Beehive History, Volume 16, 1990

HISTORY

Y

16

Mining and Minerals

Utah - a Pretty Great Mining State

By PHILIP F. NOTARlANNl M a x J. E v a n s

Director S t a n f o r d J. Layton

Coordinator of Publications M i r i a m B. Murphy

Beehive History Editor

0 Copyright 1990 Utah State Historical Society 300 Rio Grande Salt Lake City, Utah 84101 -1182

'BEEHIVE HISTORY

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Contents Utah - a Pretty Great Mining State . . . . . . . Philip F. Notarianni Silver in the Beehive State . . . . . . . . . . . . . John S. McCormick Minor Gold Rushes, Major Gold Production . . . . . Miriam B. Murphy Old King Coal - a Long, Colorful Story . . . . . . Nancy J. Taniguchi Copper, the King of the Oquirrh Mountains . . . . . . . . . Philip F. Notarianni The Growth of Utah's Petroleum Industry . . . . . . . Walter Jones Utah's Uranium Boom . . Raye C. Ringholz Utah's Building Materials . Jay M. Haymond The Great Salt Lake Mineral Industry . . . . . . . . Linda Thatcher

Cover art of Ontario Mine buildings, Park City, by Cherie Hale.

Special thanks to Laura Byrne, typist. Photographs are from the Utah State Historical Society collections unless credited otherwise. Statistical charts were compiled from Bureau of Economic and Business Research, University of Utah, reports.

This publication has been funded with the assistance of a matching grant-in-aid from the Department of the Interior, National Park Service, under provisions of the National Historic Presewation Act of 1966 as amended.

This program receives financial assistance for identification and preservationot historic properties under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The U.S. Departmentof the Interior prohiblts discriminationon the basis of race, color, national origin, or handicap in its federally assisted programs. If you believe you have been discriminated against in any program, activity, or facility as described above, or if you desire further information, please write to: Office of Equal Opportunity, U.S. Department of the Interior, Washington, D.C. 20240

The mining of metals, coal, oil and gas, rock, and numerous other minerals has been and continues to be very important to Utah's economic, industrial, political, and social growth and development. The mining industry has touched all aspects of life in Utah and contributed greatly to the state's history.

The full extent of prehistoric mining activity will never be known, but the earliest residents of present-day Utah utilized many mineral resources. Obsidian from the Mineral Mountains of Beaver County, for example, was widely used in central Utah to make stone tools. Additionally, there is some evidence that Spanish-speaking peoples from the Southwest and Mexico mined precious metals before permanent white settlement of the area.

Although early Mormon leaders emphasized the importance of farming, Brigham Young did recognize the need for iron, a necessary metal that was costly to import by wagon from the East. In 1850 he sent an "iron mission" to southern Utah (Iron County), but this effort failed for many reasons, including inadequate technology. Mormon miners participated in the California gold rush, but Young discouraged his people from searching for precious metals because it would distract them from farming and draw non-Mormons or gentiles to Utah.

Commercial Mining Begins The beginnings of commercial mining in Utah are traced to Col. Patrick E. Connor and his troops who arived in the Salt Lake Valley in October 1862 to establish Fort Douglas during the Civil War. As experienced prospectors, many of these soldiers searched the nearby Wasatch and Oquirrh. mountains for gold and silver. In 1863 they located the first formal claims in Bingham Canyon, followed by discoveries in Tooele County and in Little Cottonwood Canyon (1864).

The coming of the transcontinental railroad to Utah in 1869 made it easier to transport ore and turned small mines into larger operations.

Other early mining areas included the Big Cottonwood, Park City, and Tintic districts. As ore

Alta, Utah, 1873, evolved from a famous mining camp to a famous ski area.

on the surface was mined out, more money and larger companies were needed to extract minerals found deep underground. Between 1871 and 1873 people from Great Britain invested heavily in Utah mines. The most famous example of British investment in Utah was the Emma Mine near Alta. Many investors lost their money because of dishonest promoters, causing an international scandal.

By 1912, 88 mining districts were listed for the state, and between the years 1899-1928 the Salt Lake Mining Review listed some 122 districts. Production figures, in terms of total value compiled to 1917, illustrate the successful mining of gold, silver, copper, lead, and zinc in Utah's three leading mining districts: Bingham (1865-1917) - $419,699,686; Park City (1870-1917) - $169,814,024; and Tintic (1869-1917) - $180,401,804. Other districts listed included: Big and Little Cottonwood, $25,722,533; American Fork, $3,895,050; Piute County, $3,679,143; Carbonate, $478,122; Mount Nebo, $190,762; and West Tintic, $139,018.

Competition between the Union Pacific and the Denver & Rio Grande Western railroads

helped to increase both precious metal and coal production, as did the building of mills and smelters that made the shipping of ores worthwhile. The most important facilities were the large smelting plants in the Salt Lake Valley - the American Smelting and Refining Company (ASARCO) in Murray and the United States Smelting, Refining, and Mining Company (USSRMCO) in Midvale and the International Smelting and Refining Company in Tooele. These were the most significant plants in the state and in the western region. The Midvale smelter is the site of current environmental concerns over the amount of lead in the tailings or waste dump.

Utah is one of the most important precious metal mining states, and Park City, now an important winter skiing area, one of the greatest silver mining towns in the U.S. It boasted the Ontario, Silver King, Daly-West, Daly-Judge, and Silver King Consolidated mines, among others. From these holdings came mining millionaires such as David Keith, U.S. Sen. Thomas Kearns, John Judge, and Susanna Emery Holmes, known as the Silver Queen.

This mining wealth helped to change Salt Lake -

Mining iron, 1927, at Desert Mound, Iron County.

Utah has the largest reserves of iron ore in the West and ranked third in the nation in iron production in 1979.

City's landscape and economy. Large, beautiful mansions began to line South Temple, known as Brigham Street; and the Salt Lake Stock and Mining Exchange (1908) became part of Samuel Newhouse's Exchange Place development (Fourth South and Main Street). Surrounded by some of the world's great mines, Salt Lake City became a regional center for supplying food, equipment, and services to mines all over the Intermountain West.

Worldwide Fame Utah's worldwide fame as a mining area rests to a large extent on a less glamorous metal than either gold or silver - copper. The Bingham Canyon open-pit mine, often called "the greatest hole on earth," has been a major producer of this very versatile metal since the early 20th century. In 1910 Utah produced 11.7 percent of the U.S. total of copper and by the 1940s almost 30 percent. In 1983, the last year for which figures are available, the state accounted for 16.4 percent of the U.S. total. Many technological advances in mining and milling

The town of Bingham - the Can Fork section of which shows in this photograph - was vacated to permit expansion of the copper mine.

low-grade copper ores were developed at the Bingham mine, especially under Daniel C. Jackling, one of the most important mining men in Utah's history.

Coal mining in Utah can be traced from the early pioneer period to the present. In 1849 coal was discovered in Coalville, and in 1857 Welsh coal miners discovered coal in Sanpete County. But transportation costs were too high, and the development of this industry had to wait for a cheaper way to transport the fuel.

The Union Pacific Railroad entered Utah in 1869, but as the only railroad it could charge high rates. In 1881 the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad entered Utah from the southeast and challenged the Union Pacific. Along its route the D&RGW discovered coal in southeastern Utah (Emery and Carbon counties) the main coal-producing areas of the state.

The Pleasant Valley Coal Company and the Utah Fuel Company (owned by the D&RGW), two important producers, were joined by others, such as the Independent Coal & Coke Company, Standard Coal Company, United States Fuel Company, and the Spring Canyon Coal Company, to name a few. Mining towns were built at Winter Quarters and Clear Creek (near Scofield), Castle Gate, Kenilworth, Hiawatha, Sunnyside, and in the Spring Canyon and Gordon Creek areas. These were called company towns because they were totally owned by the coal companies. Miners lived on company land in company houses and had to shop at company-owned stores. Nearby, the town of Helper became a hub to these smaller towns, and Price became a regional center as well as the county seat of Carbon County.

Coal became king in eastern Utah because of the demand for it as a fuel in the home, in businesses, and in industry. Smelters need coal and coke to burn in furnaces. Coal production grew in the years 1900 to 1920, declined in the early 1920s, then leveled off until the 1930s when the Great Depression affected all industries in Utah. During World War I1 it increased to new heights, continuing into the 1950s. By the 1960s and 1970s the market declined, only to rise and fall as the result of the oil crisis of the 1970s. The market for coal continues to fluctuate. A major use of coal today is to fuel electric power generating plants.

Population Diversity Both metal mining and coal mining led to population growth and diversity in Utah. The expansion of these industries required a very

Caterina Pessetto Bottino hid the famous labor leader Mother Jones from Helper, Utah, authorities during the 1903 coal miners' strike.

large labor force to work in the mines, mills, and smelters and to work on the railroads that transported the minerals. Mining companies sought this labor at a time when southern and eastern Europeans and Japanese were immigrating to the United States as part of the mass migration of the 1890s-1920s period. The social and cultural history of immigrant peoples - their interactions and communities - were so important to mining that they cannot be separated from the industry itself.

Northern Europeans, such as the Irish, Welsh, and Cornish, arrived in the coal and metal towns first, followed by southern and eastern Europeans, Japanese, and Mexicans.

Chinese, who had helped build the transcontinental railroad in 1869, moved into mining towns such as Park City, where memories of China Town and China Bridge continue. Mining and smelter towns contained varying degrees of ethnic diversity, producing tensions and labor strife. In Carbon County some mines such as Sunnyside were considered "foreign" mines because of the large number of foreignborn workers. An anti-immigrant feeling, called nativism, developed in Utah and affected those living in the metal and coal mining towns.

Union Activity Labor unions attracted many of the "new immigrants," as well as other workers who had complaints about the way mining companies treated them. Their grievances included the forcing of men to shop at company stores, the inaccurate weighing of coal so as to shortchange a miner, and not recognizing their union -the United Mine Workers of America.

Strikes and labor-management relations were an important part of Utah's industrial history.

The coal strikes of 1903,1922, and 1933 in Carbon County are examples. Union organizers like Frank Bonacci in Carbon County made important contributions to Utah's labor history.

Mining in Utah, as in other locales, reacted to the changes of the economy. The Great Depression of the 1930s affected the entire Industry greatly, causing all production to fall. However, World War I1 increased the demand for coal and metals. The value of Utah's mineral resources continues to go up and down.

