anthropocene. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ali Cunningham Kimberly Jurado Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bohr, Roland. 2016. “Bows & Arrows.” Canada’s History 96 (5): 22–29 Carrington, Damian. 2016. “The Anthropocene epoch: scientists declare dawn of human-influenced age” The Guardian. Accessed December 8, 2018 <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/29/declare-anthropocene-epoch-experts-urge-geological-congress-human-impact-earth">https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/29/declare-anthropocene-epoch-experts-urge-geological-congress-human-impact-earth</a> Delcourt, Hazel R., and Paul A. Delcourt. "Pre-Columbian Native American Use of Fire on Southern Appalachian Landscapes." Conservation Biology 11, no. 4 (1997): 1010-014.<a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2387336"> http://www.jstor.org/stable/2387336</a>. “Extinctions: Georges Cuvier.” Digital image. Understanding Evolution. Accessed November 6, 2018.<a href="https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/history_08"> https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/history_08</a> Fagan, Brian. "Bison Hunters of the Northern Plains." Archaeology 47, no. 3 (1994): 37-41. Accessed October 7, 2018<a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/41766565"> http://www.jstor.org/stable/41766565</a>.  Fletcher, C. Alice. Life among the Indians: First Fieldwork among the Sioux and Omahas ed. Scherer, C. Joanna, DeMallie, J. Raymond (University of Nebraska Press, 2013). Guthrie, R. D. "Bison Evolution and Zoogeography in North America During the Pleistocene." The Quarterly Review of Biology45, no. 1 (1970): 1-15. <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2817929">http://www.jstor.org/stable/2817929</a>  Isenberg, Andrew C., The Destruction of Bison. New Jersey: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Jin, Y.G, Wang, Y, Wang, W, Shang, Q.H, Cao, C.Q, Erwin, D.H. “Pattern of Marine Mass Extinction Near the Permian-Triassic Boundary in South China” Science 21 (2000). Accessed November 6, 2018.<a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.289.5478.432"> https://doi.org/10.1126/science.289.5478.432</a> Klimaszewski-Patterson, Anna, Mensing, A. Scott. “Multi-disciplinary approach to identifying Native American impacts on Late Holocene forest dynamics in the southern sierra Nevada range California, USA.” Anthropocene 15 (2016): 37-48. Accessed October 8, 2018.<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213305416300327"> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213305416300327</a>  Koch, P.L., Barnowsky, A.D. “Late Quaternary Extinctions: State of the Debate” The Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 37 (2006): 215-250. Accessed December 8, 2018. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.34.011802.132415">https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.34.011802.132415</a>                                                            Krech, Shepard. “Chapter One” The Ecological Indian: Myth and History (W.W. Norton and Company, 1999).<a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/k/krech-indian.html"> https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/k/krech-indian.html</a> Laliberte, Andrea S., and William J. Ripple. “Wildlife Encounters by Lewis and Clark: A Spatial Analysis of Interactions between Native Americans and Wildlife.” BioScience53, no. 10 (October 2003): 994–1003. Lewis, David Rich. "Native Americans and the Environment: A Survey of Twentieth-Century Issues." American Indian Quarterly 19, no. 3 (1995): 423-50. doi:10.2307/1185599.  Lewis, David Rich. "Still Native: The Significance of Native Americans in the History of the Twentieth-Century American West." The Western Historical Quarterly 24, no. 2 (1993): 203-27. doi:10.2307/970936.  Loendorf, Chris, Lynn Simon, Daniel Dybowski, M. Kyle Woodson, R. Scott Plumlee, Shari Tiedens, and Michael Withrow. 2015. “Warfare and Big Game Hunting: Flaked-Stone Projectile Points along the Middle Gila River in Arizona.” Antiquity 89 (346): 940–53. doi:10.15184/aqy.2015.28. “Natives - Native Americans” All about Bison. Accessed November 4, 2018.<a href="https://allaboutbison.com/natives/"> https://allaboutbison.com/natives/</a>  Nowacki, Gregory J, Abrams, Marc. D. “The Demise of Fire and “Mesophcation” of Forests in the Eastern United States” Image. BioScience 58 no. 2 (February 2008).  Matlack, R. Glenn. “Reassessment of the Use of Fires as a Management Tool in Deciduous Forests of Eastern North America” Conservation Biology 27 no. 5 (September 2013). Accessed October 7, 2018.<a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cobi.12121"> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cobi.12121</a>  Pekka, Hämäläinen; The Rise and Fall of Plains Indian Horse Cultures, Journal of American History, Volume 90, Issue 3, 1 December 2003, Pages 833–862,<a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/3660878"> https://doi.org/10.2307/3660878</a>  Roos, I. Christopher, Zedeno, N. Maria, Hollenback, L. Kacy, Erlick, M.H. Mary. “Indigenous impacts on North American Great Plains fire regimes of the past millennium.” National Academy of Sciences. August, 2018. Accessed October 7, 2018.<a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/115/32/8143/tab-article-info"> http://www.pnas.org/content/115/32/8143/tab-article-info</a> “Samantha Projectile Point, Samantha Arrowhead” Projectile Points Database. Accessed October 7, 2018.<a href="http://www.projectilepoints.net/Points/Samantha_Dart.html"> http://www.projectilepoints.net/Points/Samantha_Dart.html</a>  Steven R. James, R. W. Dennell, Allan S. Gilbert, Henry T. Lewis, J. A. J. Gowlett, Thomas F. Lynch, W. C. McGrew, Charles R. Peters, Geoffrey G. Pope, Ann B. Stahl, and Steven R. James, "Hominid Use of Fire in the Lower and Middle Pleistocene: A Review of the Evidence [and Comments and Replies]," Current Anthropology 30, no. 1 (Feb., 1989): 1-26.<a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/203705"> https://doi.org/10.1086/203705</a> “The Omaha Indians - True Nebraskans” Legends of America: Exploring history, destinations, people, & legends of this great country since 2003. Accessed December 8, 2018. <a href="https://www.legendsofamerica.com/na-omaha/">https://www.legendsofamerica.com/na-omaha/</a> Wakeley, C. Arthur. Omaha: The Gate City and Douglas County Nebraska (The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1917) Wooster, M. Martin. 1996. “The Digest: Science and environment.” American Enterprise. 7, no. 4: 90. Accessed October 8, 2018.<a href="http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=4e0b8517-15ba-420a-bde4-4c1d4d1767fd%40sessionmgr4007&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=9607104524&db=bth"> </a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The Durham Museum Permanent Collection Fire Hunting Lithic Tools Overkill Projectiles https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/296a0278f26102801617d860eb334553.jpg ccf7a5edefa676e1834d0a0787a0eb37 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figure 2: American Smelting And Refining Company Taken from Aksarben Bridge Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bostwick, Louis Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bostwick-Frohardt, Durham Museum, Omaha, NE. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1930 https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/d732722c3eaeca84e785e9576c1503c8.jpg bba2c362bdfc21578cdc3805b10c6c88 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figure 3: Omaha Lead Pollution Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Omaha Lead Registry http://www.omahalead.org/ Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Living in a World of Our Own Making Subject The topic of the resource <a href="http://www.igbp.net/images/18.950c2fa1495db7081ebd1/1421396650502/GreatAcceleration2015igbpsrclowres.jpg" title="IGBP - The Great Acceleration Dashboard" target="_blank">The Great Acceleration</a> <img src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4721/40562555551_972c132773_o.jpg" 100="" width="100% height=" /> Description An account of the resource The Anthropocene means “The Age of Humans,” but what does it mean to live in a world of our own making? Humanity has flourished in past two centuries. Two thirds of every person ever born lived between 1945 and today. Scientists call this era of expanding population, economic development, and environmental impact the “Great Acceleration.” People are now more numerous and powerful than ever before. Mining moves more rocks and soils than all of the worlds rivers combined. Artificial fertilizers have doubled the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus in our soils. Plastics can now be found on mountain tops and the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Paradoxically, many of the most profound changes to global environments pass virtually unnoticed. Nuclear fallout, for instance, is invisible to the naked eye, but radioactive evidence of cold war weapons tests remains in soils around the world. Until recently, lead was one of the most common materials in industrial use. It was used to seal our foods, paint our homes, and power our cars. Lead is toxic, especially for children. Although invisible, lead is now in our soils, in our cities, and even in our blood. By contrast, concrete is virtually everywhere, yet we rarely think about it. We drive on it, work in it, and the foundations of this very museum are built using it. More than half of the concrete ever produced was manufactured between 1995-2015. Concrete requires enormous energy to mine, transport, and produce. These consequences are as invisible to us as the material is abundant. As you finish your journey through the exhibit, consider how many other “invisible” materials influence our lives and connect us to the global environment. Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource ASARCO Lead Refinery Subject The topic of the resource Louis Bostwick took this photograph in the 1930s, presenting a stark contrast to Omaha’s beautiful riverfront we see today. Lewis and Clark Landing was once home to a lead refinery controlled by the American Smelting and Refining Company (ASARCO), which operated for over 100 years. People later learned about lead’s threat to human health and the environment. In 1997, escalated public pressure closed ASARCO, but it had already left a lasting mark on the local community. In 2004, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declared the area a Superfund site. A Superfund uses federal funds to aid the cleanup of hazardous areas. Since then, the EPA and local government have worked to restore the contaminated soil. Despite such efforts, exposure to lead continues to threaten local and global health. Omaha’s rejuvenated riverfront is an example of how communities can combat the lasting impacts of harmful practices and heal a toxic past. Description An account of the resource In a world where half of the population is urbanized, connecting to nature is essential for good mental health. (Bratman et al, 2015) The Midwest is a great place for people to find balance in their fast paced lifestyles by staying connected to the environment while living in a city. When the weather is suitable, downtown Omaha, Nebraska has several outdoor activities to enjoy. Many tourists and locals choose to spend time at the riverfront of the vibrant and historic Old Market. Every summer, thousands of baseball fans gather for the College World Series. On any given day it is quite common to see people enjoying a relaxing stroll through the Lewis and Clark Landing or walking across the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge. It is shocking to think about what the area looked like just 30 years ago (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/53" title="Figure 1" target="_self">Figure 1</a>). The park and greenspace on the riverfront disguises an unexpected and toxic history. Bostwick, Louis. American Smelting And Refining Company Taken from Aksarben Bridge”. 1930’s. Bostwick-Frohardt, The Durham Museum, Omaha, NE. Omaha is one of the many communities that experienced incredible expansion during the late 1800s. The establishment of this plant and the history that came to follow its opening, particularly at this time and location, was not coincidental. At this time, the “Second Industrial Revolution” was flourishing in Europe and the United States. Between 1870 and 1890, Omaha’s population jumped from 16,000 to 140,000. (Omaha, Nebraska Pop History) Omaha’s growth was driven by lead manufacturing, and other growing companies like the Union Pacific Railroad. (Larsen, 2007) This industrial agglomeration can be attributed to the waterfront advantage that the Missouri River provided these companies, as well as the development of the railroad enabling companies to connect resources across the country. This photograph captures the former location of one of the American Smelting and Refinery Company’s (ASARCO) lead refineries, which was taken by Omaha World-Herald photographer Louis Bostwick in the 1930s (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/50" title="Figure 2" target="_self">Figure 2</a>). (O'Connor, 2015) The plant was originally opened on the banks of the Missouri River in 1870 under the ownership of the Omaha Smelting Company. In 1882, the Omaha Smelting Company merged with the Grant Smelting Company to form the Omaha and Grant Smelting and Mining Company. This new ownership lasted for over 10 years, until another merger, including 16 companies in total, led to the formation of ASARCO. (Curry, 1949) The Omaha plant was part of a larger corporation, ASARCO, which was formed in 1899. (ASARCO) This corporation still operates today, but it does so as a subsidiary of Grupo Mexico. (ASARCO/Grupo Mexico) It is heavily involved in the mining of copper, lead, zinc, silver and gold. It is considered to be a global mining giant. Not only is it far reaching in its operations, which extends across several countries worldwide, but also regarding its total contributions to the respective metal markets. (ASARCO/Grupo Mexico) By 1925, ASARCO was the largest lead refinery in the world. It produced lead, but also radiation shields, bismuth and antimony oxide. (Rasmussen, 1992) The Omaha-World Herald reported that during 1924, the plant produced 165,000 tons of lead, 198,000 ounces of gold, 10,945 tons of antimonial lead and 148,711 pounds of refined bismuth. (OWH, 1925) While this plant was operational for a considerable amount of time in Omaha’s history, its existence was eventually met with strong resistance as the political battle for community and environmental health secretly raged in the heartland. In this discussion, we emphasize the effects of lead production and its significance in relation to the Anthropocene narrative. Lead mining and smelting is not a newly realized process. Human manipulation of lead has been traced back as far as 6000 years ago and its threat to human health was recognized dating back to 2000 BC. It’s negative impacts can be found scattered throughout history. For example, during the time of the Roman Empire, it could be found in many common household items of the wealthy such as dishes, utensils and food storage containers. In 17th century Germany, it was blamed for causing colic when litharge, a different form of lead, was used as a sweetener in wine. (Needleman, 1999) In more recent history, lead’s most common uses were in leaded gasoline, batteries, paints and plumbing pipes. Despite a plethora of historical knowledge available regarding the threat lead poses to human health, ASARCO continued its operations along the riverfront throughout a greater part of the 20th century. Starting in the early 1970s, human and environmental health risks came to light and the battle between Omaha and ASARCO began. Important environmental concerns at that time included air and potential water pollution. There was a great deal of attention drawn to the airborne threat due to the extensive exposure employees received, therefore significantly affecting their health. In one particular legal battle the company faced, three officials representing the Secretary of Labor visited the plant to investigate claims of hazardous levels of airborne lead. (LOC, 1974) The delegation found that airborne concentrations of lead in five of the seven areas tested were above the minimum threshold to be considered hazardous which was 0.2 mg/cm3. (LOC, 1974) As a result of this investigation, ASARCO received a citation with a sixty day reparation period and had to pay a fine of $600. (LOC, 1974) Another instance of this airborne threat was discovered in the elevated blood levels of workers in the plant. In 1985, the Omaha World-Herald reported that there were workers found to have blood lead levels above 50 μg/100 g blood.