Lee Scamehorn. High Altitude Energy: A History of Fossil Fuels in Colorado. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2002. xvi +232 pp. ISBN 0-87081-661-6, $27.50.
High Altitude Energy explores the history of natural resource extraction in Colorado from 1860 to the present. The contexts for the book are the energy crises of the 1970s: Lee Scamehorn undertook this well-researched study in order to understand them. The work falls somewhat short, however, in using its narrative to explain why America has been faced with recurring challenges to meet its energy needs. Rather, it delivers a focused and largely descriptive account of the development of Colorado's mineral resources that in many respects will serve as an encyclopedia of one state's modern energy development.
The organization of the book privileges description over analysis. Arranged both topically (by natural resource) and chronologically, the first four chapters treat coal, coke, crude oil, and natural gas production, respectively, from the late nineteenth century to 1930. The next three address coal, petroleum, and natural gas, in turn, during the period from 1930 to the onset of the energy crisis in 1973. A separate chapter explains efforts related to the production of synthetic fuels, from 1917 to 1973. The penultimate chapter considers all forms of natural resource extraction during the period of energy crisis, 1973-1985. The conclusion deals with recent developments. In the last three chapters, which provide much more context in terms of national energy development and policy trends than the earlier ones, Scamehorn focuses on the links between Colorado energy development and the exogenous national and international factors that shape it. Still, High Altitude Energy does not effectively use state and local history to shed light on critical socioeconomic and natural environmental impacts and policy issues. Rather, the author simply sets the narrative in the context of national and international developments. Thus the description of developments at the state level provides little additional insight into why America experienced the energy crises of the 1970s. [End Page 156]
Even so, High Altitude Energy offers the student of natural resource extraction a rich compendium of firms and individuals involved in Colorado's energy production. As someone who recently was contracted to inventory and study the firms that engaged in crude oil extraction in California's coastal region from 1950 to the present, this reviewer was pleased to learn new information about several Denver-based firms that operated in the coastal area during the 1970s and 1980s. Scamehorn also provides ample and illuminating descriptions of many extraction processes and the technologies that supported them. Numerous figures and photographs supplement the narrative.
At the same time, the amount of detail detracts from the book's readability. A bewildering number of firms and individuals make brief appearances on the pages of High Altitude Energy, but little analysis is offered of the firms as business enterprises or of the industries in which they participated. Further, there are no humanizing episodes or quotations that might have added insight into the thinking of the many entrepreneurs, executives, and investors whose decisions determined the character of local natural resource extraction. Too many paragraphs simply relate statistical data that would have been better placed in tables or charts. At the same time, far too few data are provided that compare Colorado in terms of production, wells, mines, or number and size of firms, to other energy-producing states.
The editorial decision to provide readers with a bibliographical essay
in lieu of endnotes and a comprehensive bibliography somewhat limits
the usefulness of the text as a reference resource for students of
business history. Thus, for all of the detail provided in the narrative,
there is a lack of corresponding documentation to support further
research. For example, Scamehorn describes in detail the statewide
coal miners' strike of 1913-1914, which included the so-called Ludlow
massacre of April 20, 1914. Though the author researched the papers of
Colorado Fuel & Iron Company president Jesse F. Welborn, who served as
the firm's spokesperson during the strike, the reader not already well
versed in the history of the labor action will be unable to discern
what is new in this account, as no material is specifically linked to
the archival sources. The bibliographical essay makes it clear that
Scamehorn consulted many sources for his study, but the lack of detailed
documentation limits the extent to which readers can rely on the book
alone as a guide to pursuing additional research on any of the events,
businesses, industries, and individuals that the work describes.
Michael R. Adamson
Sonoma State University
