Russell Hartill is a lawyer, mining historian, mineral collector, photographer and author. Russ has spent a half-century studying, prospecting, documenting, indexing, collecting and reviewing the world's mineral resources while digitizing their historical record. He has traveled over 145,000 miles and visited 23 countries. His mindat page is at: https://www.mindat.org/user-11231.html
Russ has a BA in History with an emphasis on the oral history of the mining frontier. His JD is from the University of Idaho College of Law, with postgraduate work in the online delivery of adult education. He is a member of Phi Alpha Theta (the National History Honor Society) and the Society of Mining Law Antiquarians.
On the 100th anniversary of the 1872 Mining Laws, Russ founded the Living West, dedicated to the dynamic interpretation and dissemination of western American mining history. Now as Executive Director of the National Historic Mining Initiative (NHMI), Russ uses his multi terabyte Mac server farm to research and document the mining and economic history of the American West through text, images, sounds and artifacts. NHMI hopes to lead the celebration of the sesquicentennial of the 1872 Mining Laws in 2022. Mr. Hartill is a subject matter expert on the history of the 1872 mining laws, frontier theory as it relates to mining history, as well as western American history and historiography. He is available for consulting, speaking engagements and in-studio projects at russhartill@gmail.com and maintains a website at http://minerals.russhartill.com