(OMH, 1985) These workers were sent home until the levels in their blood dropped to 40 μg/100 g blood. Additionally, these blood lead levels have significant consequences on the central nervous system. Employees reported to experience body tremors and tiredness. (LOC, 1974) Water pollution was another concern requiring investigation, specifically from the time the plant was operational to the demand for remediation. In the past, intense ambiguity revolved around the levels of toxicity and the overall impacts of the discharge into the river when the plant was in operation. In 1994, a toxicologist from the Nebraska Department of Health suggested that there had not been enough studies completed in order to completely understand how discharge from the plant affected both human and aquatic life. (Thomas, 1994) Although researchers lacked any concrete evidence that ASARCO polluted the water, there was a lawsuit in the works at the time to fine ASARCO $25,000 per day should they continue discharging waste into the Missouri River without installing a specialized filter. (Thomas, 1974) In 2001, the US Geological Survey published a technical report regarding toxic metals in the Missouri River adjacent to the plant site. (Chapman, 2001) Though there were elevated levels of lead in sediment at one of the areas studied, the sediments, pore water and river water did not reach exceed maximum acceptable levels set by the EPA. Considering the negative environmental and health consequences discussed above, it is easy to demonize the ASARCO, but its employees continued to stand with this destructive company. The ASARCO plant was recognized as a positive economic force in the Omaha area. In 1995, officials estimated that the plant annually contributed $15 million to the Omaha metro economy. (Powell, 1995) The ASARCO’s economic contributions played a significant role in the battle against site closure. It was estimated that closure would result in a loss of $22 million in taxes and wages. (Anderson, 1996) There were many people who wanted to keep the plant to prevent job loss and preserve economic profits that ASARCO contributed to Omaha. Despite the knowledge of the significant health risks imposed on employees, the reliable income ASARCO provided was enough for the union to fight to keep the company alive. (Anderson, 1996) Before the final closing of the plant, there was considerable deliberation regarding which actions should take place in order to ensure effective cleanup of the contaminant. In early 1996, the Omaha World-Herald reported that there were ten possible plans in deliberation. At that time, ASARCO wished to use a six foot cap on the soil to prevent further contamination, and would cost the company $15 million. (Anderson, Manager, 1996) On September 4, 1997, the city of Omaha approved ASARCO’s proposal to tear down the plant and cap the soil. After decades of tension, the ASARCO lead refinery was finally closed in 1997. (OPL) Throughout its long history in the Omaha area, the ASARCO was subjected to a great deal of public debate, legal battles, fines and reparations with specific scrutiny on its lead smelting activities. To this day, the Omaha metro area experiences environmental and human health effects from the ASARCO emissions of the past. The establishment of this specific region of Omaha as a Superfund site was finalized on December 15, 2004. (EPA Omaha Lead Site) The particular focus of the Superfund program is remediation of lead proliferation, which was heavily attributed to this particular ASARCO plant. A map of this area today shows that there are various sites that have experienced said remediation, but some areas have not been tested at all, and some are known to be contaminated and yet to be cleaned up (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/51">Figure 3</a>). (Omaha Lead Registry) Omaha’s cleanup efforts impact the economy from the decreasing property values in the area. (Decker, 2005) The contaminated areas experiencing a decline in the housing market is due to “Right-to-Know” laws, which require the homeowner to know the environmental hazards they are exposing themselves to. (Decker, 2005) Although ASARCO boasts a large presence on the mining industry stage, they are not alone in the collective effort to gain access to natural resources through various extraction methods. There are many other resources that are have been long mined and remain so to this day. These include: copper, silver, iron, etc. When viewing the mining industry from a broader perspective, it is important to understand the impacts that these activities have on the environment to better understand how the threat to public health is driven. Today, lead exposure continues to be a significant environmental threat to human health. Lead smelting itself has been linked to increases in ADHD in children living close to smelting operations. (Kim, 2013) Across the board, children have been seen as the primary concern in regards to elevated lead levels and the health impacts it may cause. Some reasons for this heightened threat include: children take in a higher ratio of lead versus their body weight because they are smaller, they are likely to ingest lead more than adults do simply based on the amount of times they put their hands in their mouth, and also the fact that they are still going through physical development and it makes them more susceptible to the effects of lead. (Shilu and Prapamontol, 2000) A more comprehensive description of effects of lead poisoning include harm to cognitive, behavioral and nervous system health. (Sullivan, 2015) While it is important to address the human related health issues related to mining practices, it is also important to understand the human driven force behind these operations in the first place. The Industrial Revolution and the years following it are recognized as a significant contributor to the human impacts on the environment. The increased mechanization allowed for more efficient and large scale methods to extract the planet’s natural resources. The Industrial Revolution increased human’s desire to gain capital through the continued and expanded extraction operations, particularly in the mining industry. The consequences of these extractive activities are often only recognized in response to crisis, but only when such activities and their impacts cannot be successfully swept under the rug. Examples may include but are not limited to large scale mining disasters, pipeline leaks, and public water contaminations. In such instances the companies involved often try to minimize the fallout from disasters in order to continue operations regardless of the continued impact on both environmental and community health. We have drawn attention to the Omaha area and its increased lead levels due to the presence of ASARCO and its operations. However, the critical piece of this argument is that the negative consequences caused by this specific company were not isolated. They combine with other instances worldwide to compose a much larger global issue that has gone unnoticed for hundreds of years. It is imperative to highlight the long term health effects caused by both Industrial Revolutions on a global scale. The World Health Organization published research specifically unveiling substantial long-term effects of lead on global health. Before the Industrial Revolution, estimated concentrations of blood lead levels in people were 0.016 μg/dl. (Shilu and Prapamontol, 2000) The world post-Industrial Revolution has increased the blood lead levels in even the most remote parts of the world to 0.78 μg/dl. This article also noted that the “body lead burden of today’s populations is 500-1000 times greater than that of their pre-industrial counterparts.” (Shilu and Prapamontol, 2000) As exhibited throughout this narrative, it was a long, drawn out process to decide the fate of the ASARCO site, which included many discussions and debates between the company, the city, and the public. Ultimately, the City of Omaha and ASARCO decided that the space would be transformed into a public park, which we know today as Lewis and Clark Landing. The proposed park plan was finally agreed upon by all parties on April 13, 1992 (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/52" title="Figure 4" target="_self">Figure 4</a>). (Rasmussen, 1992) Examination of the history of the ASARCO site on the Omaha Riverfront has allowed us to shed light on human’s relationship with the environment. However, there is always room to improve our relationship with the environment and clearly there is more work yet to be done. Specifically, in Omaha, there are many residential sites within the Superfund site waiting to be decontaminated. (Kemp, 2016) The decisions we make when we interact with the environment can have dramatic and tangible long-term consequences on the health of both the environment and the public. While public health is an important facet of this particular case, it should not be the only driver of environmental awareness and change. We have learned that our short term motivations to keep something we profit from can be lethal in the long run. This calls for a cultural change that needs to start with the understanding that the public and the environment are deeply intertwined, especially when it comes to profit driven decisions. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Annie Klein Jenna Mucci Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Anderson, Julie. “Manager: Asarco wants to speed up cleanup plan.” Omaha World-Herald, February 1996. “American Smelting And Refining Company Taken from Aksarben Bridge.” Bostwick-Frohardt Collection, Durham Museum Archives. http://durhammuseum.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p15426coll1/id/3845/rec/11 “ASARCO Incorporated History.” Funding Universe. http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/asarco-incorporated-history/. Bratman, Gregory N., Hamilton, Paul J., Hahn, Kevin S., Daily, Gretchen C., and James J. Gross. “Nature experience reduces rumination and subgenual prefrontal cortex activation.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 112.28 (2015). 8567-8572. Chapman, Duane C., et al. “Toxicity and Bioavailability of Metals in the Missouri River Adjacent to a Lead Refinery.” USGS, January 2001. http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA408607 City of Omaha, Nebraska “Omaha Lead registry”. https://www.dogis.org/Html5Viewer/?viewer=omahaleadregistry/ Curry, Emmett, “Biggest Lead Refinery.” Omaha World-Herald, April, 3, 1949. Decker, et. al. “Residential Property Values and Community Right-to-Know Laws: Has the toxics Release Inventory had an impact?” February 1, 2005. Growth and Change, vol.36 iss.1, winter 2005, pp.113-133. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2257.2005.00269.x Dukes Lee, Jennifer. “Asarco’s Cleanup Plan Wins Approval From State.” Omaha World-Herald, September 1997. Kim, Stephani et. al.“Lead, mercury, and cadmium exposure and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children.” Environmental Research no. 126 (2013):105-110, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2013.08.008 Lawrence H. Larsen, “Upstream Metropolis: An Urban Biography of Omaha and Council Bluffs”. (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 185. Markel, Howard. “Remember Flint.” Milbank Quarterly, 19 no. 2 (2016): 229-236, doi:10.1111/1468- 0009.12188. O’Connor, Michael. “Who was Louis Bostwick?” Omaha World-Herald, April 2015. http://dataomaha.com/bigstory/go/revisiting-early-omaha Omaha Public Library. “American Smelting and Refining Co., Omaha, Ne.” Nebraska Memories. http://www.memories.ne.gov/rights/opl.html Powell, Joy. “ASARCO Manager Defends Plant as Economic Mainstay.” Omaha World-Herald, June 30, 1995. Rabinowitz, Michael B. "Lead isotopes in soils near five historic American lead smelters and refineries." Science of The Total Environment346, no. 1-3 (2005): 138-48. doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2004.11.021. Rasmussen, Jim. “Refinery Wary of Gateway Concept.” Omaha World-Herald, March 1992. Rasmussen, Jim. ”Riverfront Plans Retain Refinery: Concerns on Cost Compel Redesign.” Omaha World-Herald, April 1992. “Safety Order Includes Omaha Lead Refinery.” Omaha World-Herald. July, 1985. Shilu, Tong, von Schirnding,Yasmin E., and Tippawan Prapamontol. “Environmental Lead Exposure: A public health problem of global dimensions.” Bulletin of the World Health Organization 78.9. (Jan. 2000). 1068-1077. Sullivan, Marianne. “Reducing Lead in Air and Preventing Childhood Exposure Near Lead Smelters: Learning from the U.S. Experience.” New Solutions, 25 no.1 (2015): 78-101, doi:10.1177/1048291115569027 Thomas, Fred. “Effect of Omaha Firm’s Emissions Unclear”. Omaha World-Herald. July 1994. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 7. Interim Record of Decision, Omaha Lead Site. https://archive.epa.gov/region07/cleanup/superfund/pdf/web/pdf/ols_rod.pdf “ASARCO/Groupo Mexico Chronology”. Their Mines, Our Stories. http://www.theirminesourstories.org/?p=1225 “World’s Largest Lead Refinery is in Omaha.” Omaha World-Herald. April, 1925 Kemp, Steve. “Going Home to manage the final steps of Omaha’s historic lead cleanup.” EPA. May 25, 2016. https://blog.epa.gov/blog/2016/05/going-home-to-manage-the-final-steps-of-omahas-historic-lead-cleanup/. 501 F.2d 504 “AMERICAN SMELTING & R. CO. v. OCCUPATIONAL S. & H. R. COM'N.” Library of Congress, 1974. https://www.leagle.com/decision/19741005501f2d5041927 EPA Health Risks Invisible Pollutants Lead Mining Production https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/accd071b247ae2369fbcc1674273b2de.jpg bf31567dce618b9369418e57ba3b1def Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Living in a World of Our Own Making Subject The topic of the resource <a href="http://www.igbp.net/images/18.950c2fa1495db7081ebd1/1421396650502/GreatAcceleration2015igbpsrclowres.jpg" title="IGBP - The Great Acceleration Dashboard" target="_blank">The Great Acceleration</a> <img src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4721/40562555551_972c132773_o.jpg" 100="" width="100% height=" /> Description An account of the resource The Anthropocene means “The Age of Humans,” but what does it mean to live in a world of our own making? Humanity has flourished in past two centuries. Two thirds of every person ever born lived between 1945 and today. Scientists call this era of expanding population, economic development, and environmental impact the “Great Acceleration.” People are now more numerous and powerful than ever before. Mining moves more rocks and soils than all of the worlds rivers combined. Artificial fertilizers have doubled the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus in our soils. Plastics can now be found on mountain tops and the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Paradoxically, many of the most profound changes to global environments pass virtually unnoticed. Nuclear fallout, for instance, is invisible to the naked eye, but radioactive evidence of cold war weapons tests remains in soils around the world. Until recently, lead was one of the most common materials in industrial use. It was used to seal our foods, paint our homes, and power our cars. Lead is toxic, especially for children. Although invisible, lead is now in our soils, in our cities, and even in our blood. By contrast, concrete is virtually everywhere, yet we rarely think about it. We drive on it, work in it, and the foundations of this very museum are built using it. More than half of the concrete ever produced was manufactured between 1995-2015. Concrete requires enormous energy to mine, transport, and produce. These consequences are as invisible to us as the material is abundant. As you finish your journey through the exhibit, consider how many other “invisible” materials influence our lives and connect us to the global environment. Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Pumping Station Description An account of the resource The geoengineering of natural waterways has been a long-standing hallmark of the global Anthropocene.1 In fact, Donald Worster, a leading figure in environmental history, considered water management to be “the dominant symbol of humankind’s power over nature.”2 From ancient Mesopotamia to the 20th-century American city, the environmental histories of nearly every rapidly growing urban metropolis revealed some form of manipulation of hydrological systems.3 These modifications consistently raise questions about the power dynamics of resource ownership and management, specifically regarding private and public ownership models. The water municipalization debates in Omaha, Nebraska mirror these broader global discussions about public and private water ownership. As a result of growing sanitation concerns, the city of Omaha commissioned the development and construction of the Florence Water Works and Minne Lusa Pumping Station. Constructed approximately seven miles north of downtown Omaha in the town of Florence, the new water management facility included multiple high-service pumps and boilers that filtered out sediment, chemically treated, and dispersed clean water to meet the growing demand for water in Omaha.4 At its peak, the water treatment plant supplied upwards of 28 million gallons to the citizens of Omaha per day.5 The plant’s ability to provide water resources at a substantially lower cost, along with its improved quality, ultimately enabled the continued growth and development of the city of Omaha. However, as the rapidly urbanizing Omaha continued to grow, the privately owned and operated plant could not keep up. This contributed to rapidly declining infrastructure, sewage leaks, enormous amounts of wasted water, and, most concerning to the public, rising prices. As the problems continued to worsen during the early 20th century, the citizens of Omaha campaigned for the municipalization of Omaha’s water resources. This culminated in the creation of the Metropolitan Utilities District and their subsequent acquisition of the assets of the Omaha Water Company in 1912. This transition ultimately contributed to improved operations and crucial cost reductions, which expanded clean water access in Omaha. The story of the municipalization of the Florence Water Works and Minne Lusa Pumping Station revealed the growing desire across the United States and the globe for publicly owned and operated water resources. These global and national transitions demonstrated the comparative advantage of municipalized water, which consistently contributed to lower costs for households and improved service quality. These crucial improvements expanded water access to marginalized communities, who were otherwise unable to afford this basic necessity under the private, corporate model. Ultimately, with 21st-century initiatives to return to the corporatized natural resources model, ownership and distribution of water will continue to be one of the unique challenges faced throughout the Anthropocene, especially in the face of environmental degradation and the global depletion of freshwater resources. Making Minne-Lusa: The development and construction of the Florence Water Works and Minne Lusa Pumping Station reflected the importance of artificially controlled water resources for urban expansion and population growth. Throughout the late 1800s, Omaha’s population increased by 360%.6 This contributed to a hyper-concentrated urban center that lacked adequate sanitation systems to accommodate the growing, densely packed population.7 The absence of a working sewage system led residents to dump garbage and human waste into the streets.8 Furthermore, current waste management, primarily taking the form of privies and cesspools, contaminated the local drinking water supply.9 Public accounts from Omaha in the 1870s and 80s noted the rapid spread of communicable diseases such as dysentery, diarrhea, and typhoid fever, all of which finally prompted locals to draft over one hundred petitions and complaints aimed to garner the attention of the city council.10 The public upheaval generated by the contaminated drinking water convinced local politicians to commission the construction and development of the Florence Water Works and Minne Lusa Pumping Station in 1888. Constructed six miles up the river from Omaha due to the danger of contamination from the city, the plant was both an essential piece of infrastructure and an architectural marvel. Designed by the architectural firm Mendelssohn, Fisher, and Lawrie and managed by the American Water Works Company, the