Mining for experience: the new American boomtown

Abstract

This thesis will explore the ways that Old American West and the New American West work in tandem to continue to define this region through the analysis of circuit-like capital accumulation. The connection between old and new will be analyzed through Western Mountain towns such as Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Bozeman, Montana, and Telluride Colorado to flush out this survey. Ultimately the argument presented here will leave the reader with a more complete understanding of how cyclical capital accumulation acts as an infinite metric to grasp the occurrences of both the Old and New American West.