Uranium, the "wonder mineral" that became a giant in the 1950s, had been sought in earlier days. The quest for uranium and accompanying minerals has historical roots in Utah, and the industry of the late 1950s and 1960s rested upon prior experience in the fields of prospecting, mining, and processing.

The earliest miners of uranium ore in Utah were the Indians, who used it for paints. In the 1870s and 1880s uranium was mined for commercial use in the forming of salts and oxides as coloring agents for ceramics and dyes, in the manufacture of glass and pottery, and in photography and steel plating. By 1898 radium had been isolated from the mineral and was soon hailed as a "miracle" treatment for cancer.

Market demands for vanadium and radium, found with uranium, grew. By 1906 some 200 tons of uranium were mined annually in Colorado and Utah. World War I sharpened the demand because of vanadium's use as a steelhardening agent and radium's use in illuminating watch faces, compasses, gunsights, and airplane dials. The uranium discoveries of the 1950s in southeastern Utah created another bonanza period. Charles Steen reigned as the most well known of the uranium bonanza kings.

Gilsonite in the Uinta Basin Gilsonite, a lightweight, glossy black bituminous asphaltite found south of Vernal and Roosevelt, is the primary hydrocarbon mined in Utah. It is found in parallel vertical veins that cut across the Uinta Basin in eastern Utah, one of the few places on earth that it occurs. It is believed to be a solid residue of petroleum and was initially named uintaite in 1885 by W. P. Blako. The mineral was later named in honor of Samuel H. Gilson, a Salt Laker who brought it into prominence for commercial uses such as in paints and varnishes and in other building products.

In 1888 the Gilsonite Manufacturing Company was organized in Salt Lake City. Reports at that time stated that some 3,000 tons of Gilsonite were shipped to Price along the Nine Mile Canyon freight road and sold for $80 a ton. A better method of transporting the min-

American Gilsonite mine at Bonanza, Uintah County, shows typical vertical vein of this rare hydrocarbon.

era1 was needed. The Uintah Railway Company was begun in 1903 by the Barber Asphalt Paving Company. The line ran across the Book Cliffs from Dragon, Utah, to Mack, Colorado, where it connected with the Denver & Rio Grande Western main line.

Mining the vertical layers of Gilsonite was difficult, as the veins were often quite narrow.

Pick and shovel proved to be the most useful mining tools. In the early days veins were worked on a rising slope to permit the ore to roll down the slope. When a sufficient amount had been gathered, the mineral would be hand loaded into a burlap bag holding about 200 pounds.

Uintah and Duchesne counties produced the principal Gilsonite mines: Dragon, Rainbow, Watson, Little Emma, Bonanza, Little Bonanza, and the Parriette Mine (closed in 1900 because of an explosion). By 1935 the main Gilsonite operation was centered in Bonanza; ore was trucked to Craig, Colorado.

Production figures illustrate the growth of the Gilsonite industry: 1904 (2,977 tons), 1905 (10,916 tons), 1929 (54,987 tons), and 1961 (470,000 tons). In the 1950s a new development plan by the American Gilsonite Company, successor to the Barber Asphalt Company, resulted in the increased production level for 1961.

First Producing Oil Well The oil and gas industry in Utah has grown significantly since petroleum first came to the attention of the pioneers in 1847. Prospectors drilled off and on up to the 1940s; however, not until 1948 did a well produce oil in commercial amounts. Called the Ashley Valley No. 1, located near Vernal, it produced about 300 barrels of oil a day.

This discovery led to other activity. Drilling now began to go deeper, to depths of 5,000 to 8,000 feet. Most of these discoveries occurred in the Uinta Basin, but the big producer was the Greater Aneth field located near the San Juan River in the extreme southeast comer of the state. With the development of this field, Utah by 1959 was about twelfth in total oil production in the United States.

Natural gas has usually been discovered while drilling for oil. In 1892 gas was found in Davis County and marked the beginning of the industry in Utah. Gas was also discovered in Ashley Valley in the Uinta Basin and was piped to Vernal by 1928. In 1929 natural gas was piped to Salt Lake City from fields in Wyoming by the company that was to become Mountain Fuel Supply. Fields in northeastern Utah and Colorado were later connected to this line. In 1947-48 natural gas was brought to Provo, Springville, and Spanish Fork and to Cache County during the 1950s.

Laying the natural gas pipeline from Wyoming to Utah. Courtesy of Questar Corporation.

The process of settlement and growth necessitated a search for building materials.

Quarries and lime kilns were developed near many Utah cities and towns. Red sandstone and white oolitic.,limestone were popular for use as building materials. Fort Douglas in Salt Lake City utilized red sandstone found in nearby Red Butte Canyon. In Sanpete County quarries near the Manti LDS Temple supplied the oolitic limestone used for this temple and many other buildings. The Salt Lake LDS Temple and Utah State Capitol were constructed of granite from Little Cottonwood Canyon. Early

quarries were generally developed by individuals and communities, and the stone was extracted as needed. In 1905 the value of stone sold was: granite, $13,630; sandstone, $1,150; limestone, $232,519.

Most of the masons involved in stonework were European-born -Danes and Swedes who had settled in Manti and Spring City, English in Heber City and Midway, and Italians and Greeks in Carbon County. Spring City, Sanpete County, was built almost exclusively of stone - the light, cream-colored oolitic limestone quarried in the hills west of town. As brick became more available, the use of stone declined.

Typical of the many individual Utah communities was the burning of lime used for mortar and whitewash. Kilns constructed for this purpose can be found in many areas. Commercially, the Utah Lime and Stone Company of Dolomite, Tooele County, is recognized as among the oldest such operations in Utah.

Utah has great mineral wealth. Its development has affected every part of the state in some way and even, in the case of the Bingham copper mine, literally changed the face of the earth. In 1983 copper was still king of the metals with production valued at $286 million.

Gold production in 1983 was valued at $101 million. By 1987 the total value of nonfuel mineral production in Utah was over $699 million with $514 million of the total coming from beryllium, molybdenum, tungsten, vanadium, magnesium, potassium, and several other minerals - exceeding copper and gold by many millions. Most of the U.S. supply of beryllium used to come from South America, South Africa, and India. Now the Topaz Mountain area of Millard County produces much of this "space-age" metal used in missile cones and electronics. Molybdenum, principally a byproduct of copper refining in Utah, is another valuable mineral used to toughen alloy steels and in numerous industrial products such as dyes, fertilizers, enamels, and reagents. The energy or fuel minerals combined, however, outran all other Utah minerals, including precious metals such as gold, utilitarian metals such as copper, and exotic metals such as beryllium. The value of Utah's fuel minerals in 1987 was: petroleum, $616 million; natural gas, $493 million; uranium, $145 million; bituminous coal, $424 million $1.7 billion total. From this one can see that mineral and mining history is still being made in Utah.

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Dr. Notarianni is museum services coordinator, Utah State Historical Society.

Patrick Edward Connor

Colonel Connor's Role The development of the precious metals industry in Utah began in the early 1860s with the arrival of Col. Patrick E. Connor, commander of the Third California Volunteers, who had been sent to Utah in 1862 to keep an eye on the overland mail routes during the Civil War. Connor, a staunch anti-Mormon, quickly set about to reduce church influence by exploring 'and developing the territory's mineral wealth.

If gold, silver, and other precious metals were found in Utah, he thought, the resulting flood of miners into the territory would overwhelm the Mormons, and gentiles would soon predominate. So he sent the men under his command out to prospect, and they almost singlehandedly opened the precious metals industry in Utah in 1863 by locating deposits, staking claims, and establishing mining districts.

Until it became possible to transport large quantities of ore to distant markets, however, mining could not really grow, and the industry did not become important until after the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 and the subsequent spread of a network of rails throughout the territory. After that, mining began to develop on a large scale. Rich mines flourished in the Wasatch Mountains east of Salt Lake City, in the Oquirrh Mountains west of the city, in Rush Valley, in the Tintic Mountains, and at many central and southern sites, including Frisco in Beaver County where the fabulous Horn Silver Mine was located, and at Frisco, Beaver County, ca. 1880, with silver mills and smelkrs on hill behind town.

Silver Reef near St. George - an unusual place to find silver since it does not ordinarily occur in sandstone. In 1880 a visiting journalist described Utah as one large mining camp with Salt Lake City as its Main Street.

A Major Industry By the turn of the century mining was a major industry in the state, second only to agriculture. According to the 1860 census only four miners earned a living in Utah, while in neighboring Colorado nearly 80 percent of the adult males were engaged in mining. A decade later 500 miners worked in Utah and by World War I about 10,000. The value of Utah's mineral production increased from $190,000 in 1869 to $10 million in 1880 and to over $100 million by the middle of World War I. Silver was the most important early metal and remained so until the early 20th century when copper eclipsed it. More than any other metal, silver was the foundation on which family fortunes, industrial employment, and development of mining areas were based. Until the turn of the century more than half of Utah's mineral production was silver, which in turn totaled about 20 percent of the silver production in the United States. In 1925 Utah mines accounted for 32 percent of the nation's silver.

Since then the amount produced and the percentage of the nation's production have both declined. Even so, Utah remains an important silver state. In 1983, the last year for which figures are available, it provided 10.5 percent of the silver produced in the United States, and the Hecla Mining Company's Escalante Mine in Iron County is one of the top ten silver-producing mines in the country.

Given the Mormon preoccupation with building a stable society based on agriculture, the development of mining in Utah remained, for the most part, in non-Mormon hands, but there were exceptions. One of the best known mine owners was "Uncle" Jesse Knight, an active Mormon with extensive holdings in the Tintic Mining District. His company town, Knightsville, was probably the only saloonfree, brothel-free, mining town in the United States. Old-timers said that no man prayed more and met with more success than Knight.

"He prayed for silver and gold in them thar hills, and there was silver and gold, and sure enough, he struck it," one man said. In time, as the mining industry developed, more and more Mormons went to work in the mines. Still, non-Mormons predominated.

Ontario Mine workers with lunch pails and dah, supply of candles prepare to descend the shaft of this famous Park City mine, ca. 1902.

Immigrant Workers Most of the workers were newcomers to the territory, many of them "new immigrants" from eastern and southern Europe and Asia.