Pumping Station was constructed using Warrensburg sandstone: a material commonly found on the Missouri River and used frequently in construction throughout Missouri River states during the late 19th and early 20th century.11 With a distinctive four-story central tower and granite fountains adorned with monster heads, the facility’s architecture reflected the classical stylings of the 1898 Trans-Mississippi Exposition.12 In addition to the actual pumping and treatment station, the compound also included a superintendent’s mansion and numerous worker housing units.13 Figure 1, taken by photojournalist of the Omaha World-Herald Robert Paskach, depicted the unique architecture of the main treatment facility along the Missouri River, the central tower, and the superintendent’s mansion, displayed off in the distance (Figure 1).14 Significantly, the extraordinary design of the treatment plant was a key factor in compelling the populace to care about the ownership of the facility. Initially, the Florence Water Works and Minne Lusa Pumping Station catalyzed Omaha’s urban transition as a result of the lower utility costs. Developer CW Martin and architect Everett S. Dodds surveyed the plot in 1915, initially attracted by the presence of the Florence Water Works facility.15 In fact, the development was strategically named the Minne Lusa development to capitalize on the positive associations people had with the waterworks.16 An advertisement in the Omaha Daily Bee in 1915 used the water station as the primary selling point, chronicling how the water station brought with it the economic redevelopment of roads, easy accessibility to utilities, and proximity to working-class jobs.17 The construction of a cable car route (Figure 2) that passed right by the plant, and the urban design of the city, which runs perpendicular to the treatment site as if branching out from it, illustrated how the Minne Lusa facility was the focal point of the redevelopment of Florence, Nebraska.18 Furthermore, plant operators knew that the unique design of the plant would attract public attention and began offering tours of the facility, thus drawing in new residents and tourists to the town of Florence, catalyzing its economic and population growth.19 Despite its initial positive benefits, the privately owned and operated plant could not keep up with Omaha’s rapidly growing population, much of which it catalyzed itself. Historians Larsen and Cottrell noted that immediately after its opening, “serious problems plagued the new works.”20 For one, the American Water Works Company did not have the resources to appropriately and sufficiently maintain the plant’s infrastructure. Customers often found dead fish in their water mains and frequent raw sewage leakage in their taps.21 Furthermore, the plant was constructed without water meters resulting in enormous wastes of water.22 In other words, the company did not track individual household consumption, charging a flat rate to all customers regardless of usage. The lack of financial incentive for water conservation led to over-excessive water use and undetected leakages, putting a further strain on the plant’s ability to operate while maintaining financial viability.23 These problems contributed to both rising water rates and the installation and maintenance of new water mains only in areas where consumers were willing and able to pay these rising fees.24 Ultimately, the residents of Omaha, embittered about the American Water Works Company’s inadequate service and rising costs, began to fight for public ownership of water. At the turn of the 20th century, the Minne Lusa Pumping Station’s inadequate operations generated considerable civil unrest in Omaha. Historians Larsen and Cottrell noted that “it was no longer possible or fashionable to blame inaction on rapid growth.”25 The citizens of Omaha demanded a solution to the emerging and expensive water crisis. Therefore, in March 1897, at an Omaha City Council settlement to postpone municipalization until 1917, hundreds of Omaha residents flooded the meeting hall.26 In an over three hour discussion, the public strongly opposed the council’s proposal citing the exorbitant water rates and the impediment of future municipal ownership as the primary reasons.27 This meeting, and the city’s subsequent acquisition of the plant in 1912, reflected the Omaha citizen’s belief that public ownership would be more economically feasible and just. The improved management of the Florence Water Works and Minne Lusa pumping station after 1912 demonstrated the benefits of public ownership of natural resources. First, public utility ownership eliminated the American Water Company’s profit obligations to shareholders, and therefore led to substantial decreases in water rates. For example, between 1912 and 1916, “water rates were reduced by 50%.”28 Moreover, by eliminating the profit generation goal and gaining access to municipal funds, grants, and bonds, the newly created Metropolitan Utilities District’s management could comparatively invest more into maintenance and facility upkeep. These improvements also cut service costs for small consumers by 50%.29 Ultimately, public control of water in Omaha contributed to enhanced operationally efficiency and more equitable distribution. History of US Waterworks: More than just a hallmark of the growth, expansion, and urbanization of Omaha, the Florence Water Works and Minne Lusa Pumping Station served as a microcosm for both national and international developments in water management. Omaha’s private to public utility transition represents broader trends in the global anthropocene regarding the control of water. In the United States, water provision before 1830 was generally considered to be publicly controlled, as urban expansion had not yet necessitated the development of uniform, complex systems. Water was primarily obtained through individuals’ own devices, public wells, and occasionally private water merchants.30 As American cities struggled with fire control, poor sanitation, and the threat of disease, the need for development became apparent. Concurrently, Europe was going through a water revolution of their own. Through the early modern period (1500 - 1800) water systems and provision became increasingly viewed as a subsidiary of the industrial sector throughout Europe. Though mainly manifesting itself in Britain, European water systems transitioned from basic gravitational supply from distant sources to mechanical and eventual steam engine pumping from rivers and other freshwater sources.31 In accordance with increased globalization, these technological developments in water management were brought to North America in the mid to late 18th century. Despite the first pumping station being opened in Philadelphia in 1754, it did not become recognized as an integrated and functional waterworks until 1801. This development was seen as a relative anomaly, as it did not spark an immediate nationwide trend of cities developing waterworks.32 However, the propagation of integrated waterworks began to spread during the early to mid 19th century as the traditional methods of water collection could not keep up with communal demands for larger quantities of clean water and increased fire security.33 Concurrent to these developments, the sanitary revolution, 1830 - 1880, began to sweep through American cities, as public health was correlated with the presence of waste and decay in natural resources. Both city officials and sanitarians, then, became invested in the connection between these water systems and the new goals of environmental sanitation in order to get a handle on waterborne diseases. The overwhelming majority of these new waterworks were privately owned, 80% of all works in 1830, and relatively small compared to the systems that would later gain popularity.34 While relatively inefficient in disease mitigation, as bacteria was later identified as the cause of disease, the increasing importance of effective water provision during this time correlated to increases in the complexity and number of waterworks. In support of this emerging trend, there were only 45 unique works in 1830, but 599 in 1880.35 Municipalization: The implementation of additional systems, newly invigorated civil needs, and the requirement that systems be integrated within the entire urban area led to the skyrocketing of the costs of establishing and maintaining waterworks. Therefore, many city leaders throughout the US concluded that the continued control of sanitary water systems by private entities would be difficult to maintain. Additionally, they came to believe that the control of the public water supply could be profitable for city governments and would benefit the public, as this vital resource would no longer be controlled by for-profit businessmen.36 Mirroring the sale of the Minne Lusa Pumping Station to the city of Omaha, this transition to public ownership of water systems through city governments led to the first major shift in the history of waterworks, municipalization.37 Between 1830 and 1924, the percentage of publicly owned waterworks increased from 20% to 80%, representing the uniform nature of these changes throughout the United States.38 This transition to municipal ownership was perceived as a public good throughout areas of implementation. Low-income American households would spend 4.39% of their income on water resources in privately controlled sectors and 2.84% of their income in publicly controlled sectors as of 2007.39 Additionally, numerous studies demonstrate how municipalized systems ensure equitable access to water. One such study examined the effects of municipal water ownership on black communities from 1889 to 1921. It identified that rates of typhoid fever decreased by 9% in black individuals under public ownership without substantial impacts on white communities, highlighting the general increases in water quality and uniform implementation under municipal ownership.40 Although this transition was driven by financial and operational factors, it raised fundamental questions regarding whether profit-oriented private corporations could effectively manage vital natural resources.41 Moreover, these debates coalesced around the core issue of whether water should be treated as a commercialized commodity or a basic human right. Conclusion: The environmental history of the Florence Water Works and Minne Lusa Pumping Station demonstrated the national and global shift toward municipal ownership. However, as contemporary corporate interests seek to regain access to municipal utilities, it is important to keep in mind the benefits of Omaha’s municipal shift. On a national level, the 2014 Flint water crisis spurred many Americans to distrust municipally controlled water sources. While current understandings have placed the majority of the blame on individual government officials and not municipal control in general, the transition away from sourcing water from Lake Huron without modernized infrastructure under the Karegnondi Water Authority has raised the question of reprivatization in the face of aging infrastructure.42 On an international level, public opinion has generally aligned with municipal water resources. In regions of Latin America specifically, several instances of remunicipalisation have occurred from 2000 to 2005, as water prices spiked without increases in the availability or quality of the water provided through private ownership transitions a few years prior.43 By considering the themes of urbanization, globalization, and the consideration of natural resources as inherent human rights, the history of the Minne Lusa Pumping Station and the global municipal water transition should be taken into account. Though the immediate infrastructure boost under private ownership may be beneficial in the short term, public control of water sources will be essential in maintaining the supply of clean water to all individuals in the face of climate change, pollution, and the commodification of natural resources. Figure 1: Robert Paskach, Missouri River Trip, 1967, Robert Paskach Collection, Durham Museum, Omaha, NE. Figure 2: Map of Florence in 1923 from: (Omaha: North Omaha History Blog, 2017), Minne Lusa Pumping Station Collection, North Omaha History Blog, Omaha. https://northomahahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/florence-1923.jpg Figure 3: Tables recording the number of waterworks, the breakdown of ownership style, and the number of cities with waterworks (1800-1830 only) from 1800 to 1924 in the United States. From: Melosi, Martin. “Full Circle? Public Responsibility versus Privatization of Water Supplies in the United States.” In Urban Water Conflicts, edited by Bernard Barraqué, 39–56. Taylor and Francis, 2011. Endnotes 1) Donald Worster, “The Flow of Empire: Comparing Water Control in China and the United States,” RCC Perspectives, no. 5 (2011): 5. 2) Worster, “The Flow of Empire,” 15. 3) Worster, “The Flow of Empire,” 15. 4) “Omaha from the Air,” Omaha World-Herald, 1947. 5) Robert Lee Rayl, “A Study of Warrensburg Sandstone,” University of Missouri, (June 1952): 85-95. 6) Michael J. Harkins, “Public Health Nuisances in Omaha, 1870-1900.” Nebraska History 56 (1975): 478. 7) Raymond A. Mohl and Neil Betten, “The History of Urban America: An Interpretive Framework.” The History Teacher 3, no. 3 (March 1970): 30. 8) Mohl and Betten, “The History of Urban America,” 29. 9) Harkins, “Public Health Nuisances in Omaha,” 478. 10) Harkins, “Public Health Nuisances in Omaha,” 478. 11) Robert Lee Rayl, “A Study of Warrensburg Sandstone,” University of Missouri, (June 1952): pg. 85-95. 12) Federal Writers’ Project Nebraska, Omaha: A Guide to the City and Environs (Omaha: Omaha Public Library, 1939), 45. 13) Federal Writers’ Project Nebraska, Omaha: A Guide to the City and Environs, 25-27. 14) Robert Paskach, Missouri River Trip, 1967, Robert Paskach Collection, Durham Museum, Omaha, NE. 15) "Big Land Deal is Brought to Close," Omaha Daily Bee, April 3, 1915. 16) Jennifer Honebrink, National Register of Historic Places Registration Form: Minne Lusa Residential Historic District, register form, November 2013, national Reigster of Historic Places, accessed November 5, 2023, https://preservation.cityofomaha.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/HD-021-N_-Minne-Lusa-Residential-HD.pdf. 17) “The Water Board Appraisal,” Omaha Daily Bee, July 15, 1906, https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn99021999/1906-07-15/ed-1/?sp=10&q=florence+water+works&r=0.266,0.048,0.151,0.165,0. 18) Florence 1923 (Omaha: North Omaha History Blog, 2017), Minne Lusa Pumping Station Collection, North Omaha History Blog, Omaha. https://northomahahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/florence-1923.jpg 19) “Purity of the City’s Water Supply and How it is Attained for Omaha” Omaha Daily Bee, April 5, 1908, p. 4F. 20) Lawrence Harold Larsen and Barbara J. Cottrell, The Gate City: A History of Omaha (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982), 104. 21) Larsen and Cottrell, The Gate City, 104. 22) Larsen and Cottrell, The Gate City, 104. 23) Larsen and Cottrell, The Gate City, 104. 24) Larsen and Cottrell, The Gate City, 750. 25) “Talk About Water Works,” Omaha Daily Bee, March 16, 1897. https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn99021999/1897-03-16/ed-1/?sp=8&q=florence+water+w orks&r=-0.008,0.02,0.258,0.28,0. 26) “Talk About Water Works.” 27) “Talk About Water Works.” 28) Earl Alexander Everret, “Municipal versus Private Wwnership of Public Utilities,” (Masters thesis, University of Nebraska Lincoln, 1919), 11. https://www.proquest.com/openview/158d820bbab6df2d9689a78bdca47b91/1?cbl=18750&diss=y&pq-origsite=gscholar 29) Everrett, “Municipal versus Private Ownership,” 9-10. 30) Martin Melosi, "Full Circle? Public Responsibility versus Privatization of Water Supplies in the United States," in Urban Water Conflicts, ed. Bernard Barraqué (Taylor and Francis, 2011), 40. 31) James Douet, The Water Industry as World Heritage: Thematic Study (TICCIH, 2018), 26-35. 32) Melosi, “Full Circle?”, 40-41. 33) Charles Jacobson, Ties That Bind: Economic and Political Dilemmas of Urban Utility Networks, 1800-1990 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000), 33-34. 34) Melosi, Martin. The Sanitary City: Environmental Services in Urban America from Colonial Times to the Present. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008, 73-89 35) John Croes, Statistical Tables from the History and Statistics of American Water Works (New York: Engineering News, 1884), 4-69. 36) Charles Jacobson, Steven Klepper, and Joel A. Tarr, "Water, Electricity and Cable Television: A Study of Contrasting Historical Patterns of Ownership and Regulation," Cahier / Groupe Réseaux 1, no. 3 (January 1985): 9. 37) Jacboson, Klepper, and Tarr, “Water, Electricity and Cable Television,” 8. 38) Melosi, “Full Circle?”, 41-42. 39) X. Zhang, M. González Rivas, M. Grant, and M. E. Warner, "Water Pricing and Affordability in the US: Public vs. Private Ownership," Water Policy 24, no. 3 (March 2022): 500-516. 40) Werner Troesken, "Race, Disease, and the Provision of Water in American Cities, 1889-1921," The Journal of Economic History 61, no. 3 (September 2001): 750-776. 41) Debora Spar and Krzysztof Bebenek, "To the Tap: Public versus Private Water Provision at the Turn of the Twentieth Century," Business History Review 83, no. 4 (2009): 675-702. 42) Benjamin J. Pauli, "The Flint Water Crisis," WIREs Water 7, no. 3 (March 2020): 1-3. 43) Germà Bel, "Public versus Private Water Delivery, Remunicipalization and Water Tariffs," Utilities Policy 62 (February 2020): 1-2. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ben Jackson Logan Yogi Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bel, Germà. “Public versus Private Water Delivery, Remunicipalization and Water Tariffs.” Utilities Policy 62 (February 2020): 100982. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jup.2019.100982. "Big Land Deal is Brought to Close." Omaha Daily Bee, April 3, 1915. Croes, John. Statistical Tables from the History and Statistics of American Water Works. New York: Engineering News, 1884. Douet, James. The Water Industry as World Heritage: Thematic Study. TICCIH, 2018. Federal Writers’ Project Nebraska. Omaha: A Guide to the City and Environs. Omaha: Omaha Public Library, 1939. Florence 1923. Omaha: North Omaha History Blog, 2017. Minne Lusa Pumping Station Collection. North Omaha History Blog, Omaha. https://northomahahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/florence-1923.jpg. Harkins, Michael J. “Public Health Nuisances in Omaha, 1870-1900,” Nebraska History 56 (1975): 471-492. http://www.nebraskahistory.org/publish/publicat/history/full-text/NHOmaHealth.pdf. Honebrink, Jennifer. National Register of Historic Places Registration Form: Minne Lusa Residential Historic District. Register form, November 2013. National Register of Historic Places. Accessed November 5, 2023, https://preservation.cityofomaha.