How did European colonization impact the Highlands?
Gates: The whole Highlands region was developed for its geology. It was developed because it had iron deposits. All the way back from colonial times people went around and found these iron deposits and started mining in them. And there are literally hundreds of mines in the Highlands regions where they removed magnetite. It was largest source of iron in the continental United States, from the Revolution all the way up through the Civil War, that’s where most of the iron came up from, for the United States. So the region became a warren of these mine systems, so they could be able to extract this magnetite ore. The problem is, in those days we didn’t have an EPA to govern what we were going to do, therefore everything turned into an absolute mess. There were no trees. There were no animals. There was nothing up there at the time. There were polluted lakes, and there was polluted air. It was a mess. Q. Why was mining so detrimental to the landscape? Gates: Normally when you do iron minin