Throughout the 19th century Utah was a territory of immigrants. In 1880, for example, nearly one-third of the population was foreignborn, most of them Mormon converts from the British Isles, Scandinavia, and western Europe.

Toward the end of the century that began to change. New groups began to arrive. Part of a larger stream of 20 million people who reached the shores of the United States between 1880 and 1920, many came to Utah by chance rather than by design. Utah was where they happened to get a job, where they had a friend or relative, or where they decided to get off a freight train after a long and exhausting ride. For at least the first generation, they worked at pick and shovel jobs, mainly on the railroads and in the mines and smelters. By the early 20th century, for example, the population of Park City, which a generation earlier had been the home of a few Mormon farmers, included several dozen national groups, among them Chinese, Greeks, Italians, Slavs, and Serbs.

F ; wty, Utah, one or the West's greal n... ..ng towns.

Silver mining added richness and diversity to Utah's population. It also added a new element to the Utah landscape, the typical American mining town. Ramshackle colonies of shanties, saloons, gambling dens, dance halls, and brothels, all hastily thrown together at the first rumor of a strike, sprang up throughout the territory. Even those towns that evolved from frantic mining camps into more settled communities contrasted in appearance very much with the remarkably similar rural towns that historians have called "Mormon villages," with their wide streets and large blocks laid out in a grid pattern, in which most Utahns lived in the 1860s.

"Nature'sGreat Lottery" The population of the mining communities, as one historian observed of Park City, was essentially divided into two groups, a small wealthy class and a large working class.

Theoretically, silver society was upwardly mobile and the industrious could become wealthy. In fact, few did. "Mining is Nature's great lottery scheme," a contemporary observer said, and, as with any lottery, few of the participants held winning tickets. One person might be industrious and yet lose everything but his shirt after several months' hard work, while another would make thousands of dollars in a few hours.

Of course, the age of the individual entrepreneurs did not last long. Individuals and partnerships with little backing made most of the initial discoveries, but by the late 1870s or so the easily accessible surface ores were exhausted. After that large corporations with substantial capital took over mining development, and most people involved in silver mining became wage workers who labored long hours for low pay at physically demanding and dangerous work.

There was nothing romantic about work in the mines, and it is a mistake to think there was. Miners received about $3.00 a day until well past the turn of the century and, as historian Dean May says, deserved more. Until 1896, when the first Utah State Legislature passed a law limiting work in the mines to eight hours a day, miners typically worked ten or twelve hours a day, six days a week. Accidents were common. Hoists were dangerous.

So were falling rocks and runaway ore cars.

Falls down mine shafts were one of the most common fatalities. The air was often so bad that candles the miners carried burned at only

Assayers, such as these employed by the Ontario Mine, analyzed the mineral content of ores to determine their potential worth.

one-fifth of their normal intensity. Miners became ill and sometimes died from lead poisoning. Methane gas was another serious hazard.

A frightening number of miners developed lung diseases.

Job insecurity also plagued miners. Few could count on full-time work the year around.

The periodic recessions and depressions that affected both the American economy as a whole and the mining industry in particular resulted in long periods of unemployment and often wiped out the savings of even the most frugal families. And once out of work, miners were left adrift. Public relief was nonexistent and private charity insufficient.

most important mining district in Utah in the 19th century, had produced twenty-three millionaires by the early 1890s. One of them, David Keith, came from Virginia City, Nevada, to supervise installation of a 500-ton Cornish pump with a working capacity of four million gallons a day to remove water from the Ontario Mine.

Thomas Kearns also built his fortune in Park City. Legend has it that he arrived in town in the late 1880s with only a pack on his back and a dime in his pocket. A decade later he was a multimillionaire, owner with Keith of the Salt Lake Tribune,and a U.S. senator.

A third Park City millionaire was Susanna Bransford Emery Holmes Delitch Engalitcheff, Utah's famed and flamboyant "Silver Queen," whose worldwide travels and lavish entertainments outlasted her four marriages and $100 million fortune. More than anyone she represented the quick fortunes and luxury living that silver sometimes produced in Utah.

23 Millionaires Though most people in mining did not get rich, some did. Silver formed the basis of a few huge personal fortunes and spawned extensive financial empires. Park City, for example, the Utah's "Silver Queen"

son, ~ e k and n Edmund, and, seated, wife Jennie Judge and son Tom, outside their South Temple

In addition to giving birth to a new economic and social elite, silver altered Utah's landscape. It built or helped to build mansions, skyscrapers, luxurious hotels, and exclusive clubs. Many of the mansions on Salt Lake City's East South Temple, known as Brigham Street until the early 20th century, were built with silver money. A number of them have been demolished over the years, but some remain, including those of David Keith and Thomas Kearns, the latter now the Governor's Mansion. Silver also built St. Ann's Orphanage, now a school; Judge Memorial High School, which was originally a miner's hospital that Mary Judge intended as a tribute to her

husband, John Judge, who died of lung disease at the age of forty-two after long years of working in the mines; and a number of skyscrapers and commercial buildings, including Salt Lake's McIntyre Building, McCornick Block, Kearns Building, Keith Building, Judge Building, and the public library building that now houses the Hansen Planetarium.

w: i

More Silver Buildings Silver paid for the buildings that comprise the Exchange Place Historic District at the south end of Main Street near Fourth South, all of which were built around 1910 by non-Mormon mining men, in particular Samuel Newhouse, in an effort to construct a gentile commercial district at the south end of the central business distritt to counterbalance the concentration of Mormon establishments at the north end of the city. silver helped finance the Alta Club, too, as a symbol of gentile prosperity. Founded in 1883, its original eighty-one members were mainly non-Mormon mining magnates. Mormons were initially excluded from membership, a reflection of the extreme division that existed between Mormons and non-Mormons in 19th-century Utah. After the turn of the century, however, Mormons were gradually admitted to the club - but no women until 1987 - and for the next several decades it served as an important instrument of accommodation between Utah's Mormon and non-Mormon communities.

Though Utah has been an important silver mining state, it has not been a significant manufacturing one. The state's mining and smelting industries produced an abundance of silver, but only a few artisans created silver objects - handcrafted or mass produced - for use and display. The Navajos of southeastern Utah are an obvious exception. Silvermaking has always been important among them and represents a significant aspect of the history of silver in Utah. Within the state's larger population, however, the production of silver articles has been a limited and small-scale activity.

Silver items have been as conspicuous in Utah UTAH SILVER PRODUCTION - Selected Years Ounces * Value 1870 473,182 $ 628,400 1910 10,466,971 $ 5,652,100 1925 1960 1983

21,276,689 4,782,960 4,567,000

' Troy ounces from 1946 on.

$14,766,000 $ 4,329,000 $52,242,000

Boston and Newhouse buildings under construction, June 30, 1908, on Exchange Place.

as in other parts of the country, but for the most part they have been produced elsewhere, either on the East Coast or in California, and then sold in Utah through local dealers.

A versatile material, silver can be fashioned into a variety of objects. In Utah, silver objects, whether locally produced or not, were used in the same diverse ways that they were elsewhere - for luxury goods and commonplace items, for everyday activities and for special occasions, both religious and secular. And, as elsewhere, silver in Utah was associated with, and provided a way of displaying, wealth and status. More than any other metal except gold, silver symbolized affluence and position.

Silver had an enormous impact on Utah's history. It contributed to the diversification of the population, added new elements to the landscape, and helped build new fortunes and solidify old ones. It also stimulated the growth of railroads and related industries and contributed significantly to the rise of the labor movement. Before 1869 Utah was a closely woven fabric with only a few broken threads. It was a relatively self-sufficient, relatively egalitarian, relatively homogeneous society where the hand of the Mormon church was ever present and ever active. After 1869 it began to move in a different direction. As Dale Morgan says, the Kingdom of God began to be transformed into another among the kingdoms of the world. A social revolution began, and silver was one of its driving forces.

Dr. McCormick teaches history at Salt Lake Community College. This article was extracted from a museum exhibit catalog with the same title that he authored in 1988.

Mliinor Gold Rushes, 'MajorGold Production

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By MIRIAM B. MURPHY

Mercur, Utah, in June 1902. Fire - the nemesis of mining towns with their many wooden buildings - swept through Mercur not long after this photograph was taken.

Gold can be found in trace amounts in almost all rocks and even in ocean water, but finding it in quantities large enough to make mining profitable is rare. Erosion often washes gold out of surface rocks. Gold particles are about seven times heavier than rock particles of a similar size. As a result, nuggets and flakes of gold tend to sink to the bottom of water-deposited gravel and sand, especially in streambeds. This gold is recovered using placer mining techniques. Lode mining, or hard-rock mining, recovers gold from veins or reefs that extend underground. The gold-bearing rock is removed from the mine using pick and shovel, blasting, and other methods.

Placer mining, widely used by the Fortyniners during the California gold rush and in the Yukon, was rare in Utah with a few notable exceptions, including Bingham Canyon. Precious metals were initially discovered in the Oquirrh Mountains by brothers Thomas and Sanford Bingham in 1848-49. More important to the history of mining were the discoveries made in that area on September 17, 1863, by men and women associated with the California Volunteers stationed at Fort Douglas and other individuals. They organized the West Mountain Mining District, the first in Utah, and staked numerous claims. Placer mining in Bingham Canyon began in 1865, and by 1871 a reported $1 million in gold had been taken from these claims.

Gold in Southeastern Utah The most extensive use of various placer mining techniques occurred in southeastern Utah where prospectors began finding placer

deposits of gold in the 1880s. Although stories of lost Spanish mines and secret Navajo mines in that area persist, the first gold rush in southeastern Utah began in 1883 after Cass Hite found placer gold in Glen Canyon on the Colorado River. On December 3, 1883, Hite, Lewis P. Brown, and seven others organized the Henry Mountains Mining District. Four years later Hite helped organize the White Canyon Mining District. Unfortunately, the gold found by prospectors along the Colorado River was very fine, making it extremely difficult to recover.

p+ bass Hite

Jack Sumner and Jack Butler found gold in the Bromide Basin on Mount Ellen in the Henry Mountains in 1889 and started another gold rush. A town called Eagle City boomed and busted quickly when the gold ran out. In 1892 discoveries in the LaSal and Abajo moun-

Placer mining for gold on the San Juan River, 1889.

tains triggered another gold rush, followed by news of gold in the San Juan River country.