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/HD-021-N_-Minne-Lusa-Residential-HD.pdf. Jacobson, Charles. Ties That Bind: Economic and Political Dilemmas of Urban Utility Networks, 1800-1990. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000. Jacobson, Charles, Steven Klepper, and Joel A Tarr. “Water, Electricity and Cable Television: A Study of Contrasting Historical Patterns of Ownership and Regulation.” Cahier / Groupe Réseaux 1, no. 3 (January 1, 1985): 2–31. https://doi.org/10.3406/flux.1985.1615. Larsen, Lawrence Harold, and Cottrell, Barabara J. The Gate City: A History of Omaha. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982. Melosi, Martin. “Full Circle? Public Responsibility versus Privatization of Water Supplies in the United States.” In Urban Water Conflicts, edited by Bernard Barraqué, 39–56. Taylor and Francis, 2011. Melosi, Martin. The Sanitary City: Environmental Services in Urban America from Colonial Times to the Present. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008. Mohl, Raymond A., and Neil Betten. “The History of Urban America: An Interpretive Framework.” The History Teacher 3, no. 3 (March 1970): 23-34. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3054423. “Omaha from the Air.” Omaha World-Herald. 1947. https://www.historicomaha.com/aerial5.jpg. Pauli, Benjamin J. “The Flint Water Crisis.” WIREs Water 7, no. 3 (March 12, 2020). https://doi.org/10.1002/wat2.1420. “Purity of the City’s Water Supply and How it is Attained for Omaha.” Omaha Daily Bee. April 5, 1908. p. 4F. Rayl, Robert Lee. “A Study of Warrensburg Sandstone.” University of Missouri (June 1952): 1-108. https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/handle/10355/87444. Robert Paskach. Missouri River Trip. 1967. Robert Paskach Collection. Durham Museum, Omaha, NE. Spar, Debora, and Krzysztof Bebenek. “To the Tap: Public versus Private Water Provision at the Turn of the Twentieth Century.” Business History Review 83, no. 4 (2009): 675–702. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0007680500000878. “Talk About Water Works.” Omaha Daily Bee, March 16, 1897. https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn99021999/1897-03-16/ed-1/?sp=8&q=florence+water+works&r=-0.008,0.02,0.258,0.28,0. Accessed October 9, 2024. “The Water Board Appraisal.” Omaha Daily Bee, July 15,1906. https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn99021999/1906-07-15/ed-1/?sp=10&q=florence+water+works&r=0.266,0.048,0.151,0.165,0. Accessed October 9, 2024. Troesken, Werner. “RACE, DISEASE, and the PROVISION of WATER in AMERICAN CITIES, 1889–1921.” The Journal of Economic History 61, no. 03 (September 1, 2001): 750–76. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0022050701030066. Worster, Donald. “The Flow of Empire: Comparing Water Control in China and the United States.” RCC Perspectives, no. 5 (2011): 1-23. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26240326. Zhang, X., M. González Rivas, M. Grant, and M. E. Warner. “Water Pricing and Affordability in the US: Public vs. Private Ownership.” Water Policy 24, no. 3 (March 17, 2022): 500–516. https://doi.org/10.2166/wp.2022.283. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource Fall 2024 Subject The topic of the resource Should water be publicly or privately owned? For centuries, cities across the world have asked this question, and Omaha is no different. In the 1800s, Omaha’s waste flowed into the river, leading to dirty drinking water and disease spread. To fix this, Omaha took inspiration from other US cities. In 1889, they built the Florence Water Works and Minne Lusa Pumping Station. The privately owned plant could provide 28 million gallons of clean water to the growing Omaha city. The private company, however, could not keep up with the growing population. This led to sewage leaks and rising costs. In 1912, the people of Omaha finally took control of the plant’s operation, and with it came better management and lower costs. The history of the Minne Lusa Pumping Station shows that when people around the world control water, it's cheaper, easier to get, and better for the entire public. pumping station Water treatment https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/641ef90e4aaf51c6a3bcfc20365e5544.jpg 65ec376ee30ef15bc60c203e79b16a53 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Monkey Wrench Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Durham Museum Permanent Collection https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/6964d1b20d929b6457a8f37e8c418e04.jpg 100f5ae3f7bb429e3184cf4a5039a953 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Map of Omaha City and Environs Description An account of the resource Lithographed map. Hand colored. Shows tracts, block numbers, townships, sections, quarter sections, railroads, roads, owners of large parcels, etc. With Jan. 19, 1885 certification with facsimile signature of Geo. Smith. Oriented with north toward left. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Adin Mann Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived David Rumsey Map Collection https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~29081~1130186:Omaha-City-&-environs-?showTipAdvancedSearch=false&showShareIIIFLink=true&showTip=false&helpUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fdoc.lunaimaging.com%2Fdisplay%2FV73D%2FLUNA%2BViewer%23LUNAViewer-LUNAViewer&title=Search+Results%3A+List_No+equal+to+%272719.186%27&fullTextSearchChecked=&dateRangeSearchChecked=&advancedSearchUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fdoc.lunaimaging.com%2Fdisplay%2FV73D%2FSearching%23Searching-Searching&thumbnailViewUrlKey=link.view.search.url# Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1885 https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/4544288d8e133e3b674b3000d43312df.png fa8834f000a70555decfb52f5645ea0f Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Political Cartoon Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Creightonian Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Living in a World of Our Own Making Subject The topic of the resource <a href="http://www.igbp.net/images/18.950c2fa1495db7081ebd1/1421396650502/GreatAcceleration2015igbpsrclowres.jpg" title="IGBP - The Great Acceleration Dashboard" target="_blank">The Great Acceleration</a> <img src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4721/40562555551_972c132773_o.jpg" 100="" width="100% height=" /> Description An account of the resource The Anthropocene means “The Age of Humans,” but what does it mean to live in a world of our own making? Humanity has flourished in past two centuries. Two thirds of every person ever born lived between 1945 and today. Scientists call this era of expanding population, economic development, and environmental impact the “Great Acceleration.” People are now more numerous and powerful than ever before. Mining moves more rocks and soils than all of the worlds rivers combined. Artificial fertilizers have doubled the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus in our soils. Plastics can now be found on mountain tops and the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Paradoxically, many of the most profound changes to global environments pass virtually unnoticed. Nuclear fallout, for instance, is invisible to the naked eye, but radioactive evidence of cold war weapons tests remains in soils around the world. Until recently, lead was one of the most common materials in industrial use. It was used to seal our foods, paint our homes, and power our cars. Lead is toxic, especially for children. Although invisible, lead is now in our soils, in our cities, and even in our blood. By contrast, concrete is virtually everywhere, yet we rarely think about it. We drive on it, work in it, and the foundations of this very museum are built using it. More than half of the concrete ever produced was manufactured between 1995-2015. Concrete requires enormous energy to mine, transport, and produce. These consequences are as invisible to us as the material is abundant. As you finish your journey through the exhibit, consider how many other “invisible” materials influence our lives and connect us to the global environment. Physical Object An inanimate, three-dimensional object or substance. Note that digital representations of, or surrogates for, these objects should use Moving Image, Still Image, Text or one of the other types. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Monkey Wrench Subject The topic of the resource Tools like this twentieth-century monkey wrench tuned machines and shaped environments during the Second Industrial Revolution. Associated with railroading in the nineteenth century, the monkey wrench symbolizes industrial progress. Later in the twentieth century, the monkey wrench became a symbol of environmental resistance to industrial progress. In his novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, Edward Abbey popularized an ideology of direct action against environmental destruction, which later inspired environmental organization such as Earth First! and the Earth Liberation Front. This wave of environmentalism found its way to Omaha and led to the formation of the Quality Environment Council and acts of environmental protest on Creighton University’s campus in the 1970s. The monkey wrench is an important artifact of the Anthropocene, symbolizing both industrialism and environmentalism. Description An account of the resource First created in nineteenth-century England, the monkey wrench is an adjustable tool used in many areas of industry to insert screws and fasten materials together (Geesin 2015). As such, the monkey wrench is a symbol of the innovation, industrialization and in the context of the Anthropocene, the humans on the earth system. Ironically, the monkey wrench symbolizes resistance to these changes as well. Since the publication of American author Edward Abbey’s novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang in 1975, the tool has become a symbol of radical environmentalism as well. This is the paradox of the monkey wrench: a tool created for use in industry and the taming of the natural world by mankind, has also become a totem for those who radically oppose the very same industrial advancement. The monkey wrench, thus tells us two contrasting stories of the Anthropocene. The first, industrial progress and the second, questioning and active resistance to that “progress”. The monkey wrench in the collection of the Durham Museum (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/641ef90e4aaf51c6a3bcfc20365e5544.jpg">Figure 1</a>) bears no distinctive markings or indicators as to when or where it was made. However, it was likely manufactured in the early 20th century due to its similarity to examples from that time (Geesin 2015). Its proximity to Omaha, Nebraska is unsurprising, as similar wrenches were utilized and modified in the Omaha area in the 1920s. The elongated handle and ratchet for size adjustment are common features of period wrenches (Inventions New and Interesting). The development of new and improved versions of the monkey wrench tailored the tool to different areas of industry. By the mid-nineteenth-century, the manufacturing of such wrenches was a thriving and competitive industry on its own (Greeley 1874). Although different iterations of the monkey wrench were in various areas of industry, one of the most common uses was in the construction and maintenance of steam locomotives. The monkey wrench would have been widely employed in Omaha’s many railroad shops. Omaha was and continues to be the headquarters of the Union Pacific Railroad from the nineteenth-century (Monkey Wrench). <a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/6964d1b20d929b6457a8f37e8c418e04.jpg">Figure 2</a> is a map of Omaha from 1885 depicting the transformational effect that the Union Pacific railroad imparted on the city after only two decades of prevalence. The pink area on the lower-right portion of the map shows the expanse of the Union Pacific Shops. The city grew and developed in the nineteenth-century largely as a result of its relationship with the Union Pacific Railroad. After the railroad construction began in the 1860s, an influx of employment opportunities in Omaha allowed for its growth to surpass its neighbor cities and the city became a gateway to the Western portion of the United States. The project of building the railroad brought thousands of jobs to the Omaha area and this opportunity to make a living working on it saw Omaha’s population increase at an incredible rate (Bristow 2000). By the twentieth-century, Omaha had become a railroad hub and central city of the second industrial revolution in the United States. The growth of Omaha’s railroad industry transformed Omaha and Nebraska with dramatic environmental consequences. In an 1867 book, The Union Pacific Railroad from Omaha, Nebraska, Across the Continent, the Union Pacific Railroad Company outlines the economic opportunities afforded by the construction of the railroad. These opportunities were headlined by the opportunity to expand the areas in which people live westward, bridging the gap between the Eastern and Western United States. In addition, natural resources such as untapped land for farming, mining, hunting and harvesting lumber were held as the most lucrative of opportunities. During this time period, the Union Pacific railroad transported 460,000 tons of freight across the continent each year (The Union Pacific Railroad Company 1867). This industrial expanding of the railroad to the West would manifest itself through an immense impact on the environment of the Great Plains. As the railroad stretched West towards the Rocky Mountains, populations and land usage in the Great Plains region increased at an incredible rate. The further that the railroad stretched, the more settlements were established along it. These settlements enabled the land to be used by the new people in an area where it had been nearly impossible to receive supplies and contact with the East prior to railroad construction (Whitney 1994). <a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/23598e7fe45a0b6d110faa984b789628.png">Figure 3</a> shows measured usages of land for raising livestock and crops, as well as the population in the Great Plains region after construction on the Transcontinental Railroad from Omaha began. Once a small number of individuals had begun to populate the Great Plains and begin to tame the land, the success of their agricultural endeavors coupled with the ease of communication with the rest of the country established by the railroad and the transcontinental telegraph brought people seeking prosperity in the region (Hartman 2011). As the region was further developed throughout the decades following the establishment of rural communities, the impact of large-scale agriculture took its toll on the local and global environments. In addition to the establishment of a booming agriculture industry in the Great Plains, the railroad enabled transnational and international trade of hides and furs of animals. One striking example was the systematic destruction and near extinction of the North American Bison. <a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/9e930674cc1bd5e8bafcd27de827333a.png">Figure 4</a> demonstrates the marked spike in the number of bison hide exports almost immediately after the beginning of railroad construction from Omaha, along with the consistent rise in cattle population in the Great Plains (Taylor 2011, Bozell 1995). Bison hide exports declined significantly in the late 1870s as the population of bison dwindled in the region, while the cattle population maintained its steady rise through the late 1880s. The hunting of bison to virtual extinction is an example of the devastating damage that the increased accessibility to the Great Plains established by the railroad had on its environment (Taylor 2011). There is a stark increase and subsequent decrease in the number of bison hides exported as the population dwindled in the 1870s (Hartman 2011). As a tool and symbol of industry, the monkey wrench represented the growth of progress and urbanization and taming of their surrounding landscapes. In Omaha and Nebraska, the railroad played an important role in these changes that also resulted in significant environmental consequences, especially in grassland environments. However, this rampant industrialization was no longer accepted uncritically as “progress” by the mid-twentieth-century. “Monkey Wrenching” came to embody active resistance to industrial growth at the expense of the environment. This term entered public discourse upon publication of Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang in 1975. In his novel Abbey tells the fictional story of a group of activists who commit acts of sabotage in the name of environmentalism. The group destroys bridges, billboards and makes plans to destroy a dam. Their activities, called “monkeywrenching,” lauded the destruction of industrial property for the sake of saving the natural world from development (Abbey 1975). <a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/ffdc6157e4715c6d9d4f9f5d4c332dde.png">Figure 5</a> is an  example of illustrations by Robert Crumb from The Monkey Wrench Gang. Abbey’s characters saw industry, government-sponsored or corporate, as a threat and promoted uncompromising resistance. After the release of The Monkey Wrench Gang, the monkey wrench was a widely recognized symbol for radical environmentalism as it had been described in the book. The writing itself became a handbook for those looking to shake up the industrial establishment through acts of monkeywrenching. From the ideology of Edward Abbey sprung a variety of radical environmental groups, most notably the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and Earth First! of which Abbey was a member. The actions of destroying machines in an attempt to slow the progress of industry harken back to the attempted Luddite revolution in late 18th century England. Although the Luddites were motivated by the prospect of keeping their own jobs in industry, the consequences of destroying machinery were much the same (Horn 2005). The ideology established by Abbey in the late twentieth-century was one of resistance to industrial development of the environment. This ideology manifested itself in acts of direct and indirect resistance. In the vain of direct resistance, groups such as Earth First! And the