Every settled landscape has its own history of the way in which its occupants have interacted with their natural surroundings. In many locations this interaction has resulted in enhancement, while at others it has brought about deterioration.' Thus, all these physical settings have undergone varying degrees of usually permanent change, and some form of technology often has played a role. Especially interesting in this regard is the history of the Copper Basin, located in the southern Appalachian Mountains and long important for its copper mining and smelting. Around the turn of the century, this activity had such a large-scale, injurious, and enduring impact on this isolated locale's environment that the area became a landmark of sorts. Travelers went out of their way to see it. For decades and until as recently as the early 1980s, it continued to be one of the most unusual and most maligned industrial landscapes in the United States.2 From the perspective of relationships between people and nature in general and between industry and environment in particular, the Copper Basin provides a case study with an importance that is certainly national and perhaps even international. Despite this fact and with the exception of my own recent work, nowhere in the journal literature can one find articles providing more