Hundreds of individual prospectors panned and sluiced with great difficulty in the slickrock country with only limited success.

Lack of water, except in the major rivers, made placer mining difficult, if not impossible. The Hoskaninni Company built a huge gold dredging works in Glen Canyon at the turn of the century, and the Zahn Mining Company ran the largest placer operation on the San Juan River in the early 1900s. All these efforts, small and great, produced little gold during the heyday of the southeastern Utah gold rushes, 1883-1911.

Tooele's Gold Lode mining for gold was more successful.

Two Tooele County mining areas are known for their gold. Mercur, one of the most important mining towns in Utah, did not fully exploit its gold ores until the 1890s when a cyanide processing plant was built there.

When ore is crushed and treated with cyanide, the gold dissolves and can later be refined to produce almost pure gold. Daniel C. Jackling, Utah's copper king, and George H. Dern, mining engineer and later governor of Utah, were two of the major figures associated with the de-

velopment of Mercur. After years of inactivity in Mercur, improved technology has periodically allowed gold to be extracted from old mine and mill tailings there when the price of gold has risen high enough to make such processing profitable.

Gold Hill on Utah's western border enjoyed a much shorter life as a gold mining town. The Clifton Mining District was organized in the area in 1889 and the town of Gold Hill established in 1892. As is so often the case with mining towns, Gold Hill's mines failed to produce as much of the gleaming metal as its founders had hoped. However, two world wars created a national need for the arsenic and tungsten found in great abundance at Gold Hill, and the town enjoyed waves of mild prosperity.

Piute County was the scene of another gold rush. The Gold Mountain Mining District and its central town of Kimberly flourished in the early 20th century. The Annie Laurie Mine was a famous gold producer. In 1902 a new cyanide mill in Kimberly processed 250 tons of ore a day. According to George A. Thompson, writing in the Frontier Times of June-July 1974,

Gold from Kimberly's mines was shipped in bars 6"x10"x10JJvalued at over $20,000 each, on the Shepard Brothers Stages to the railroad in Sevier, eighteen miles to the northeast. The heavy yellow bars were stacked on the floor of the stagecoach, between the passengers' feet, An armed guard always rode ahead of the coach.

But Kimberly, too, enjoyed only a short if gaudy career. Its boom was over by 1907.

A Major Gold State As shortlived as Utah's gold rushes have been, the state nevertheless continues to pro-

Annie Laurie Mine and Mill in Kimberly, Piute County, June 1917.

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Mammoth, 1882, in ,,ab County's Tintic Mining Districtl was a noted gold producer.

duce gold in impressive amounts. In 1944 Utah gold amounted to 34.5 percent of the U.S. total. In 1983, Utah mines produced 238,459 troy ounces of gold valued at $101,107,000 and amounting to 12.2 percent of the total U.S. production. Gold production dropped sharply in 1985, the last year for which data is currently available.

For the most part Utah's gold production has never been keyed to great finds of free gold in placer deposits or rich lodes underground.

In Utah, gold is most often found in the same ore bodies that produce silver, lead, zinc, and copper. The Bingham copper mine, for example, has been a steady producer of gold for many decades; and in their heyday the mines of Park City and Juab County's Tintic Mining District produced large amounts of gold in addition to their silver and other metals. In mining and refining copper and silver - historically the most important metals in Utah's economy - mine owners have come as close as one can outside of fairy tales to possessing a goose that lays golden eggs.

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Utah's coal industry his ha$ a Ibng and colorful past. Lung,because of the early need for coal as a fuel; colorful, due to the people and events associated with it. Utah coal mining has had far-reaching effects on the state and the nation. Especially around the turn of the century, ~ o awas l truly king, The earliest white settlers of Utah, members of h e r Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, quickly demanded coal to heat homes and run businesses when the sparse local timber was reserved for building. In desperation the 1854 territorial legislature offered a cash prize for the first usable coal deposits found within forty miles of Salt Lake City. Unfortunately, the first coal discovered in Utah was much too far away to win the money.

During the 18509, 1860%and 1870s settlers discovered coal in other parts of the territory, including Utah's southwestern corner and in centrally located Sanpete County. These mines began to fuel iron foundries, but the foundries soon closed, After that local farmers used the coal from what they called "wagon mines" 3r

Mrs. Murphy is the editor of Beehive History.

UTAH GOLD PRODUCTION - Selected Years Value Ounces * 1870 14,512 $ 300,000 $ 680,000 1890 32,895 $ 3,972,200 1900 192,155 $ 2,014,600 1920 97,454 1940 355,494 $ 12,442,300 $ 12,888,900 1960 368,255 1983 238,459 $101,107,000 $ 43,039,000 1985 135,489 Troy ounces from 1946 on.

Coal mine in Cedar Canyon, Emery County.

roup of coal miners in Scofield, Carbon County, including several boys. In 1910 Utah coal mines employed 245 males ?tweenthe ages of 10 and 20, 19 of whom were under age 16.

Early Coal Discoveries In the early 1860s coal was found at Coalville, Summit County, twenty-five miles from Salt Lake City. The Mormons built a connecting railroad to the Coalville deposit. This line was coveted by the Union Pacific Railroad (UP),then laying the first transcontinental line across the United States. A few years after the UP entered Utah Territory in 1869 it bought the Coalville railroad (and others) and almost monopolized Utah's coal supply.

Utah's leaders objected strongly to this unfair business practice. Understandably, they were overjoyed when the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad (D&RGWor Rio Grande) extended its route across Utah from 1881 to 1883.

Now, residents thought, the UP would have some competition! The Rio Grande, however, soon proved just as monopolistic in the southeastern part of the state as the Union Pacific was in the north.

The D&RGWwas largely responsible for the development of Utah's major coal belt, most of which lies in Carbon and Emery counties. In three quick steps the D&RGWsurrounded most of this area's commercial coal. First, in 1881 a Rio Grande geologist pinpointed a good de-

posit for locomotive fuel: the newly prospected Castle Gate Mine. Second, in 1882 the Rio Grande bought the Pleasant Valley Coal Company and Railroad, originally founded by a band of Sanpete Mormons in 1875. Third, the railroad got Sunnyside - the only Utah deposit of quality coking coal (used in smelting) in 1899.

To develop these mines the Rio Grande had to meet three major challenges. The first was labor. There were not enough settlers already in the area to man the mines. So the railroad hired labor agents to bring foreign immigrants to Utah to do this dangerous work. Lured by false promises of easy money, miners came from Italy, China, Finland, Greece, present-day Yugoslavia, Japan, and Mexico. Often brought in as strikebreakers, most of them remained and gave the area its distinctive ethnic mix.

Coal Miners' Complaints Company problems did not end with recruiting workers. The miners frequently complained about their working and living conditions. They complained about short weights (deliberate underweighing of coal), the basis for their pay. They did not like living in the

company town and trading at the company store (where they had to pay high prices). They feared the dangerous working conditions that caused frequent injury and death. Most of all, they wanted a union to protect their rights.

Many miners joined unions, mainly the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA).

Because conditions were so bad - and company promises had been so rosy -union members sometimes went out on strike. The Winter Quarters miners were the first to walk out in 1883, a year after the D&RGW took control. In 1899 Sunnyside miners struck because their wages were dramatically lowered when development work ended and commercial mining began.

still IEf3 scan today an the bill omrLaoking the S m y a i d e tipple.

The miners still lacked reoognized union prottx%iurzwhen an explosion racked the Gagae 'Gats Mine in 1924, killhg 171. b a d d y , Caath a t e was the fimt Utah mi^ to f h shot6 (explmivas) electronically to blew c a d a f f the wails so miners could load it into cars. The expbsivw wem set off wbmx all the miners W ~ setsid8 the mihe, Even this safety measure had not prttxenbed a disaster, so the miners k ~ pdet manding a union to improve their working conditions.

Rescue workers carry the body of one of the 200 miners killed in the Winter Quarters Mine explosion May 1, 1900.

Miners' concerns about dangerous working conditions led to other strikes. Their fears were justified when terrific explosions shook the Utah coal fields. The first such disaster, at Winter Quarters in 1900, killed 200 men and boys. A year later dangerous conditions remained, and miners struck without achieving any significant changes. In 1903-4 another strike was organized to try to gain the protection of a national union, the UMWA. It, too, was unsuccessful. A local strike shook Kenilworth, the first independent mine, in 1910.

Utah's coal miners joined another national strike in 1922, still fighting for recognition of their union. Utah strikers, driven out of company towns, set up tent cities outside company land. The mine owners mounted machine guns and searchlights on the mountainsides above the tent camps to keep an eye on the strikers.

At least one of these machine-gun nests can

Union Recognition Coal companies finally admitted organizers of the UMWA in 1933 after Congress passed the Wagner Act enforcing labor's right to unionize. As miners escaped from company control, company towns shrank in size. Today, Hiawatha in southwestern Carbon County is the only full-fledged coal company town in Utah.

The Rio Grande's domination of the early Utah coal industry was also challenged by federal investigators. Until the passage of the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 United States law allowed people to buy coal land up to a maximum of 640 acres. The Rio Grande, like all other early coal developers, needed much more land (2,000-3,000 acres) for an efficient commercial mine. As a result, many early entrepreneurs got the land they needed by fraud.

Agents of the federal government found out about this around 1905. Attorneys from the Justice Department prepared what they hoped would be the national "landmark" case for coal land fraud based on what they found in Utah.

Prosecutions lasted from 1906 until 1932 when the last Utah coal land case was heard by the Supreme Court.

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The government was not as successful as it had hoped. The D&RGW hung on to its most profitable coal mines, as did independent developers who had also been brought to court.

The case against one of these, Arthur A. Sweet, set a precedent in the U.S. Supreme Court that still stands. As a result of the Sweet case, states cannot claim coal land from the federal government at statehood. However, even federal court cases did little to break up already-established, large, commercial mines. Several huge, privately owned coal properties still exist as the legacy of this era.