ELF, established in 1980 and 1992 respectively, committed acts of sabotage in the United States. Bombings claimed by ELF have targeted ski resorts, animal testing facilities, fishing operations and other sites of humans meddling with the environment. This led to ELF’s listing as the greatest domestic threat in the United States by the FBI in 2001 (Taylor 2008). Earth First! did not claim responsibility for destructive crimes, although some of their members have been personally indicted for various acts of sabotage. In 1983, an editorial in the journal Environmental Ethics personally addressed Edward Abbey and his friends for actively encouraging the destruction of industrial resources, thus endangering the lives of workers. Abbey responded directly, claiming that Earth First! is little more than a disorganized group of environmentalists who come together for acts of civil disobedience in the face of the destruction of nature. He also plainly stated that he believes that the destruction of nature is an act of terrorism (Abbey 1983). Foreman takes matters a step further, openly denying acts of monkeywrenching in Earth First! while directly stating that he believes that such acts are completely morally justified (Foreman 1983). The direct actions of groups such as Earth First! and ELF coupled with a new ideology of environmentalism had a massive impact on the United States throughout the late 20th century. Other citizens intent on protecting the environment practiced indirect resistance to industrial progress. In Omaha, these effects manifested in the creation of the Quality Environment Council (QEC). Established in the 1970s, the Omaha QEC protected the parks and open spaces in Omaha against development. Its original goal was to prevent the construction of a mall in downtown Omaha. They managed to prevent further development within the city in this case, however this simply diverted the same development to the suburbs (Taylor 1973). The QEC also vehemently opposed the release of extremely hot waste water into the Missouri river by the Omaha Public Power District in 1972. They succeeded in the city imposing a required cooling time for all water being disposed of in the river to prevent destruction of the environment within (Omaha World Herald 1972). On the campus of Creighton University, students reacted negatively to the environmental policies of the Nixon administration in the 1970s. Although Nixon was the president who established the Environmental Protection Agency, students at Creighton did not believe that this was enough, given the publication of a study claiming that 73% of all water in the United States is contaminated with industrial byproducts. <a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/4544288d8e133e3b674b3000d43312df.png">Figure 6</a> displays a political cartoon published in The Creightonian, the school newspaper. This is an example of civil disobedience within the student population against large companies and government policies. The article published with this cartoon admonishes the industrial domination of nature, providing examples of deforestation, water contamination and animal populations nearing extinction (Meyer 1970). In a further article from The Creightonian, the newspaper announces the beginning of seemingly the first ecology class at the university. With its purpose to study the physical and social implications of the environment and the factors which contribute to damaging it, this certainly shows a shift in the mindset of people in Omaha towards at least some form of environmentalism (Lohr 1972). The monkey wrench, through its contributions to industry primarily through the railroad, has historically been a tool and symbol of industrial progress. The meaning of progress changed over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth-centuries, however. By the Green Decades of the 1960s and 1970s, and drawing upon criticisms of corporate and state “development,” the monkey wrench became a symbol of resistance. Direct resistance of the type advocated by Edward Abbey and radical groups such as Earth First! and the ELF, though these strategies found little support in Nebraska or Omaha. In Omaha, indirect resistance was the primary mode of fighting industrial progress for the betterment of the natural environment. The dual symbolism of the monkey wrench, promoting progress and simultaneously symbolizing resistance to it, is a fitting artifact of the Anthropocene. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brad MacDonald Hasan Lari Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Abbey, E. “Earth first! And the Monkey Wrench Gang.” Environmental Ethics 5, no.1 (1983): 94-95. https://www.pdcnet.org//pdc/bvdb.nsf Abbey, E. The Monkey Wrench Gang (Salt Lake City: Dream Garden Press, 1975). Bozell, J. “Culture, Environment, and Bison Populations on the Late Prehistoric and Early Historic Central Plains.” Plains Anthropologist. 40, no. 152 (1995): 145-163. Bristow, D. A Dirty, Wicked Town: Tales of 19th Century Omaha (Omaha: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 152-154. Foreman, D. “More on Earth First! And The Monkey Wrench Gang.” Environmental Ethics. 5, no.1 (1983): 95-96. Geesin, R. Adjustable Spanner: History, Origins and Development to 1970 (Crowood: Antiques & Collectibles, 2015). George M. Smith, Omaha Central. 1885. Lithographed map, 40 x 69 cm. David Rumsey. From: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection, www.davidrumsey.com (Accessed April 4, 2018). Greeley, H. The Great Industries of the United States (Hartford: J.B. Burr & Hyde, 1874), 875-876. Gutmann, M. “Beyond Social Science History: Population and Environment in the US Great Plains.” Social Science History, 42, no. 1 (2018). Hartman, M. “Impact of Historical Land-Use Changes on Greenhouse Gas Exchange in the U.S. Great Plains, 1883-2003.” Ecological Applications. 21, no. 4 (2011): 1105-1119. Horn, J. “Machine-breaking in England and France during the Age of Revolution.” Labour 55, (2005): 143-166. “Hot Water Dumping Is Protested,” The Omaha World Herald (Omaha, NE), July 19, 1972. "Inventions New and Interesting." Scientific American 127, no. 2 (1922): 117-20. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24993964 Lohr, J. “Ecology Course To Study Physical, Social Environment,” The Creightonian (Omaha, NE), October 27, 1972. Meyer, M. “Environment: Student Issue,” The Creightonian (Omaha, NE), January 9, 1970. “Monkey Wrench.” America on the Move, last modified 2018, http://amhistory.si.edu/onthemove/collection/object_137 Crumb, Robert. The Monkey Wrench Gang. 1975. Source: JohnShalek.com, 2009, Digital Image. Available from: http://www.joshshalek.com/tag/the-monkey-wrench-gang/ Taylor, Bron. "The Tributaries of Radical Environmentalism." Journal for the Study of Radicalism 2, no. 1 (2008): 27-61. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41887590. Taylor, J. “Leahy: River Critics ‘In A Dream World’,” The Omaha World Herald (Omaha, NE), July 25, 1973. Taylor, S. “International Trade and the Virtual Extinction of the North American Bison.” American Economic Association. 101, no. 7 (2011): 3162-3195. Union Pacific Railroad Company, The Union Pacific Railroad from Omaha, Nebraska, Across the Continent (Chicago: Press of Wynkoop & Hallenbeck, 1867), 7. Whitney, G. From Coastal Wilderness to Fruited Plain (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 188-190. Zalasiewicz, J. “Stratigraphy of the Anthropocene.” Philosophical Transitions. 396 (2016): 1036- 1055. https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/aaaa3a776d204afbb0d68f69a0d166bc.jpg 1b4476cd886150262d0aaa742ed80eba Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Branding Iron Subject The topic of the resource Our object photographed at the Durham Museum on 9/10/22 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Elise Gooding-Lord Bridget Courtney Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Durham Museum Permanent Collection Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Taming the Landscape Subject The topic of the resource The Early Anthropocene <img src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4740/38752446300_776a102fdd_o.jpg" 100="" width="100% height=" /> Description An account of the resource When did people begin to take control of the global environment? Humans have shaped their local environments for hundreds of thousands of years. As populations increased, their impacts expanded. Two changes greatly accelerated human influence on a global scale: the movement of hunting societies and the development of agriculture. By the end of the last ice age, humans had migrated across much of Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Whenever humans appeared, a wave of extinctions followed. In the Americas, large animals such as the Mastodon and Giant Beaver went extinct shortly after the arrival of people. Although scientists debate the origin of these mass extinctions (changing climate likely played a role), hunting was a significant factor. The development of agriculture played an even more important role in global environmental change. People began domesticating plants and animals around the world roughly 12,000 years ago. The stone (“lithic”) tools in our exhibit speak to this dramatic change. Agriculture often required clearing forested lands, irrigating, or fertilizing landscapes to make them suitable for crops. These changes were the foundation for settlement and later the rise of complex civilizations all over the world. Agriculture and hunting continue to reshape environments on a global scale today. The bison in this exhibit represents the consequences of modern overhunting and the single-wheel hoe represents our continued reliance on agriculture. These objects remind us that “taming the landscape” revolutionized societies, but they also produced global environmental consequences. They connect us to a deep past and symbolize a transformation that continues to shape the modern world. Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Branding Iron Subject The topic of the resource Branding irons marked cattle ownership. Ranchers used brands on the Great Plains to prevent theft or miscommunication. This is indicative of an era when producers and consumers of beef spread across vast distances. The iron is not specific to a ranch but symbolizes changes in the cattle economy during the 19th and 20th centuries. As demand for red meat grew- the supply could not keep up. Sources of meat grew more distant. Foreign environments came to feed American appetites and similar changes took place around the world. Shipping meat across distances hides its economic and environmental costs. These costs do not disappear but become a dept paid by future consumers and the planet. This branding iron symbolizes the relationship in the Anthropocene. Description An account of the resource While a device that was created to permanently burn cattle with an identifying symbol may not sound important in relation to the environment, that isn’t actually the case. The branding iron may not seem like a lot at first glance, but in reality, it is an important artifact in not only Omaha’s environmental history, but also global environmental history. This is because it serves as a symbol of the significance of the cattle ranching industry. The cattle ranching industry has had major effects on not only the environment in Nebraska and the rest of the United States, but the world environment as well. The demand for red meat in the United States accelerated the cattle ranching industry. As the consumer demand for meat rose- the requirement of materials to produce beef, such as pastureland, laborers, feed, all increased exponentially. These concerns were addressed by outsourcing red meat production, which has led to food production becoming more environmentally impactful. This same phenomenon took place worldwide and has created the global food web that we have present in today’s society. Therefore, the branding iron, while relatively small, symbolizes the large effect that its industry has had on global history and therefore the Anthropocene. Branding cattle is necessary on ranches to differentiate between two herds that share the same grazing space (Lombard 226). Brands are also useful when it comes to preventing the theft of livestock, as a permanent mark on the animal would make it impossible for anyone to try to claim it as their own, if the brand doesn’t belong to them (“Livestock Brands”). These brands often represent the owners “character” given there are no requirements for the symbols to represent anything specific such as the name of the ranch or owner, though they should be decently simple and recognizable (“Livestock Brands”). Once a brand is designed it can be registered for in states that have brand registers, so long as it is a unique symbol that no other ranch is using, which can be difficult to achieve due to the large number of existing brands (“Livestock Brands”). Due to the fact that not all states register their brands and the fact that there is no national brand registration book, it is difficult to determine both where our brand comes from. The simplicity of the branding iron has allowed for it to be used for centuries; however it also makes dating our branding iron problematic as there have seemingly been little changes to the structure of the branding iron since its introduction to the New World (“Livestock Brands”). The brand itself appears to be intact, though the exact symbol may not be obvious. While it appears to be a lowercase “h”, which is what the Durham Museum describes it as, brands are typically composed of capital letters, which means that it is possible that our brand depicts something other than a “h” (“Livestock Brands”). Branding symbols can also be made up of multiple characters or pictures, with brands today often being made of at least three symbols due to the number of existing brands, this means that our brand may not be one symbol, but multiple combined together to make one picture that happens to look like an lowercase “h” (“Livestock Brands”). It is a little humorous that something that was created to assist with identification can be so hard to identify, but the value that the branding iron holds as a symbol of anthropogenic environmental change is still clear. Branding irons in general played an important role in the history of cattle ranching. The origin of cattle branding can be traced back to Egypt in 2700 B.C., but it made its way to the New World from Europe because of Hernando Cortez in 1541 (“Livestock Brands”) This happened because many Spanish and Portuguese colonies in Latin America participated with cattle ranching, and their techniques would have eventually been observed by Texans due to their proximity and eventually adopted by them (“The Origin” 122). The original brands from Spain tended to be complicated with beautiful designs, which made them not very practical, leading to American ranchers to create brands that were more simplistic, easy to remember and produce, while also being effective and difficult to change (“Livestock Brands”). When cattle ranching first became prominent in the United States it was primarily in the Texas and California areas (“The Overemphasis” 2). While ranchers from both areas tried to get their ranching methods spread across the country, with Texas targeting the Great Plains and California the Great Basin neither method lasted past the end of the nineteenth century (“The Overemphasis” 9). At that point a new cattle ranching culture started to rise in popularity, this being the midwestern system of cattle ranching. This new system originated in the Midwest and mountain South, and primarily deviated from the ranching culture in Texas and California with its use of methods originating from the British highlands, instead of ones of Spanish influence (“The Overemphasis” 9). The midwestern system also tended to have more of a focus on the welfare of the cattle and had practices in place that helped the cattle survive through winters and harsh weather, while the Texas and California systems didn’t (“The Overemphasis” 9). This system can be traced back to the 1850s, specifically in Nebraska with its “road ranches” that were set up along the trails, but it only started to spread across the country after the collapse of the Texas and California systems, both of which happened around the 1880s (“The Overemphasis” 12). With the midwest system of cattle ranching being the most popular by the end of the nineteenth century, it would eventually be the system that most ranchers or future ranchers would adapt once they moved out west for the new opportunities that were promised to them by the United States following the Civil War. The end of the Civil War in the United States opened opportunities for Euro-American settlers to move out West. The United States Government incentivized people to move with the Homestead Act of 1862 that allowed for any US citizen to claim 160 acres of land (Homestead Act). The act had requirements of “improving” the land in the first five years, but the Homestead Act was very indistinct about how the land had to change in order to meet these requirements. Individuals and companies began abusing The Homestead Act, for economic and personal gain, and by the end of 1934 10% of all US lands were distributed into individual hands (Potter 360). These lands were not the US government’s to distribute however- the vast majority of them were inhabited by Native peoples, with established communities, hunting practices and lifestyles (Pritzke 8). The Homestead Act did not account for this and there was a mass displacement of Native peoples in a violent manner. This led to conflict throughout the country as Natives defended their homes, this time period is known as the Indian Wars (Michno 364). As Euro-Americans started occupying this land, the native bison were seen as a nuisance, untamable, and most importantly not profitable (Hornaday 457). Moving forward the bison were killed off in order for the preferred bovine cattle to take their place (Hornaday 466). There was lots of new business in the West including mining, farming, and cattle ranching (Kivette 177). The colonial practices that encouraged a complete change in landscape and lifestyle by displacing the current ecosystems made the ideal conditions for cattle ranching to thrive. Cattle ranching had lots of potential because during the Civil War, the populations of cattle in Texas had gone unchecked and were now substantially large (Russel 6). The cattle were unbranded as well, making them easy targets for theft (Gard 1). Cattle are not suited for every climate, they require large grazing areas and moderate temperatures which can be seen throughout the central