Mining rushes spawn camps so lawless that vigilante committees become necessary.

Evidence

At last we got through, and I beheld, with some sadness, the goal of my journey, “The Great Divide,” the Snowy Range, and between me and it South Park, a rolling prairie seventy-five miles long and over 10,000 feet high, treeless, bounded by mountains, and so rich in sun-cured hay that one might fancy that all the herds of Colorado could find pasture there. Its chief center is the rough mining town of Fairplay, but there are rumors of great mineral wealth in various quarters. The region has been “rushed,” and mining camps have risen at Alma and elsewhere, so lawless and brutal that vigilance committees are forming as a matter of necessity. — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 191

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: vigilantism as the predictable immune response of isolated resource booms, using South Park’s 1870s camps as the case study.