Independent Operators The third challenge faced by the turn-ofthe-century Rio Grande came from the new mines opened by independent developers. At first the D&RGW tried to squeeze them out by denying them railroad cars. Coal had to be moved in bulk, and before large trucks were introduced during World War I1 coal had to be carried on trains. Just when it looked like the D&RGW might be successful in monopolizing Utah's richest coal belt, Congress passed the Hepburn Act of 1906. This law forced the railroad to treat its competitors more fairly. As a result, many new mines opened. The first, Kenilworth, began shipping coal over the Rio Grande tracks in 1906. Mormon businessman "Uncle" Jesse Knight began work in 1912 in the Spring Canyon District where several other developers followed in the period up through World War I. After World War I ended in 1918 all the coal mines - railroad and independent -

UTAH BITUMINOUS COAL PRODUCTION - Selected Years Value Total Tons 1890 318,159 $ 552,390 1900 1 ,147,027 $ 1,447,750 1910 2,517,809 $ 4,224,556 1920 6,005,199 $ 19,350,000 1 930 4,257,541 $ 10,515,000 1950 6,669,896 $ 32,050,000 1960 4,954,693 $ 31,458,000

1975 1980 1982 1987

6,961,000 13,263,000 17,029,000 16,508,000

$1 37,650,000 $339,930,690 $500,993,180 $424,255,600

Average number of workers: 1920,4,505;1987,2,544.

faced the same problems, including that of labor (already described). A nationwide mining depression began in the 1920s. A few new mines, such as Columbia and Consumers, opened during this decade despite slow sales.

The twenties depression in the coal industry deepened, however, as railroads switched to diesel fuel and homeowners to natural gas.

Fewer mines opened in the thirties during the worldwide Great Depression. This downturn ended only when World War I1 pushed demands for Utah coal through the ceiling. Henry Kaiser then opened his mine near Sunnyside to help the war effort, and Horse Canyon opened a few miles east.

Utah coal suffered again in the 1950s and 1960s. Then the combination of the original Clean Air Act of 1971 and the 1973-74 Arab oil embargo increased the demand for low-sulphur Utah coal. During the 1970s and 1980s energy companies bought several Utah coal mines. They use coal to generate electricity.

Utah coal production reached an all-time high in the early 1980s, but it has sagged since then.

Partly to improve production, companies are using more and more machines to mine coal. Such equipment was originally blamed for the terrible Wilberg Mine Disaster of 1984, which killed 27 m i ~ e r s (including one woman). However, in 1990 a jury found the machine manufacturers free of blame and instead blamed mine operators.

Utah coal mining has brought a large, diverse number of people and a great deal of money to the state for more than a century. The industry still contributes to Utah's wealth, although there are fewer jobs for miners than there used to be. It is still dangerous work but is gradually growing safer.

Dr. Taniguchi is assistant professor of history at California State University, Stanislaus.

First steam shovel used by Utah Copper Company, March 16, 1906.

Copper mining has played a significant role in the industrial, economic, and social life of Utah.

It has also affected the state's geography. Copper has many uses. It is very important in the electrical field as it is a good conductor of electricity.

Water pipes, architectural trim, weather stripping, and wiring are but a few uses of copper found in buildings. Virtually every electrical appliance in the home or office uses copper - from air conditioners and computers to television sets and waffle irons. Automobiles, boats and ships, airplanes, and railroad engines also use copper.

In fact, we come into contact with copper almost constantly in our daily life.

In the 1860s the California Volunteers under Col. Patrick E. Connor discovered copper in the mountains of the Salt Lake Valley.

The Walker brothers, Salt Lake City merchants, hauled the first wagonloads of copper from Bingham Canyon in 1868. Throughout the 1870s and 1880s copper was basically a byproduct of the lead-silver ores mined in Bingham and elsewhere.

Copper for Electric Power As the demand for copper increased, espe-

cially with the development of electric power, Utah's role as a copper producer became more significant. During the mid-1890s Thomas Weir and Samuel Newhouse appeared on the Utah mining scene, primarily in the Bingham Canyon area, and placed copper mining and smelting in an important role in the state. These businessmen attracted other investors, such as millionaires William Rockefeller and the Guggenheim family.

In 1896 the Utah Consolidated Gold Mines, Limited, was organized in London with Newhouse as president and Weir acting as general manager.

This meant involvement in the Utah copper industry by British investors.

The development of the Bingham mines in turn led to the establishment of smelters in the Salt Lake Valley and Tooele County that would add to the national and worldwide importance of Utah's copper industry. The smelters were built by the American Smelting and Refining Company (Murray), the United States Smelting, Refining, and Mining Company (Midvale), and the International Smelting and Refining Company (Tooele).

In 1903 the Utah Copper Company was organized by Daniel C. Jackling, a metallurgical engineer from Missouri, who began a rich and

prolonged career in copper mining in Utah.

Throughout the first decade of the 20th century, many mining companies merged. In 1910 the Guggenheims' Kennecott Copper Corporation merged the Boston Consolidated Mining Company and the Utah Copper Company to form one large corporation.

Open-PitMining Jackling introduced open-pit copper mining to Utah. Ore is mined from the surface using large mechanical shovels to remove the surface rock and dig out the ore. This process had both state and worldwide significance.

Jackling became known as the "father of Utah copper mining" and Kennecott an important producer. Jackling also demonstrated that the mining of low-grade ores, containing about 2 percent copper, was profitable when mined and processed in large quantities. He initiated new methods of extracting metal by "floating" the ground ore on water and chemicals to extract the copper and other minerals. This process, called "concentrating," separates copper minerals from waste material. Smelting extracts copper from these minerals, and refining purifies the metal.

Copper mining in Bingham Canyon expanded so rapidly that most other operations in Utah disappeared. With the Magna Mill and Garfield Smelter and Refinery, Kennecott (with Utah Copper as a subsidiary) developed into one of the leading copper producers in the United States. The town of Bingham grew with it, becoming an important center for waves of immigrants.

During the 1870s Irish and English miners had populated the Bingham area, and in the 1880s British and Scandinavians continued the northern European make-up of the camp.

Tramway in Bingham Canyon delivered ore to smelters in the valley. Loaded cars descended by gravity; horses pulled empty cars back.

Daniel C.Jackling

By the end of the decade and into the 1890s' Chinese, Finns, and Italians began moving in.

The southern and eastern European presence in the canyon grew until the early 1900s. Eastern Mediterranean and Balkan peoples came to fill the need for unskilled laborers. Specific ethnic sections developed - Copperfield (Greeks),Highland Boy (South Slavs), Japtown (Japanese), Carr Fork (Finns and Swedes), and Frogtown (American-born). During the 1912 strike Mexican laborers were introduced, with that group becoming a major cultural presence in Bingham.

Striking Workers Labor strikes in the copper industry became almost a way of life for most workers and company personnel. The first large strike occurred in 1912. Men wanted their union - the Western Federation of Miners (later the International Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers, and the United Steelworkers of America) - to be recognized by the company. Also, the Greek miners wanted to end the "padrone" system.

The Greek padrone at Bingham, Leonidas G. Skliris, supplied the copper company with workers. Skliris demanded money from the Greek men for finding them work, and he made them shop at his store. Although the 1912 strike was lost in terms of union recognition, Skliris was forced to leave. Because of this strike the mining industry suffered, as did smelting and milling. It took five months to return to normal operations.

The Garfield and Magna areas developed as a direct result of copper mining. Utah Copper had constructed the Magna Mill in 1906 as a plant for the coarse crushing, fine crushing, concentrating, and dewatering of copper ores.

The site was selected because it was near water

Women ran many businesses, such as this boarding house in Bingham, in mining towns all over the state.

During World War I1 women worked in the copper mills.

perton - east of the open-pit mine in Bingham Canyon. Constructed for company supervisors and skilled workers, the town was to be a showplace for the use of copper and copper-related products, including such items as strip shingles fastened with copper nails; copper valleys, hips, ridges, and downspouts; copper gutter straps, downspout stays, and chimney saddles; copper vents; bronze hardware and screens; and brass pipes, pipe fittings, and shower fixtures.

Utah's copper industry responded to growing demands for unionization of employees by creating programs of their own. In 1919 Kennecott developed a welfare department.

Baseball leagues, ball parks, swimming pools, golf courses, and other sports facilities were

and high enough to make it easy to dispose of tailings (waste left over from milling). Another mill near the Magna Mill, constructed in 1909

by Boston Consolidated, later became part of Utah Copper and used the tailings pond. By 1918 the pond covered 5,000 acres. During 1906-7 an electric generating plant was built below the Magna Mill.

The Copper Towns By 1916 maps showed Magna as a well-developed town with many businesses and residences and a culturally diverse population.

The land which would form the town of Garfield, near the present refinery, was purchased in 1905 by Utah Copper. A smelter was built by Utah Copper and ASARCO in 1906, and the area soon became a company town where the workers rented housing from the company.

In the 1920s Kennecott (Utah Copper) began to build a unique company town -CopFlotation section, Arthur Mill, Garfield.

Copperton, Utah, a unique company town.

constructed. In 1925 the Utah Copper Club building was erected at the Arthur Mill, while Bingham had its R. C. Gemmel Club. Christmas parties for children were sponsored by the company, and each child would receive a large bag of candy. By 1939 most of Kennecott's labor force for its milling operations lived in Garfield (14 percent), Magna (63 percent), and Salt Lake City (23 percent). These mills had gone from approximately 152 employees in 1906 to 1,336 in 1938. A highpoint of 3,298 was reached in 1917. In Garfield, records indicate approximately 2,000 people living in the town in 1940. In 1955 Kennecott sold both Garfield and Copperton to a private real estate firm. Garfield was dismantled, with some of the homes moved to Magna. Copperton homes were sold to private individuals. The town is now a historic district listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Copper during World War I1 Copper production reached a high point during World War 11. Puerto Ricans came to

91I The Growth of Utah's Petroleum Jesus Arinaz, February 1942, one of many Spanish-speaking workers who came to the Bingham copper mine during World War 11.

help make up the labor shortage in Bingham Canyon. The Bingham mine is said to have produced one-third of the copper used by the Allies during the war. By 1963 Bingham had produced approximately 8 million tons of metal.

At that time Kennecott decided upon an expansion project at the mine, and the towns of Bingham and Lark were dismantled to make way for improvements.

The copper industry declined in the 1970s, and in the 1980s the company was sold to BP Minerals America, a British-owned affiliate of the Standard Oil Company of Ohio. Between 1986 and 1988 Kennecott invested $400 million to modernize facilities at the Utah Copper Division, rendering them highly efficient.

From a total workforce of some 7,000 in the 1960s, the company had 2,240 employees in 1989. In July 1989 RTZ Corporation, also British-owned, acquired BP's interests, renaming the company Kennecott Corporation.