and northern plains, making it seemingly ideal for cattle ranches. (Kim 112). However, cattle also required moving each season to keep the grass plentiful and the cattle alive through the winter (Niedringhaus 18). This led to the development of a rotational grazing system for cattle ranches (Niedringhaus 20). Cattle ranching also requires immense amounts of resources to be brought in such as feed, laborers, ranching equipment, and more (Beef Checkoff 9). The ranching system along with many other emerging economic systems, all needed an efficient way to receive goods quickly- and the answer was the railroad system (Kinbacher 194). The Pacific Railroad Act in 1862 marked the creation of the largest rail system in the US, one that started construction in Omaha, Nebraska (Pacific Railroad Act). The formation of this railroad was the start of a new transportation method that accelerated the production and consumer market. The terminal end in Omaha meant numerous economic opportunities for development, and at one point in the mid-20th century Omaha had the largest stockyards in the country (Kivett 178). Once the basics of cattle ranching were understood and the optimal conditions were met, cattle ranching could flourish into the start of the 20th century. By the start of the 20th century, cattle ranching was an economic powerhouse, and all the kinks had worked out in order to create the most profit per carcass. In 1909 the US was producing 6,915 million pounds of beef alone each year and imported a mere 2 million (USDA). This mass production of meat was creating a sudden availability of red meat on the market, which made the everyday consumer more eager to consume red meat (Holecheck 119). The US kept up with the demand for red meat until the start of the first World War (Holecheck 118). The war meant less men to work, and more mouths to feed each day. This was the first time that the US decided to outsource their meat production and open the trade doors for the beef to come from non-domestic lands, in 1914 the US imported 328 million pounds of beef compared to 45 million pounds the year before (USDA). The importation of beef slowed down dramatically after the end of the first world war and the American government encouraged the consumer to buy from a local source and support their hometown (Hulse 681). Then came the second World War, and with it another loss of the working class, creating a lack of red meat on the market. And in response the United States had a second uptake in beef imports. In the final year of the war, 1945, the US imported 130 million pounds of beef, and the very next year only imported 20 million pounds (USDA). This lull in imports did not last long however, in 1958 the United States established trade routes with Australia, Canada, and many others. This was in order to establish a constant red meat supply to US consumers and that year imported 1,184 million pounds of beef (USDA). After the United States had created the precedent of getting their meat from somewhere else, they got used to letting someone else do the work for them. The United States shipped the process of red meat production globally, but the costs did not disappear. The costs were instead paid by the planet, and other less wealthy countries (Ritchie 4). The exportation of this process played a key role in the destruction of world's forests becoming graze lands, as the time period of 1900 to present was when 23% of all natural surviving forests surviving on earth were converted to agricultural land-including crops and grazing land (Ritchie 5). This led to the creation of a global food web, allowing consumers to eat a cow that was butchered all the way across the world for dinner and not know any different (Boucher 45). However ignorant the consumer may be, the costs of outsourcing are innumerable and environmentally deleterious. The impacts of a global food web are compounding, and the price tag when purchasing a package of red meat from the grocery store does not include how many trees were cut down in order to allow that cow to graze (Dubay 2). Now that food is no longer being consumed on a local scale, there are transportation emissions, refrigeration processes, and added preservation stops along the way that all create a negative effect on the environment (Dubay 3). This shift from locally sourced beef to global food webs created a massive impact on our planet that can be seen here in the US and all over the world. Even though we might not know that many specific history or details about this branding iron, we know that the branding iron symbolizes the cattle ranching industry and the effects that it has had on Omaha and global history. The popularity of the cattle ranching industry helped to put Omaha on the map due to the industry’s reliance on railroad systems like Union Pacific and it helped give Omaha some of the biggest stockyards in the country. Globally the cattle ranching industry spread once it essentially got too big for the United States, who turned to outsourcing to keep up with the demand for red meat. This outsourcing would have large effects on the global environment which can still be seen and added on to today. As the population grows the need for red meat most likely will too, which would logically mean that the global environment and therefore the Anthropocene will continue to be affected by cattle ranching, or in a way, the branding iron. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bridget Courtney Elise Gooding-Lord Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Act of May 20, 1862 (Homestead Act), Public Law 37-64 (12 STAT 392); 5/20/1862; Enrolled Acts and Resolutions of Congress, 1789 - 2011; General Records of the United States Government, Record Group 11; National Archives Building, Washington, DC. [Online Version, https://www.docsteach.org/documents/document/homestead-act, November 18, 2022] Act of July 1, 1862 (Pacific Railroad Act), (12 STAT 489); 7/1/1862; Enrolled Acts and Resolutions of Congress, 1789 - 2011; General Records of the United States Government, Record Group 11; National Archives Building, Washington, DC. Anderson, Bruce. “Grasslands and Forages of Nebraska.”Rangelands, vol. 21, no. 1, 1999, pp.5–8. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4001500. Accessed 6 Oct. 2022. Beef Checkoff. “Quality Care and Handling Guidelines.” Beef Quality Assurance. Boucher, Doug, et al. “Cattle and Pasture.” The Root of the Problem: What’s Driving Tropical Deforestation Today, Union of Concerned Scientists, 2011, pp. 41–49. http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep00075.11. Accessed 3 Nov. 2022. Dubay, Adrianna, et al. The Water Footprint of Livestock | Mathematics of Sustainability. 16 Sept. 2018, muse.union.edu/mth-063-01-f18/2018/09/16/the-water-footprint-of-livestock. Gard, Wayne. “The Impact of the Cattle Trails.” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, vol. 71, no. 1, 1967, pp. 1–6. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30237939. Accessed 3 Nov. 2022. Haggerty, J. H., M. Auger, and K. Epstein. "Ranching Sustainability in the Northern Great Plains: An Appraisal of Local Perspectives." Rangelands, vol. 40, no. 3, 2018, pp. 83-91. doi:10.1016/j.rala.2018.03.005. Hiller, Tim L., et al. “Long-Term Agricultural Land Use Trends in Nebraska, 1866—2007.” Great Plains Research, vol. 19, no. 2, 2009, pp. 225–37.http://www.jstor.org/stable/23780131. Accessed 3 Nov. 2022. Holechek, Jerry L., et al. “Macro Economics and Cattle Ranching.” Rangelands, vol. 16, no. 3, 1994, pp. 118–23. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4001044. Accessed 1 Nov. 2022. Hornaday, William Temple. The Extermination of the American Bison. United States, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1889. Hulse, David, and Robert Ribe. “Land Conversion and the Production of Wealth.” Ecological Applications, vol. 10, no. 3, 2000, pp. 679–82. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2641036. Accessed 1 Nov. 2022. Iverson, Peter. When Indians Became Cowboys: Native Peoples and Cattle Ranching in the American West. University of Oklahoma Press, 1994. Jordan, Terry G. “The Origin and Distribution of Open-Range Cattle Ranching.” Social Science Quarterly, vol. 53, no. 1, 1972, pp. 85-92. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42858856. Accessed 6 Oct. 2022. Jordan, Terry G. "Overemphasis of Texas as a Source of Western Cattle Ranching." (1992). Social Science Quarterly, vol. 53, no. 1, 1972, pp. 105–21. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42858856. Accessed 6 Oct. 2022. Kim, S., et al. “The Effect of Socioeconomic Factors on the Adoption of Best Management Practices in Beef Cattle Production.” Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, Soil and Water Conservation Society, 1 May 2005, https://www.jswconline.org/content/60/3/111/tab-article-info. Kivett, Marvin F. “The Nebraska State Historical Society.” History News, vol. 22, no. 8, 1967, pp. 177–79. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42646071. Accessed 1 Nov. 2022. “Livestock Brands.” Cowboy Showcase, https://www.cowboyshowcase.com/brands.html#.Y2MbUy-B06W. Lombard, Carol G., and Theodorus Du Plessis. “Beyond the Branding Iron: Cattle Brands as Heritage Place Names in the State of Montana.” Names, vol. 64, no. 4, 2016, pp. 224–233., https://doi.org/10.1080/00277738.2016.1223119. “Major Land Uses.” USDA ERS - Major Land Uses, https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/major-land-uses/. Makkar, H P S. “Review: Feed demand landscape and implications of food-not feed strategy for food security and climate change.” Animal : an international journal of animal bioscience vol. 12,8 (2018): 1744-1754. doi:10.1017/S175173111700324X Michno, Gregory. Encyclopedia of Indian Wars: Western Battles and Skirmishes, 1850-1890. Mountain Press Pub. Co., 2005. Niedringhaus, Lee I. “The N Bar N Ranch: A Legend of The Open-Range Cattle Industry 18 85-99.” Montana: The Magazine of Western History, vol. 60, no. 1, 2010, pp. 3–92. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25701715. Accessed 2 Nov. 2022. Potter, Lee Ann and Wynell Schamel. "The Homestead Act of 1862." Social Education 61, 6 (October 1997): 359-364. Pritzke, Frank. A Native American Encyclopedia: History, Culture, and Peoples. Oxford University Press, 2000. Ritchie, Hannah, and Max Roser. “Forests and Deforestation.” Our World in Data, 9 Feb. 2021, ourworldindata.org/forests-and-deforestation. Russell, John C. “Holding the Herd: Nelson Story’s 1866 Cattle Drive.” Montana: The Magazine of Western History, vol. 68, no. 4, 2018, pp. 4–92. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45200812. Accessed 1 Nov. 2022. Starrs, Paul F. Let the Cowboy Ride: Cattle Ranching in the American West. Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2000. “Texas Cattle Trade in Omaha.” History Nebraska, https://history.nebraska.gov/texas-cattle-trade-in-omaha/. Thornton, Philip K. “Livestock production: recent trends, future prospects.” Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences vol. 365,1554 (2010): 2853-67. doi:10.1098/rstb.2010.0134 Union of Concerned Scientists. Cattle, Cleared Forests, and Climate Change: Scoring America’s Top Brands on Their Deforestation-Free Beef Commitments and Practices. Union of Concerned Scientists, 2016. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep17253. Accessed 2 Nov. 2022. USDA ERS - Food Availability (per Capita) Data System. www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-availability-per-capita-data-system. USDA ERS - Livestock and Meat International Trade Data. www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/livestock-and-meat-international-trade-data/livestock-and-meat-international-trade-data. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The Durham Museum Permanent Collection https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/7375efb95df70f7b01747efc111e33ce.jpg c4697d493008abf101443b5bbef76916 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Mormon Camp Meeting, Council Bluffs Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource George Simons (1834-1917) Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Durham Museum Permanent Collection https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/6d670239a7f33476669c6956f5622e67.jpg 636f0f32972acfcb06dcc9ed4355569e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Mormon Trail. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hales, J. Rulon Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived David Rumsey Map Collection https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~290740~90062336:Mormon-Trail-?sort=Pub_List_No_InitialSort%2CPub_Date%2CPub_List_No%2CSeries_No&qvq=w4s:/what%2FPictorial%2Bmap;q:mormon%20trail;sort:Pub_List_No_InitialSort%2CPub_Date%2CPub_List_No%2CSeries_No;lc:RUMSEY~8~1&mi=1&trs=2# https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/347b34f5998affa5d69af9fd4dab42e7.png 3b8e80ca774aea24a509c624a4142ef9 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Detail (Mormon Camp Meeting, Council Bluffs) Subject The topic of the resource Handcarts depicted in Mormon Camp Meeting, Council Bluffs, by George Simons Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Durham Museum Permanent Collection Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Conquering Time and Space Subject The topic of the resource <div>Industrial Revolutions <img src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4704/39667361775_2e3264c4bf_o.jpg" 100="" width="100% height=" /> <a href="https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~24266~880086:-Birdseye-view-Great-Plains-#" title="Bird Eye View - Rumsey" target="_blank">Detail(Birdseye view Great Plains)Knight, Leonard & Co.,Engravers and Printers, Chicago. (1890) David Rumsey.com </a></div> Description An account of the resource Industrial revolutions fundamentally transformed the world’s social and economic order. Beginning in Great Britain in the eighteenth century, European empires expanded industrialization into a global phenomenon that created spectacular wealth and unprecedent power for western countries, but also led to new social conflict and increased the gap between rich and poor. Industrialization also led to profound changes in the global environment. Advances in transportation and telecommunications expanded the reach of industrial powers. The railroad and the telegraph allowed people to tap distant natural resources more quickly and efficiently than ever before. Contemporaries praised this “annihilation of time and space” and Omaha was central to this story. The first transcontinental telegraph began in Omaha and was completed in 1861. In 1863, the Union Pacific chose Omaha as the eastern terminus for the transcontinental railroad. By 1867, the United States had built the world’s largest railroad network, business leaders communicated from coast to coast, and Omaha stood at the center. As railroads and the telegraph shrank time and space, cities expanded. Streetcars promoted urban growth and the rise of the first suburbs. The objects in this section show rail and the telegraph reshaped environments during this era of industrialization. As you move through this section of the exhibit, consider how transportation and telecommunication connects Omaha to the wider world and to global environments today. Physical Object An inanimate, three-dimensional object or substance. Note that digital representations of, or surrogates for, these objects should use Moving Image, Still Image, Text or one of the other types. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Mormon Camp Meeting Painting Subject The topic of the resource In the early nineteenth century, people had to travel by foot or wagon to get to new places. During this time, Omaha and Council Bluffs became a settlement for pioneers traveling west. This painting illustrates one of these settlements on the Mormon Trail called the Winter Quarters. Likely painted between 1834-1917 by George Simons, it connects Omaha to migration. Trails have often been the pathway for the movement of people around the world. Migration redistributes both people and resources. It can bring new people and goods that can be helpful to local economies. Human mobility often introduces harmful new plants and animals to an area as well and migration contributes to global carbon emissions. This painting shows how important trails are to cities like Omaha. Even so, we shouldn't forget that how they create ecosystem changes that are harmful to the Anthropocene. Description An account of the resource When the word ‘migration’ comes to mind, one may think of animals traveling south for winter or people relocating to distant new lands, seeking refuge or opportunity. However, migration involves more than just the movement of people or animals. Its effects extend deeper, leaving an impact on the environment itself. The Mormon Trail is one such example of human migration that left a stark impact on the land. The trail, beginning in Nauvoo, Illinois, was the route people of the Mormon religion used to get to Salt Lake, Utah while fleeing religious persecution. From 1846 to 1868, over 15,000 Mormon migrants trekked across the 1,300 mile-long trail. The painting “Mormon Camp Meeting, Council Bluffs” by artist George Simons, depicts a stop along this trail and is representative of the social as well as environmental significance of this movement. (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/admin/files/show/237">Figure I</a>) The movement on the Mormon Trail is not unique: migration is omnipresent in human history and has been a constant in the human story. Migration contributes to the settlement of new countries and the exploration of foreign lands. This painting reminds viewers that the Anthropocene is more than a story of settlement, urbanization, and agriculture. The Mormon Trail represents all human migration and the effects it has on the global environment. Migration is not inherently good or bad on its own; however, the methods used for migration have had and continue to contribute negatively to the Anthropocene. Movement is an unusual object of environmental historical analysis, but images offer unique evidence of its significance. This painting depicts the Winter Quarters settlement of the Mormon Trail, which later became the cities Omaha and Council Bluffs. The settlement is split into two sections, divided by a stream or narrow river. Tents and covered wagons are depicted on the right side of the painting and are presumably the primary shelters used at this settlement. These dwellings are simple and representative of the few resources migrants have had. Animals are also depicted, often alongside the wagons they pull. These horses were