**Follows Chapter 18 and 16 in “The American Yawp” **(http://www.americanyawp.com/)
**Utilizes Mabel Barbee Lee, “Cripple Creek Days”**
Prompt:
We tend to think of American industrialization as a phenomenon located in the northeastern quadrant of the United States, today’s “rust belt” running west from New York to Chicago, but the fact is that mining, not farming and ranching dominated the economy of many western states, contrary to the myth of the six-gun West popularized by dime novels and western films. Colorado was one. And Mabel Barbee Lee wrote a memoir of growing up in one, Cripple Creek, which she memorialized in Cripple Creek Days.
Write a review of Mabel Barbee Lee’s title Cripple Creek Days, a book about life in one of the world’s most famous and important mining towns of the late 19th and early 20th century.
Discuss life in an industrial city in the West. To what degree did life in mining towns like this resemble life in industrial cities in the East, the main topic of Chapter 18 in The American Yawp?
Memoirs such as this are important sources of information for historians writing about an era. In your discussion and analysis of this title, be sure to assess what historians might learn (or not learn) about the era and the region from using this book as a source.
In your final, critical analysis, how would you assess the use of memoirs like this one in the writing of history?
-Thank you