Kennecott produces annually 250,000 tons of copper, 350,000 ounces of gold, 2.5 million ounces of silver, and 8 million pounds of molybdenum. It is considered among the top copper producers in the world and by many as the most efficient. The Bingham mine is currently two and one-half miles across and onehalf mile deep and is the largest open-pit copper mine in the world!

UTAH COPPER PRODUCTION - Selected Years Short Tons Value 1890 503,300 $ 157,000 $ 8,938,500 1905 28,649,000 $ 16,204,800 1910 63,798,500 1917 143,337,100 $ 67,342,000 1 930 90,263,200 $ 23,468,400 1943 323,989,000 $ 84,237,100

1970 1983

295,738,000 169,751,000

$341,282,000 $286,403,000

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By WALTER JONES Utah's oil industry developed slowly in two distinct phases: a long period ofexploration and a more recent time of commercial production. The exploratory period began in 1850 when Capt. Howard Stansbury, while on a survey of the Great Salt Lake for the Army Corps of Topographical Engineers, discovered evidence of "petroliem" along the northern shore of the lake. During the next forty years Utah residents and visitors found other signs of oil in various parts of the region.

Before 1890, gold prospectors traveling down the San Juan River in southeastern Utah noticed oil seeps along the river's steep embankments. In that same period two Salt Lake City businessmen found oil dripping from the crevices of rocks on the Green River, and ranchDespite technological advances, drilling for oil remains hard work and is considered a hazardous occupation.

ers and other residents of the Uinta Basin came across similar occurrences near Vernal. In 1891 the Utah Oil Company, whose incorporators included Simon Bamberger - later to be governor of Utah - and C. J. Millis, sank a shallow well near Green River, Utah. Not finding any oil, the Utah Oil Company abandoned its well after drilling to a depth of 1,000 feet. During the remainder of the 1890s oil and gas prospectors sank approximately twenty-five wells in various parts of the state.

In 1901 Anthony Lucas's fabulous petroleum discovery at Spindletop, Texas, encouraged Utahns to renew their interest in the state's oil potential. A somewhat frenzied increase in the formation of ~etroleumcompanies and the leasing of promising oil properties followed, and the Salt Lake Tribune proclaimed in December 1901 that an "oil era" was at hand for Utah. Two years later the state coal mine inspector supported the Tribune's claim by noting the existence of thirty-five oil companies in Utah and the drilling of two wells.

Early Oil Drilling Southern Utah became the focal point of oil field activities in 1907. Early that year Pat Holohan, a Nevada miner, found outcroppings of oil sand near Virgin City in Washington County and quickly drilled two wells. Twelve different companies soon put down fourteen wells in the region. Meanwhile, a former gold prospector named E. L. Goodridge was drilling a well at Mexican Hat on the San Juan River in San Juan County. In March 1908 Goodridge produced a gusher, and by the end of 1909 approximately seven oil companies had started work on no less than twenty-five wells near Mexican Hat. Neither Virgin - Citv nor Mexican Hat ever became major oil-producing fields, but both areas produced enough oil to supply small local refineries that operated intermittently for many years.

Oil men drilled more than eighty wells in Utah from 1907 through 1912. In addition, John C. Howard incorporated the Utah Oil Refining Company and completed the construction of a refinery at the northern edge of Salt Lake City in 1909. After 1912, however, the state's oil industry went into a slump from which it did not totally recover until 1922.

The prospect of a major petroleum find nevertheless continued to lure a few explorers, and from 1916 to 1921 several companies, in-

cluding such major operators as the Ohio Oil Company and the Midwest Refining Company, drilled a dozen deep test holes. Observing the persistence of these enterprises, one writer concluded in 1925 that their efforts were justified because Utah's structural and surface conditions held "exceptional promise for oil and gas accumulation."

During the 1920s petroleum companies increased their exploration efforts throughout Utah. They worked over areas previously examined and also initiated drilling projects in new locations such as Salt Lake City itself, where one company drilled a well at the north end of Redwood Road while a second firm sunk a well on Highland Drive. Enterprising petroleum operators also tested the Great Salt Lake to a greater extent than had been previously done. The Lakeside Oil Company drilled on the western shore of the lake, and an offshore rig was built on a pier near Rozel Point at the lake's northern tip.

One of the most spectacular ventures of the period was a joint project on the Colorado River near Moab, Utah. The companies involved in this endeavor included the Utah-Southern Oil Company, the Midwest Enterprises Company, and John Howard's Utah Oil Refining Company. Together, these three firms drilled a well called the Frank Shafer No. 1, which hit oil on December 8, 1935. At first the well gushed oil, gas, rock, and sand and gravel hundreds of feet into the air, but very quickly the 84-foot tall wooden derrick caught fire and burned. When the well hit oil the Salt Lake Oil refining operations in the north end of Salt Lake City began in 1909. This photograph was taken in the 1960s.

Mining Review hailed it as evidence that Utah had joined the ranks of the "real petroleumproducing states." The boast was premature, however, because the well's promoters were unable to produce any oil from the venture despite extending the well to a depth of 5,000 feet.

Oil in the Uinta Basin During the 1920s Earl Douglas, a paleontologist who discovered Dinosaur National Monument, became an eloquent spokesman for Utah's oil industry. His interest in petroleum geology and his scientific investigations in the Uinta Basin convinced him that the region contained a great deal of oil. Throughout the 1920s he called attention to the Uinta Basin by writing journal articles and letters and by visiting financial centers to seek support for drilling projects.

The Great Depression and the first years of World War 11 dampened enthusiasm for Utah's petroleum potential. Experiencing the worst slowdown in drilling since the World War I period, Utah oil promoters drilled only 143 wells from 1930 through 1944. In 1939 only three wells were sunk, while the total dropped to two in 1942, and no one ventured into any areas which had not already been explored before the Great Depression.

The industry survived this slowdown, and developers continued to drill in Washington County's Virgin oil field where they completed sixty wells before 1944. Standard Oil of California sank two test holes in Emery County, and the Utah-Southern Oil Company remained active in Grand County, even drilling one well to a depth of 6,715 feet. William E. Nevills, who began work in the Mexican Hat oil field in the mid-l920s, enlarged his operations by adding three wells to his string of small producers during the 1930s.

Toward the end of World War I1 oilmen began to accelerate Utah's petroleum operations once again. From 1945 through 1947 they succeeded in finishing the groundwork necessary to propel the state into a period of commercial oil production. The focal point of their activities was the Uinta Basin where a number of large companies such as Standard Oil of California, Pure, Continental, Gulf, Carter, and Union began to explore more seriously than ever before. Despite the presence of these major firms, the Equity Oil Company, a Utahbased enterprise under the leadership of J. L. Dougan, was the first to find commercial

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J. L. Dougan, left, watches oil flow from Utah's first commercial well southeast of Vernal in 1948.

amounts of oil in the Uinta Basin. Dougan was drilling in Ashley Valley on September 18, 1948, when his company tapped a pool of oil that produced 300 barrels a day. During the next seven years major oil companies opened several Uinta Basin fields such as Roosevelt (19491, Red Wash (1951), Walker Hollow (1953), and Bluebell (1955). These fields became a part of two giant oil-producing complexes - Greater AltamontiBluebell and Greater Red Wash - which ultimately included White River (1961), Cedar Rim (19691, and Altamont (1970).

Greater Aneth Area During the 1950s other large companies, including Shell, Superior, and Texas, tapped into an oil region in southeastern Utah that overshadowed even the Uinta Basin. The discovery well at Aneth, along the San Juan River east of the old Mexican Hat field, produced 1,704 barrels of oil a day after it hit oil in 1956.

Twenty other wells were completed that year, each averaging a daily flow of 800 barrels. The major companies operating in the Aneth region UTAH CRUDE PETROLEUM PRODUCTION - Selected Years 1955 1960 1970 1974 1980 1984 1988

42-Gallon Barrels 2,227,000 37,596,000 23,367,000 39,363,000 24,877,000 37,902,000 33,017,000

Value $ 5,140,000 $ 98,126,000 $ 65,661,000 $ 290,893,000 $ 492,316,000 $1,031,313,000 $ 470,492,000

Pumping unit in the White Mesa oil field, part of the Greater Aneth Area.

soon discovered other fields, including Ratherford (1956), McElmo Creek (19571, and White Mesa (1957), and together these fields became known as the Greater Aneth Area.

From the late 1940s until 1957 almost all of Utah's oil development occurred along the eastern border of the state from the Uinta Basin to the San Juan River. The one exception was the Upper Valley oil field located ten miles southeast of Escalante in Garfield County. In 1964 Tenneco opened the Upper Valley field, and by 1978 there were twenty-six active wells capable of producing a total of one million barrels of petroleum a year.

In 1975 Summit County became an important center for oil development. Part of the Overthrust Belt - a region of highly complex mountain-forming faults, folds, and thrusts Summit County became the scene of American Quasar's discovery of a field called Pineview, east of Coalville. Within the next five years, Amoco, Chevron, Gulf, Chaplin, and Anschutz Corporation hit prolific amounts of oil and gas in a series of fields that included Lodgepole, Elkhorn Ridge, Anschutz Ranch, and Anschutz Ranch East.

From Howard Stansbury's discovery of "petroliem" along the northern shore of the Great Salt Lake in 1851 to the opening of the giant Overthrust Belt fields in Summit County in the

late 1970s, the history of Utah's oil industry has been one of slow and intermittent development. The first companies to drill within the state were predominantly small and poorly financed. The majority of wells they drilled (360 out of a total of 550 drilled prior to the Ashley Valley well of 1948) did not even reach a depth of 1,000 feet. None produced the 300 barrels of oil a day that Equity's first well initially yielded. Only gradually did the large petroleum companies enter Utah, and they did not succeed in discovering commercial quantities of oil until after 1948. Most oil development has occurred in the eastern third of Utah, running from the Uinta Mountains to the San Juan River.

In the 140 years since Stansbury's first discovery nearly one hundred and sixty fields have been explored and approximately 900,000,000 barrels of oil produced in Utah (Texas yielded almost that much petroleum in 1947).The number of productive wells in Utah has increased from 225 in 1957 to 875 in 1968 and 1,300 in 1978. While the state's contribution has remained relatively minor, the petroleum industry has become one of Utah's significant commercial enterprises.