vital for movement on the trail and without them the journey would have been longer and more arduous. Near some of the horses, are handcarts. While not as effective as animal-drawn transportation, handcarts were commonly used to transport smaller goods. The depictions of these tools highlight the elements necessary for all forms of land migration. Migration involves more elements than just the movement of people. The attire of the people depicted in the painting can also be associated with the values of these migrants. People are wearing formal attire, despite travelling and living modestly. Clearly the Mormons prioritized personal presentation more than communal presentation. Painting, as a medium, imitates the physical appearance of a scene, although it also presents the ideas associated with its subject. The painting is an interesting piece to look at on its own, but knowing the story behind the painting sheds a new light on what it is attempting to convey. The Mormon Camp shown in the painting is merely a small snapshot of a much bigger picture, for Council Bluffs was just a stop along the way for the Mormons. The painting was produced by a well-known artist to the area, George Simons, and represents a time sometime between 1834 and 1917. It is based off sketches Simons made while documenting the Mormon exodus. Simons arrived in Council Bluffs between 1849 and 1855, when the region was known as Kanesville (Gregory, 16). The physical state of the artwork today helps convey its age—the paint is beginning to crack and fade over the canvas. These works of art help give a visual record of what Omaha and Council Bluffs may have looked like at the time. Eventually, his painting, Mormon Camp Meeting, Council Bluffs, ended up in possession of the Durham Museum in Omaha. The exact timeframe of the painting’s creation is unknown. A rough range of dates is limited only by Simons’ own lifespan (1834-1917), and the time of the subject depicted: the Mormon Trail (1846-1868). Mormonism took root far east of Council Bluffs, in upstate New York. There, a religious leader, Joseph Smith (December 1805 – June 1844), claimed to have received a set of golden plates from an angel, from which he wrote the Book of Mormon in 1830 and founded the Church of the Latter Day Saints (Pierce, 6-7). Persecution forced the Mormons west, to Nauvoo, where they stayed until 1844, when Smith was murdered. Smith’s successor, Brigham Young, soon decided that the Mormons should yet again migrate west, this time to the Great Salt Lake, in what would later become Utah. Throughout global history, persecuted groups have been forced to uproot themselves and to migrate to safer locations. Migration is difficult and potentially deadly, but for many groups it is a necessity for their survival, and while many people in the 19th century regarded the Mormons as little more than nuisances, they could not deny the importance of the Mormons’ migration westward. (Cosmopolitan Art Journal, 82). The Mormons acted as pioneers, laying the road for others outside the Mormon religion to travel into the vast regions of the largely unknown Western United States. The 1,300-mile-long migration along the Mormon Trail began in 1846, taking the Mormons west through Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming and finally to Utah. (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/admin/files/show/238">Figure 2</a>). The journey was treacherous, and many perished along the way. In some places, the Mormon Trail overlapped with the Oregon Trail, but other than that, there were no roads to follow, nor any cities or towns where the weary Mormons could stop or rest. They slept in tents and wagons, and there was “only the wreckage—the remains of camps—the bones of animals and men” who had died before them along the trail to mark the way (White, 24). Food was often hard to come by and the lack of sustenance had disastrous results for health and morale. By the time the Winter Quarters were abandoned, and the Mormons continued their migration west, over seven hundred graves were left behind at the Winter Quarters, and along the trail, families had little more than wagons as shelter, many children “were born and died in these tents of misery” (Cosmopolitan Art Journal, 82). “[We were] wearied and worn down, the bones almost through the skin, not only of myself but of all that were in the company...I never was so hungry in my life. My children cry with hunger and it grieves me and makes me cross,” (Aitken). However, some migrants found value within their suffering:  “When we got on top of the mountain it was the potis seanry that I ever saw in my lif...Hear was a little lake and it was very Clar and cold. Thar was fish but I had lost my hooks and lines so I Codent ketch any of them. Hear was timbor of all kinds of the fir kind and whar I was I cod see wone montan below a nother and Coverd with timber and it was the purtis seanry I evver saw. This sit pad me for my hardship,” (Clark). Nearly 42,000 people made the journey on the Mormon-Carson (Council Bluffs to San Diego) section of the trail in 1850 alone (Owens, 16). The main ways that people moved along the Mormon Trail were by foot, wagon, and handcart (each of which were depicted in the Simons’ painting). (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/admin/files/show/239">Figure III</a>) For nearly 20 years, Mormon migrants traveled along the trail, forcing them to find creative ways to bring the goods necessary to establish settlements. Walking proved ineffective when it came to carrying goods, but handcarts and wagons proved substantially more efficient. Prior to 1855, Brigham Young instructed his followers to use covered wagons to transport goods (Bagley, 54). While these wagons provided shelter, carried more goods, and did not require human labor, they did have some shortcomings. Wagons required beasts of burden, which were expensive and required care and occasionally replacement. Most livestock did not survive the 1,300-mile trek and replacements did not come cheap or quickly. Covered wagons were also expensive and took a long time to build. To solve these problems, Brigham Young and Robert Campbell implemented the “Handcart Plan,” (Bagley, 58). The Handcart Plan is especially relevant to the painting because Campbell suggested the plan to Young in a letter from Kanesville—the setting of the painting. It was also written in the period when Simons may have sketched the camp for his painting, which can clearly be seen in Figure 2 (Bagley, 58). In the letter, Campbell quoted a Mormon traveler in Kanesville who described handcarts as “the fulfillment of a Mormon prophecy,” (Bagley, 58). In June of 1956, Brigham Young instructed the construction of over 10,000 handcarts, which were produced in Iowa City (Bagley, 67). While these handcarts were cheaper to produce, the manufacturers in Iowa City could not keep up with their high demand, forcing some trail-goers to wait over a month to receive them (Bagley, 70). Handcarts turned out to be very unpopular among users, due to the physical labor required to use them and their limited carrying capacity. People often died of fatigue while using handcarts, with one handcart captain describing the devices as “two wheeled instruments of torture,” (Bagley, 78). While individual experiences along the Mormon Trail were unique, the impact of migration on the surrounding environment was largely negative. In fact, the environmental impact of trails and other forms of mass migration has had an overall negative effect on the biotic and abiotic materials surrounding areas used for migration. Once the Mormons reached their destination, the migrations did not end. With no one to evict or persecute the Mormons in Utah, they flourished, but this eventually led to a crisis of overpopulation. People were continuing to come, which caused problems for Utah’s agricultural environment. With the abundance of people, too much land was being taken up to support the number of workers. The younger people, who did not have a stake on a plot of land, had to move farther and farther away to support themselves (Sherlock, 54). Aside from a boom in agriculture, the increasing number of people in Utah catalyzed industrialization. These are both major themes in the Anthropocene and illustrate just how big of an impact this religious community’s journeys had. The Mormon Trail played a role in migrations outside of the Mormon religion as well. From 1849 to 1852, Kanesville became the most used departure point for the California Gold Rush than anywhere else along the Missouri River (Hartley, 38). When news of gold in California spread, people came from far and wide to partake in the Gold Rush. Council Bluffs became a center for commerce. Thousands of people swarmed the area, buying out the Mormons’ wagons and supplies so they could head West. This reminds us that movement and settlement were inextricably intertwined historical processes in western migration. The painting, Mormon Camp Meeting, Council Bluffs, and the story of migration it depicts, does have important historical contexts. The global theme of migration, specifically rural to urban migration, has had a particularly significant impact to the Anthropocene. Historically, many populations have moved from rural countries to urban cities. <a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/admin/files/show/240">Figure 4</a> illustrates the move from more rural countries in the Americas to the more urban countries in North America (Meyerson, 185). Urbanization can be a positive thing because “it moves population growth away from rural and protected areas.” However, “it can also increase per capita demand for energy, material goods and services, since migrants to cities often become more affluent and consume more resources,” (Meyerson, 184). The Anthropocene is often characterized as the epoch triggered by human activity. Urbanization may not have been the catalyst of the Anthropocene, but has left its mark via negative human contribution to the environment, including unhealthy water, soil, and air pollution levels (Meyerson, 185). The global population is expected to increase by 3 billion by 2050 (O'Neill et al, 1). This population growth will impact urban areas more, where “urbanization can substantially influence emissions,” (O'Neill et al, 1). Global population growth and urbanization is already projected to increase and will thus have increasingly negative impacts on the environment. Human migration/movement had distinct environmental impacts too. The mechanical and human movement on the trail compacted the soil, which continues to have an impact on the environment today, specifically in ways that contribute to climate change. A survey conducted on the Iowa portion of the Mormon Trail, stretching from Montrose, Iowa to Council Bluffs, found that though the trail has been relatively untouched since its original use, the soil remains compacted from the traffic it once endured 150 years ago (Brevik, 137-138). This revelation carries importance because compacted soil loses the organic matter it usually contains, which plays a role in removing CO2 from the atmosphere (Brevik, 137). Higher amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere increase average global temperature, contributing to the Greenhouse Effect (Brevik, 137).  This study provides direct evidence that human trail migration contributes to climate change. Though the study was conducted exclusively on the Mormon Trail, the effects of soil compaction can be found in trail systems worldwide. The study did not consider untrodden soil—the authors only note that it was a mass land migration on this route that created permanent compaction. This implies that any form of land migration involving people following an exact route will compact the soil on the path. As early as the agricultural revolution, when humans had the means to travel independently with animal herds, trails would become the predominant method of transportation, suggesting that land migration—from the Silk Road or simple walking trails used today—compacts soil, removing mass amounts of organic matter over time, thus worsening human induced climate change over time. Another study found that, more recently, the creation of alkaline paved roads and trails are “the main cause of changes along roads in the area and indicate the leading role of water transport in the soil and consequent vegetation alteration,” (Müllerova, 3839). Changes to the environment were found to be especially threatening to “rare and protected species,” (Müllerova, 3847). The process in which alkaline gravel impacts the surrounding environment can be found in <a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/admin/files/show/241">Figure 5</a>. While the damage has already been done, the study also finds hope, saying “The National Park authorities started to reconstruct the trails, although recovery is expected to be slow,” (Müllerova, 3839). Unfortunately, while park trails are halting the harmful use of alkaline, the worldwide use of pavement for roads is a larger problem to tackle. The painting, Mormon Camp Meeting, Council Bluffs, illustrates just a small piece of a greater story: one of migration and the environmental impacts that characterize the Anthropocene. Human migration changes not just the people who migrate, but the earth itself. The Mormons, and all those who migrate, can teach future generations about the impacts it has on the earth being tread underfoot. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Cassi Adams Laura Gagnon Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Aitken, William. “Adventures of a Mormon,” London Advertiser. (1957) Anson, Clark.  “Recollections of his Journey from Ohio, to California in 1850, with his Experiences in the Mines,” Bancroft Library. Bagley, Will. ""One Long Funeral March": A  Revisionist's View of the Mormon Handcart Disasters." Journal of Mormon History 35, no. 1 (2009): 50-115. Ball, Terry, and Brotherson, Jack. "Environmental Lessons from Our Pioneer Heritage." BYU Studies Quarterly 38, no. 3 (July 7, 1999). Bennett, Richard Edmond. Mormons at the Missouri: A History of the Latter-Day Saints at Winter Quarters and at Kanesville, 1846-52: A Study in American Overland Trail Migration. 80-81. Brevik, E., T. Fenton, and L. Moran. "Effect of Soil Compaction on Organic Carbon Amounts and Distribution, South-Central Iowa." Environmental Pollution 116 (2002): Environmental Pollution, 2002, Vol.116. Gregory, Katie. "The Art of George Simons." Nauvoo Journal, 1997, 16-24. Halon, Rules. Mormon Trail [Map]. 1947. David Rumsey Map Collection.<a href="https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~290740~90062336:M">https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~290740~90062336:M</a>ormon-Trail Hartley, William G. "Council Bluffs/Kanesville, Iowa: A Hub for Mormon Settlements, Operations, and Emigration, 1846-1852." The John Whitmer Historical Association Journal 26 (2006): 17-47.<a href="http://www.jstor.org.cuhsl.creighton.edu/stable/43200235"> </a> Kimball, Stanley B. "Mormon Trail Network in Nebraska, 1846-1868: A New Look." Brigham Young University Studies 24, no. 3 (1984): 321-36. McOwen, Micah J. B. "An Earth Used with Judgment, Not to Excess: Distilling a Mormon Approach to Environmental Law." Journal of Law and Religion 23, no. 2 (2007): 673- Meyerson, Frederick A. B., Leticia Merino, and Jorge Durand. "Migration and Environment in the Context of Globalization." Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 5, no. 4 (2007): 182-90.<a href="http://www.jstor.org.cuhsl.creighton.edu/stable/20440620"> </a> Müllerová, Vítková, and Vítek. "The Impacts of Road and Walking Trails upon Adjacent Vegetation: Effects of Road Building Materials on Species Composition in a Nutrient Poor Environment." Science of the Total Environment 409, no. 19 (2011): 3839-849. O'Neill, Brian C., Michael Dalton, Regina Fuchs, Leiwen Jiang, Shonali Pachauri, and Katarina Zigova. "Global Demographic Trends and Future Carbon Emissions." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America107, no. 41 (2010): 17521- Owens, Kenneth N. "The Mormon-Carson Emigrant Trail in Western History." Montana: The Magazine of Western History 42, no. 1 (1992): 14-27. Pierce, Perry Benjamin. "The Origin of the “Book of Mormon”." American Anthropologist 1, no. 4 (1899): 675-94. Sherlock, Richard. "Mormon Migration and Settlement after 1875." Journal of Mormon History 2 (1975): 53-68.<a href="http://www.jstor.org.cuhsl.creighton.edu/stable/23286028"> </a> Van Dyke, Judge Walter. "Overland to Los Angeles, By the Salt Lake Route in 1849." Annual            Publication of the Historical Society of Southern California, Los Angeles 3, no. 2 (1894): 76-83. "Views from the Top of a Bluff." Cosmopolitan Art Journal 2, no. 2/3 (1858): 82-84. White, Hiram F. "The Mormon Road." The Washington Historical Quarterly 6, no. 4 (1915): 243-50.<a href="http://www.jstor.org.cuhsl.creighton.edu/stable/40474465"> </a> Woods, Thomas A. "Nature within History: Using Environmental History to Interpret Historic Sites." History News 52, no. 3 (1997): 5-8. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1849-1855 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The Durham Museum Permanent Collection Greenhouse Gasses Migration Mormon Overland Trails https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/3f7b186c786c8d614843ad7859b12ee3.jpg 828e670e8dba4022bfc106e7b5f37403 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Standard Clock Subject The topic of the resource The outside of the Self Winding Standard Clock that hung in Omaha’s Union Station. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Durham Museum Permanent Collection https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/221015c8c243ff4c04afca384c5c791e.jpg 1cb0072459e9e9b60f4055a00ae37a4e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Standard Clock Description An account of the resource The inside the Self Winding Standard Clock that hung in Omaha’s Union Station. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Durham Museum Permanent Collection https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/60c58aa3a526a9fa75cd6c32b2db83ef.png 3df80d36ee0363a32ef0bdb5bdf39e96 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figure 3: Per Capita Income in Nebraska in 1880 Description An account of the resource Per Capita Income in Nebraska in 1880 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Hanson, Killeen, et al. “Per Capita Income in the United States: 1880-1910.” Spatial History Project, 2018, web.stanford.edu/group/spatialhistory/cgi-bin/site/viz.php?id=265&project_id=0. https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/650a3201d0dc9bd81288f2211594c291.png 458fc07c6c880cd81814bab7448365c0 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figure 4: The rise in China’s GDP from 2013 to 2017 Description An account of the resource Figure 4: This graph depicts the rise in China’s GDP from 2013 to 2017. