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Thread: The world is studded with artificial mountains - they're fake, can be amazing but bad

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    Post The world is studded with artificial mountains - they're fake, can be amazing but bad

    The world is studded with artificial mountains - they're fake, can be amazing but also hazardous.

    From atop the jagged mountain, cars, people, and houses appear as tiny versions of themselves, the noise of their day to day activity muted so high in the air. Scrubby vegetation
    grows from cracks in the rock, soaking up the sun and rustling in the slight breeze. Birds caw as they alight at the top of a slope, observing the expanse below them. The mountain is just another part of the topography to those that live near it, but it is not a natural part of the landscape. The mountain is completely artificial, a colossus formed not by eons of geologic change but the vigor of industrial concrete production. Artificial mountains have sprung up all over the world, the result of hellish manufacturing processes, piled construction and mining waste, or in some cases built deliberately to add a humongous new feature to the horizon.

    The majority of the artificial mountains in the United States are the byproducts of cement and steel production, formed at the height of those industries between the late 1800s and mid-20th century. Cement, the binder that holds concrete aggregate together, is made by heating limestone and clay into a product called clinker, which is then ground with gypsum to make powdered cement. Though cement has been made in the U.S. as long as people have needed it, production really got underway in the 1920s, with 159 plants in 33 states operating by 1929. These mountains have long dotted industry-heavy areas of the United States and can be truly gargantuan in scope. Brown’s Dump in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania, for example, was over 200 feet tall and covered the equivalent of 130 city blocks.

    Despite their size, it’s almost impossible to know how many there are, as there was no concerted effort to keep track of them while they were being created, says Dr. Heather Brown, Director of Middle Tennessee State University’s School of Concrete and Construction Management. Dismantling those that do exist can be tremendously difficult and expensive, but there is potential money to be made from repurposing them.

    https://getpocket.com/explore/item/t...=pocket-newtab


    Salvation Mountain: A hand-built folk art installation covered with messages of God's love.


    https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/salvation-mountain


    Shenzhen mountain collapses: https://www.mercurynews.com/2015/12/...-33-buildings/

    WV artificial mountain collapses: https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2015...9671426266793/

    From dump to golf course: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...079-story.html


    Any time you give a man something he doesn't earn, you cheapen him. Our kids earn what they get, and that includes respect. -- Woody Hayes​

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