Mr. Jones is head of Western Americana, Special Collections, Marriott Library, University of Utah.

Utah's Uranium Boom

By RAYE C. RINGHOLZ

It was the winter of 1949 in Houston, Texas.

Charles Augustus Steen was twenty-eight years old. Fired as a geologist by the Standard Oil Company of Indiana for "rebellion against authority" and blacklisted throughout the petroleum industry, he was working as a carpenter to support a pregnant wife and three toddlers.

But alithe time he pounded nails the graduate of Texas School of Mines and Metallurgy dreamed of the day he could get back to his first love and go wildcatlir~glor oil on his own.

Maybe make a fortune. Then one December he picked up a copy of the Engineering and Mining Journal and knew his time had come. "Can Uranium Mining Pay?" a headline challenged.

The accompanying story hailed a potential uranium boom evolving in the ragged badlands of the Colorado Plateau. ". . . Risks are being taken and profits are being made," the article stated. "This speaks well for the independent producers there because many of them are newcomers to the mining field, having been farmers, ranchers, fruit growers, etc. It should also be a challenge to experienced mining men to come into the area and do as well or better."

Uranium was suddenly the most critical material the United States had ever known. It fueled atomic weapons. It promised electrical power; gas-free operation of cars, planes, and locomotives; preservation of meat; and even distillation of sea water. Most important, a domestic supply of uranium was needed to maintain a nuclear edge in the cold war that was developing with Russia. But such a motherlode was nonexistent.

The Manhattan Project America had been caught short-handed during World War 11, when the Manhattan Project, a top-secret branch of the U.S. Corps of Engineers (later reorganized as the civilian Atomic Energy Commission) was developing a lethal atomic bomb to end the hostilities. Fuel for this nuclear weapon was uranium. As our nation's own supply of the ore was severely limited, the project had to import most of the needed material from the Belgian Congo (Zaire)and a small amount from Canada.

The only known source of local uranium in those days was in the Four Corners area where

Atlas Minerals uranium mine in typical, remote southeastern Utah country.

possibility of a full-scale uranium industry on the Colorado Plateau did the AEC finally send out the call for prospectors.

Uranium prospectors with pick and Geiger counter.

Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico meet. In 'the early 1900s, after Madame Marie Curie isolated pure metal radium from uranium salts, the uranium-bearing pitchblende and yellow carnotite on the Colorado Plateau (once used as Indian war paint) triggered a rush of prospectors. The region became the primary source of Curie's "miracle element" until the advent of World War I. On the heels of the radium boom, another ore came into prominence. Vanadium, a waste product of radium mines, was found to enhance the tensile strength, wearability, and elasticity of steel when added to the molten metal with iron. Production of warships, planes, and industrial machinery triggered a new mining fever on the Colorado Plateau. Fortune-hunters descended on redrock country once more to mine vanadium from the abandoned radium waste piles.

Some twenty-five years later, with the development of nuclear weaponry, the Manhattan Project calculated that there would be a small amount of uranium in the old radiumvanadium dumps, A highly secret operation to mine and mill these tailings for the precious uranium oxide commenced. Not until 1947, after Howard Balsley of Moab, Utah, and Fendall A. Sitton from Dove Creek, Colorado, went to Washington to convince bureaucrats of the

Uranium Prices Guaranteed Uncle Sam was desperate for the mineral and willing to pay for it. As the only legal purchaser of the ore, the Atomic Energy Commission established minimum prices, guaranteed the rates for ten years, and added a $10,000 bonus for each separate discovery and production of high-grade uranium from new deposits.

This was all that Charlie Steen needed. He bought a second-hand jeep and a broken-down drill rig and headed for the Colorado Plateau.

After studying the reports of Manhattan Project geologists who charted the back country, he decided that a triangle drawn from Moab, Utah, on the west, Dove Creek, Colorado, near the Utah-Colorado border in the southeast, and Grand Junction, Colorado, to the north contained the heart of the action. Confident of his expertise as an oil geologist, he ignored established uranium prospecting guidelines drawn by federal geologists and was convinced that uranium could collect deep underground like reservoirs of oil and then leech upward into the Morrison Formation where most of the ore had been located. Consequently, instead of prospecting ridgelines, he looked for downward sloping, or anticlinal, structures behind existing claims where small amounts of uranium had been found.

Unlike most uranium prospectors, Steen did not own a Geiger counter to help locate hidden deposits. He rattled around the back country for almost two years, scrounging grubstakes from friends and family and moving his wife and four sons into tiny trailers and tarpaper shacks. Finally, in the spring of 1951 he staked twelve claims behind the old Big Buck Mine, which had been worked by Dan Hayes, Jim

Charles A. Steen

Small rail cars loaded with uranium from Atlas Minerals uranium mine.

Bentley, and W. Y. Brewer - an area then labeled worthless by Manhattan Project engineers. Despite local ridicule over "Steen's Folly," he persisted. On July 6, 1952, Steen struck the biggest deposit of high-grade uranium ore in the country. Within the first six months his Mi Vida ("My Life") Mine, southeast of Moab in the Lisbon Valley, shipped a million dollars worth of ore that was so pure it assayed up to 87 percent uranium.

The Uranium Boom Steen's strike triggered a mineral rush that rocked the entire Colorado Plateau. Shortly after announcement of the Mi Vida find, Vernon Pick, a middle-aged electrician from Minnesota, discovered the Delta Mine northwest of

UTAH URANIUM PRODUCTION - Selected Years Pounds Value 2,219,000 $ 9,454,000 $ 27,843,000 6,539,000 $ 6,742,000 1,635,000 $ 68,248,000 2,397,000 2,895,000 $1 11,080,000 5,320,000 $145,610,000

Hanksville. After blocking out approximately 300,000 tons of ore with an in-place value of forty dollars per ton, the Delta's monthly production averaged 1,500 tons. Two years later Pick sold his mine to international financier Floyd Odlum for $9 million and a custom-converted PBY airplane. Odlum renamed the mine the Hidden Splendor, but soon after his purchase the highly touted vein pinched out.

Local wags then dubbed the mine "Odlum's Hidden Blunder."

Pratt Seegmiller of Marysville remembered some yellow rock he'd seen in the back country years before. After racking his brain to remember the site, he staked the Freedom and Prospector claims, which proved to be among Utah's richest deposits.

Joe Cooper, a road contractor in Monticello, partnered with his father-in-law Fletcher Bronson and earned over $25 million on the Happy Jack Mine.

Texan Blanton W. Burford and his partners sliced into an eight-foot vein of high-grade uranium ore while bulldozing a road into their claims on Rattlesnake Mountain near Moab.

School teachers, insurance brokers, used car salesmen, and shoe clerks around the nation converged on the Colorado Plateau to seek their fortune. Even a group of high school students staked forty claims and later sold them for $15,000. By the mid-1950s, almost six hundred producers on the Colorado Plateau were shipping uranium ore. Employment in the industry topped 8,000 workers in the mines and mills. Another bonanza in penny uranium stock established Salt Lake City as "The Wall Street of Uranium." The AEC had turned the tap and caused a flood.

But by 1964, after producing almost 9 million tons of ore valued at $250 million, the Atomic Energy Commission announced that "it is no longer in the interest of the Government to expand production of uranium concentrate." The market was saturated. There were 71 million tons of reserves - enough to satisfy United States needs through the next four years. For the first time, private enterprise was invited to purchase uranium oxide and the AEC put federal buying on hold. During the late 1960s the industry rallied again with mining by large companies for developing nuclear plants. But the furor was never the same. Ostensibly, the uranium boom was over.

Mrs. Ringholz, a writer living in Park City, is the author of Uranium Freqzy: Boom and Bust on the Colorado Plateau (1989).

Utah's Building Materials

Utah Sand and Gravel Products plant on North Beck Street, Salt Lake City, 1963.

Building materials - such as sand and gravel, stone, clay, cement, and gypsum - are referred to in the U.S. Bureau of Mines publications as industrial minerals. As such they do not rate a very glamorous place in mining because of their low value per ton. Yet, these minerals are essential if we want to build houses, streets and roads, office buildings, and many other structures that are important for our comfort and well-being.

Utah is noted for metal mines (copper, silver, gold, and lead) and for abundance of coal, but sand and gravel we treat like dirt.

Nevertheless, industrial minerals accounted for an impressive 17.5 percent of all minerals produced in Utah in 1989. Sometimes such a figure may be misleading, as in 1958 when the Southern Pacific Railroad made 5.5 million tons of rock fill out of a cliff at Promontory Point in Box Elder County to build the causeway bed alongside the 1902 wooden trestle of the Lucin Cutoff. The value of Utah's industrial minerals rose sharply that year.

Sand and Gravel Sand and gravel are perhaps the least flashy of the industrial minerals, yet the most noteworthy. The largest use of construction sand and gravel is as aggregate for the production of concrete. Concrete is used as a construction material in nearly all residential, commercial, and industrial buildings and in most public works projects such as dams, bridges, sewer

systems, tunnels, sidewalks, etc. Its second largest use is as a base material in the construction and repair of highways, runways and railways (remember the causeway at Promontory Point). Other major uses are as fill in highway construction, earth dams, and other applications where recontouring of the original land surface is required, and as aggregate in asphaltic concrete used mainly for paving streets, highways, and parking lots. Asphaltic concrete is nothing more than paving asphalt used to make a hard surface over a gravel base. After mixing the aggregate with hot liquid asphalt, the mixture is plastic and can be made to conform to the desired surface or area. It then hardens to make a serviceable, impermeable (waterproof) surface.

Nationally, according to the U.S. Bureau of Mines, "In 1982, the construction sand and gravel use pattern was concrete aggregates, 44%; road bases, 22%; asphaltic concrete aggregates, 14%; and fill and other uses; 16%" Utah building materials use patterns closely follow the national use pattern unless the local economy is surging from a construction boom, such as the causeway building, or lagging behind for some reason peculiar to the region.

Uses of industrial minerals have changed over the years to go along with technological advances in management and use.

Industrial minerals are most valuable in proximity to large populations. Because of their low value per unit of measure these prod-

ucts cannot be shipped very far before the cost to move them is greater than their value. Utah does have an abundance of industrial minerals, and population centers are for the most part near the supply of materials, or near to the mountains; but there is not enough of a population to demand a lot of building material, and sand and gravel and most other building materials are not valuable enough to export.