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived GDP (Current US$). The World Bank, 2018, data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?end=2017&locations=CN&start=2013. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Conquering Time and Space Subject The topic of the resource <div>Industrial Revolutions <img src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4704/39667361775_2e3264c4bf_o.jpg" 100="" width="100% height=" /> <a href="https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~24266~880086:-Birdseye-view-Great-Plains-#" title="Bird Eye View - Rumsey" target="_blank">Detail(Birdseye view Great Plains)Knight, Leonard & Co.,Engravers and Printers, Chicago. (1890) David Rumsey.com </a></div> Description An account of the resource Industrial revolutions fundamentally transformed the world’s social and economic order. Beginning in Great Britain in the eighteenth century, European empires expanded industrialization into a global phenomenon that created spectacular wealth and unprecedent power for western countries, but also led to new social conflict and increased the gap between rich and poor. Industrialization also led to profound changes in the global environment. Advances in transportation and telecommunications expanded the reach of industrial powers. The railroad and the telegraph allowed people to tap distant natural resources more quickly and efficiently than ever before. Contemporaries praised this “annihilation of time and space” and Omaha was central to this story. The first transcontinental telegraph began in Omaha and was completed in 1861. In 1863, the Union Pacific chose Omaha as the eastern terminus for the transcontinental railroad. By 1867, the United States had built the world’s largest railroad network, business leaders communicated from coast to coast, and Omaha stood at the center. As railroads and the telegraph shrank time and space, cities expanded. Streetcars promoted urban growth and the rise of the first suburbs. The objects in this section show rail and the telegraph reshaped environments during this era of industrialization. As you move through this section of the exhibit, consider how transportation and telecommunication connects Omaha to the wider world and to global environments today. Physical Object An inanimate, three-dimensional object or substance. Note that digital representations of, or surrogates for, these objects should use Moving Image, Still Image, Text or one of the other types. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Railroad Clock Subject The topic of the resource The Standard Clock was made by the Self Winding Clock Company. This clock was used by the Union Pacific Railroad as the official clock by which workers would set their watches. Time used to be different in different cities until companies created the standard time we use today. This clock shows how standard time was able to help trains run more quickly, allowing for the smooth movement of trains. Railroads played a big role in Omaha’s history. The Union Pacific rail lines that ran through Omaha brought more money and made the city grow quicker. This made Omaha’s environmental footprint larger. While the Union Pacific railroad allowed for the growth of cities like Omaha, similar growth can be seen around the world. The railroad has created growth in countries like China and Japan. While trains once created growth while hurting the environment it can now help to solve these problems. Description An account of the resource At first glance it may not be clear exactly how a clock fits into the concept of the Anthropocene. This is not an ordinary clock, however. It is a Union Pacific standard time clock. This clock was used by Union Pacific Railroad to help keep trains running smoothly and efficiently in and out of Omaha, Nebraska. The standard clock reveals the role played by the railroad in Omaha’s urban development. The clock provided a standard measure for which time was to be set all over America, not solely in Omaha. It represented the industrial and commercial standardization of time and could be easily translated to the different time zones around America and around the world. The standardization of time allowed railroads and industries to run at peak efficiency and consume natural resources quicker. It also increased the negative environmental consequences of those activities.  Time itself is a subject of fundamental interest in Anthropocene discourse. In a narrow, stratigraphical sense, the concept signifies a new division of geological time. The Union Pacific Railroad Clock demonstrates how the social construction of standard time reshaped humanity’s relationship with nature. Our object, the Standard Clock, was created by the Self Winding Clock Company for use by Union Pacific Railroad. (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/admin/files/show/259">Figure I</a>, <a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/admin/files/show/260">Figure II</a>) It hung in the telegraph office of Omaha’s Union Station until the station closed in 1971. The clock served as the official clock by which workers would set their watches. Clocks like this would have enabled the train station to run at peak efficiency and allow for smooth movement of trains in and out of the station. Telling the history of standard time and the railroads in Omaha would not be complete without a discussion of Union Pacific. Headquartered in Omaha, the Union Pacific was one of the largest railroad companies in America during the 19th century. It played a major role in the history of Omaha. In 1862, Thomas Durant, the first vice president and general manager of Union Pacific, persuaded President Abraham Lincoln to make Omaha the eastern terminus of the transcontinental railroad. The first rail of the track was laid on July 10, 1865 and would signal the beginning of Omaha’s urban history. After the passage of the Homestead Act in 1863, “settlers and immigrants poured into the area… and today this vibrant city has a population of nearly 500,000” (Union Pacific, 2018). Between the years 1880 and 1910 Nebraska’s per capita income increased from about $150 to a little over $300 (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/admin/files/show/266">Figure III</a> and<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/admin/files/show/267"> IV</a>). Omaha became a bustling railroad town, but like other cities, it kept its own local time. Before standard time, railroad time used the local times of major cities. This was known as local solar time. For example, noon in Kansas City was just when the sun was over head. Local solar time was “a group of unrelated times...there was no ‘system’” (Bartky, 28). There was no way to coordinate all these times and make sense of them. As industry grew and more trains were on the rails this combination of local times was no longer safe or efficient. Railroad companies required a more accurate means of timekeeping. “Railroads were particularly interested in accurate timekeeping for the safe running of trains and for scheduling time tables. Slowly, a network of railroad regional times replaced a hodge podge of local times” (Levinson, 10). A growing consensus emerged among railroads companies that there needed to be a single time in order to increase safety and efficiency. Local time was no longer something that was feasible. So, “on Nov. 18, 1883, the country's railroad magnates, acting on the theory that they needed provisional time zones to coordinate their train schedules” created Standard Railroad Time and in essence “seized control of the hands of time itself” (Feuer, 26). The railroads demonstrated the significance of time-related values regarding the speed and effectiveness of productivity. “In 1873, there were over seventy regional railroad times across the United States. By 1883, the railroad industry implemented a system of five distinct time zones in North America-Intercolonial (now Atlantic), Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific” (Levinson, 13). (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/admin/files/show/265">Figure V</a>) Such concepts of time were seen not only in the United States but in other regions throughout the world. It would take a while for Standard Railroad Time to be adopted across America. In 1918, the New York Central Railroad petitioned Congress and the Standard Time Act was passed. This enacted into law railroads’ time zones as the standard way to measure time across America.   Like other industrial cities in America and abroad, Omaha would eventually come to adopt standard time and use clocks such as ours to keep time. Time keeping became a standardized process on the global scale. This global standard time would even come to impact Creighton University. Father Rigge kept two clocks in the observatory on campus in order to record the time with the utmost precision. In order to keep the time accurate “Western Union Telegraph Company sent the beats of the clock of the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., to our Observatory on every week day at 11 A.M., from January 1887 to about the end of 1894” (Rigge, 88). The advent of railroads and standard time was causing Omaha to become a more globally interlinked city than in previous years. Railroads had a hand in helping to redefine Omaha as a global city, connected via transportation networks to distant locations.   The influences of the railroad on urban industrialization was a global phenomenon. While the Union Pacific railroad allowed for the rapid industrialization of cities like Omaha, similar transformation took place in states around the world. In 1884, Greenwich Mean Time was adopted internationally. This standardization of time increased the efficiency of international business and commerce while creating a globalized interconnectivity between countries. Figure VI shows the rapid growth in China’s GDP over a period of five years. (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/admin/files/show/268">Figure VI</a>) While China’s growth in GDP can be attributed to several factors, this increase is due in part to the development of the railroad throughout the nation. Due to the development of railroads, China was able to conduct commerce with countries that were otherwise inaccessible, greatly increasing China’s GDP. China invested in railways, which provided an increase in their railroads represented by an acceleration of industry across the world. It “marked a decisive break with all previous history. They were faster than the fastest horse and carriage or the fastest dispatch rider...however different the cultural reactions and modes of employment, the effects of rail travel were in principle the same all over the world” (Osterhammel, 74). The time it took to transport raw materials and products was greatly reduced thanks to the introduction of a much quicker mode of transportation. The adoption of Greenwich time across the world “increased the efficiency of international business” and “enabled administrative services to be co-ordinated too” (Ogle, 76). Asia was one such area where this effect was felt. From the years 1870-1911, China and Japan implemented the railroad at two very different rates. Japan implemented railroad technologies very rapidly and effectively. China resisted this movement due to backlash from more rural communities wanting to maintain traditional values. “The Meiji government justified the early adoption of railroad technology by appealing to the technology’s economic modernization effects” (Schmid, 571). The rapid innovation and implementation of the railroad within Japan created economic growth for the nation. At the same time, it allowed for increased modernization of urban settings. In China, the nation hesitated with investing in such technologies because “the Chinese leadership anticipated that the introduction of railroads would also have significant negative consequences” (Schmid, 572). While China was hesitant, Japan industrialized rapidly, showing the significance and impact of the railroad in the development of cities. By the early twentieth century, railroads were a global phenomenon and evidence of the spread of Western industrial power. The standard time of railroads has had a clear impact throughout history, especially during the Second Industrial Revolution. While trains ceased to be the common mode of transportation in the 21st century the effects of this earlier period of history are still important to societies today. The connections established and solidified during the nineteenth century have expanded into the 21st century. One can scarcely imagine globalized interconnectivity and commerce without a standardized measure of time. The environmental impacts of globalization are diverse, but can be most directly observed in climate change.   One of the most prevalent areas where time is felt in today’s society is climate change. By the year 2000 the IPCC reported that “global average temperatures had risen...by about 0.8℃ since the beginning of the 20th century” and “there is little doubt that this is because of human activities” (Aldrich, 31). The most alarming part is the rate at which this change is taking place. It is having a major effect on our ecosystems. Earth’s ecosystems run on a biological clock. All living things have “biological timing, the timekeeping in living organisms, in plants, and in animals including people” (Binkley, 4). However, human effects on the environment have distorted the timing of nature’s biological clock. Over the last 50 years plants in the Royal Botanic Gardens have begun blooming six days earlier and “in western Canada the aspen is blooming 26 days earlier than a century ago” (Aldrich, 32). Animal wildlife is also being affected. Migratory birds are arriving north earlier and leaving later in the fall. The acceleration of industries via railroads has had a major impact on the biological timing of the environment. The rise in industries has led to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions due to corporate activities. In the UK, supermarkets “may be responsible for up to 10% of emissions” (Sullivan and Gouldson, 733). However, companies are working to reduce this. Between “2000–2010, UK supermarkets invested significant resources in reducing their emissions through improving building and transport energy efficiency, reducing refrigerant losses and increasing the use of renewable energy” (Sullivan and Gouldson, 733). UK based supermarkets have already started seeing improved operational efficiency. These finding show that “larger companies have the potential to achieve long-term sustained reductions in emissions, but...achieving these benefits requires a continual focus on developing and testing new technologies” (Sullivan and Gouldson, 739). The Anthropocene is not a hopeless cause, there are many solutions being proposed to help reduce the negative impact of humans on the environment. Another solution that has been discussed is increasing the presence and utilization of railroads within modern societies to lessen the carbon emissions contributing to climate change. It is somewhat ironic that the railroad, a major agent in the industrialization that created current climate issues, is now being utilized to combat such environmental  issues. In terms of releasing carbon emission, the transportation industry is a large contributor. Implementing low-carbon emission innovations in the transportation industry will greatly cut the world’s carbon emissions. “The total CO2 emissions of highway freight transportation is 7.89-10.45 times more than that of railway freight transportation.” (Boliang, 97). To put this into perspective, if just 10% of highway freight was instead transported via railway, 22 million tons of carbon emissions would be prevented from entering the atmosphere (Boliang, 97). While the railroad has helped urbanize and industrialize both the United States and other global nations, it also provides an opportunity for resolving the modern issues of excessive carbon emissions. Railroads and the adoption of standard time has had a major impact on Omaha’s local history, global history, and development of the Anthropocene. Union Pacific, an Omaha based company, connects Nebraska to the rest of America. The Union Pacific Standard Clock stewarded this industrial integration into the present and promoted the accelerated growth of industries all over the world. This growth has had harmful effects on our climate and environment but the story is not just a negative one. Railroads also provide a possible solution for the future. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Charlie Clarke Thomas Haggstrom Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived "The Great Race to Promontory: The 150th Anniversary of Driving the Golden Spike." Accessed November 5, 2018.<a href="https://www.up.com/goldenspike/index.html"> https://www.up.com/goldenspike/index.html</a>.  Aldrich, Tim. About Time Speed, Society, People and the Environment, edited by Aldrich, Tim E., Will Hutton. Sheffield: Sheffield : Greenleaf Pub, 2005.  Bartky, Ian. "The Adoption of Standard Time." Technology and Culture 30, no. 1 (1989): 25.  Binkley, Sue. Biological Clocks: Your Owners Manual. Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997.  Boliang, Lin, Chang Liu, and Huijun Wang. "Modeling the Railway Network Design Problem: A Novel Approach to considering Carbon Emissions Reduction." Transportation Research Part D56 (2017): 95-109.  Levinson, Martin H. Time-Binding Time: A History of Time-Measurement and Time-Management in America, April 2014, 1-11.  Ogle, Vanessa. The Global Transformation of Time : 1870-1950 Cambridge, Massachusetts; London, England : Harvard University Press, 2015.  Osterhammel, Jürgen. The Transformation of the World : A Global History of the Nineteenth Century, edited by Camiller, Patrick Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2014.  Rigge, William F. Memoirs, edited by David E. Crawford, Stefanie Lierz February 1, 2008.  Schmid, Jon, and Jonathan Huang. "State Adoption of Transformative Technology: Early Railroad Adoption in China and Japan." International Studies Quarterly 61 (2017): 570-83.  Sullivan, Rory, and Gouldson, Andy. "Ten Years of Corporate Action on Climate Change: What Do We Have to Show for It?" Energy Policy 60 (2013): 733-40. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The Durham Museum Permanent Collection Self Winding Standard Clock Standardization Time Union Pacific