Being located near the mountains, near water courses, or on a lake bed put the communities of Utah near the most likely locations for sand and gravel and other building materials. The first thing people see as they travel along the Wasatch Front is the mountains. The eye will first encounter the benches which are the alluvial structures of sand and gravel left by flooding streams emptying into the mighty Lake Bonneville that covered much of Utah, Nevada, and parts of other states in the West 15,000 years ago. The erosive power of rushing water and wind broke apart the mountain rock and deposited the fragments at the mouth of streams. Geologists think that when the prehistoric lake rose and overflowed into the Snake River Valley at Red Rock Pass in what is now southern Idaho, the flood water cut a channel more than a thousand feet deep and drained the lake down close to what we see today as the Great Salt Lake. The draining and drying of the land left abundant resources to use as building material for people who live here today.

Stone Quarries The early settlers developed quarries in the nearby canyons to obtain building stone and gravel pits for aggregate. In Salt Lake County, for example, granite quarries were developed in Little Cottonwood Canyon, and sandstone was quarried in Red Butte Canyon behind Fort

Oolitic limestone was originally transported by wagon from quarries near Ephraim, Sanpete County.

Old lime kilns near Salt Lake City.

The remains of early lime kilns can be found near many Utah towns.

Douglas. Sanpete County quarries produced a creamy white limestone that was widely used in building. Many of the pioneer homes in Beaver City were built of a locally quarried black basalt, and in other towns throughout Utah many structures of the 19th and early 20th century illustrate the different kinds of stone available locally to builders Gravel pits may be seen all along the Wasatch Front and tend to produce the best gravel when they are near the mouths of canyons.

When gravel was hauled by wagon it was used sparingly. The invention of motor cars and trucks made hauling gravel and other material more economical and more widely used.

Gravel can be clean or dirty, the latter meaning it contains fines or organic material. Organic material in gravel is undesirable because it decomposes at a rapid rate. Concrete containing organic material will not hold up under pressure. Fines -extremely small rock particles can be used in stable concrete structures.

Once, nearly every community had a lime deposit that was mined to provide the material from which to make cement, mortar, and plaster. The remains of lime kilns can still be seen on mountainsides near communities that once used them. Lime production for plaster has been replaced by plaster board manufactured at Sigurd, Utah. In this case, gypsum is prepared in large quantities and formed between sheets of cardboard. This process takes advantage of the economies of scale to produce a better product at a cheaper cost. After production the board may be handled and applied rapidly.

This process of manufacturing, shipping, and applying wallboard increases efficiency and lowers the cost of wall construction.

By LINDA THATCHER

Outdoor brickmaking using locally available clays.

At one time a substance known as rock asphalt was mined in eastern Utah from open pit sources and spread on roads as a hard surface.

This process has since been replaced by other surfacing material such as cement slabs and asphaltic concrete.

Brickmaking Bricks were manufactured using local clays in many Utah communities. The clay was mixed with water and perhaps straw and then put into molds. The bricks were dried by building a large fire around the brick pile in the field. These field-fired bricks were usually soft and lacked the hard surface necessary to resist weathering, but they were harder than adobe and had good weight-bearing strength.

Once sand and gravel for concrete aggregate was abundant near the large population centers. Now the price of hauling aggregate fro more distant deposits is high enough to justif reduction (breaking down by blasting and crushing) of solid rock to make aggregate to avoid the cost of hauling. Our demand for some industrial minerals has outrun our supply, and, in a way, we have moved from an economy of abundance to an economy of scarcity.

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Dr. Haymond is development officer, Utah State Historical society.

UTAH PRODUCTION of SELECT MINERALS - 1986 Short Tons Value Clays 305,000 $ 2,048,000 Gypsum 284,000 $ 2,478,000 Lime 232,000 $1 3,079,000 Construction Sand & Gravel 16,452,000 $39,763,000 Crushed Stone 4,500,000 $14,100,000

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Rumors of a salty lake somewhere in western America circulated for more than a hundred years before it was actually sighted by white men. The Dominguez-Escalante expedition of 1776, while not attempting to visit the Great Salt Lake, nonetheless recorded the lake on the expedition map drawn by Bernardo Miera y Pacheco, their cartographer, using information obtained from the Indians they encountered. Most likely the first white man to actually see the lake was Jim Bridger, who was employed by William Henry Ashley as a trapper in 1824-25. Capt. Howard Stansbury's expedition in 1849 and 1850 made the first complete survey of the lake. After 1880 numerous explorations and surveys of the lake were made, mainly to analyze the water content and study the bird life. The earliest comprehensive study of the water resources was conducted by T. C. Adams in 1934-35.

Located in the lowest spot in a drainage basin of 22,060 square miles, the Great Salt Lake receives very little water from local sources. The rivers that flow into it come from the Rocky Mountains and the Colorado Plateau. The Great Salt Lake is a terminal lake that experiences marked fluctuations in size and surface depending upon the amount of rainfall and evaporation within its watershed.

The lake consists of four distinct water bodies, each having its own ecological characteristics, brine content, and color, and ranging from nearly fresh water to between 6 and 1 2 percent solids, the bay waters nearest the main body of the lake having the higher concentrations of brine. Sodium chloride accounts for about 80 percent of the lake's solids. Other salts are sodium sulfate (Glauber's salt) and salts of potassium, chlorine, sulfur, and calcium, and numerous trace elements such a lithium, bromine, and boron.

First Use of Lake Minerals The use of the lake for its minerals was limited before the Mormons entered the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. Most likely the local Indians obtained salt from the lake, but the first white men known to use salt from the lake were mountain men in Ashley's Rocky Mountain Fur Company in the fall of 1825. Later John C. Fremont reported in his 1843-44journal: Today we remained at this camp, in order to obtain some further observations and to boil down the water which had been brought from

Workers with wheelbarrows on the salt beds, Great Salt Lake.

the lake for a supply of salt. Roughly evaporated over the fire, the five gallons of water yielded fourteen pints of very fine-grained and very white salt, of which the whole lake may be regarded as a saturated solution.

Even though Fremont's reports were published prior to the settlement of the Salt Lake Valley by the Mormons, the availability of salt did not influence their decision to settle the area. Soon after their arrival in the valley a group of men were sent to the lake to extract salt from the lake shore. They reported that they "prepared 125 bushels of coarse white salt, and boiled down four barrels of salt water to one barrel of fine white table salt." The salt deposits from the shore proved to be bitter tasting, and they found that a better quality salt could be obtained from boiling down the lake water itself, thus avoiding mud and other impurities.

To improve the quality and develop a profitable commercial enterprise, one group set up a salt-boiling apparatus near the south end of the lake. The exact location of this plant remains unknown. The product from this operation was unrefined, however, and those who wanted a superior grade of salt had to import it from Liverpool, England.

A permanent salt-boiling operation was established in the spring of 1850 by Charley White. John W. Gunnison reported that White could produce 600 pounds of salt per day in his six 60-gallon kettles. This plant operated until 1861. According to the 1870 census there was one salt producer in Utah, located in E. T. City, Tooele County, and owned by Joseph Griffith and William F. Moss. The Great Salt Lake rose to a high point in 1873, diluting the brine to about one-third. As a result, the salt boilers had to burn about one-third more wood to obtain the same amount of salt as before.

Salt for the Silver Mills The salt industry received a commercial boost with the discovery of silver in Montana in the mid-1860s. The chlorination process for the reduction of silver ore was developed about the same time, placing a heavy demand on producers to supply the mills with enough salt (sodium chloride) to use in converting the silver in the ore to silver chloride, which could then be dissolved by various solutions. As this and other new markets for salt opened, production and refining methods improved.

By 1873 the level of the lake had risen so much that many of the natural salt beds were

Left: equipment for harvesting crude potash salts with refinery in the background; right: female workers bagging table salt at the Royal Crystal plant.

covered with water. To compensate for the high water level, dikes were constructed across the entrance of coves and along the shore of the lake so that the periodic rise and fall of the lake could fill the ponds. By the 1880s permanent dikes had replaced earlier structures destroyed by high winds and tides. Companies engaged in salt production installed steam-powered pumps to help control the water levels because natural fluctuations of the lake could no longer be depended upon to fill ;he ponds.

In the latter part of the 19th century three companies assumed prominence in salt production: the Jeremy Salt Company, the Intermountain Salt Company, and the Inland Crystal Salt Company, the latter founded in 1889.

The Jeremy firm finally failed, but the other two merged and operated under the successive names of Inland Crystal Salt Company and Royal Crystal Salt Company.

By the early 1890s salt companies in Utah could be placed in two categories, small companies that produced large quantities of salt to supply the silver-refining industry and larger companies that produced both refined table salt and salt for industrial use. The Inland Salt Company and its successor, Inland Crystal Salt Company, were such organizations.

Through the years there have been many changes in the way salt is produced. The pro-

UTAH SALT PRODUCTION - Selected Years Value Short Tons 1955 196,000 $ 1,339,000 $ 3,092,000 1960 231,000 1965 384,000 $ 3,591,000 1982 1,227,000 $23,210,000 1983 936,000 $23,184,000 1987 1,108,000 $34,264,000

cess of obtaining salt from the brine has evolved from boiling the brine in large kettles to pumping lake water into a series of crystallization ponds where most of the insoluble materials settle out.

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Other Lake Minerals Sodium chloride, or common salt - used in the home, in many industrial processes, and for highway deicing, water softening, etc. was the principal commodity extracted from the lake until the 1960s. Then the Great Salt Lake Minerals and. Chemical Corporation started extracting other minerals as well: cake salt (Glauber's salt, sodium sulfate], used in making paper and glass; potassium sulfate, used as a fertilizer; and ,magnesium chloride, converted to the metal magnesium (used in fireworks, alloys, etc.) and chlorine gas. In the mid-1960s NL Industries constructed solar evaporating ponds in Burmeister, Utah, and a pilot plant for producing cell feed was built at Lakepoint, Utah. In 1969 they built a magnesium plant at Rowley, Utah, to utilize brine from the Great Salt Lake. In 1978 Amoco began oil and gas drilling operations about seven miles from the shore of Great Salt Lake, leasing 600,000 acres from the state of Utah.

The wet years of the mid-1980s nearly brought an end to the lake's mineral industry when the lake rose to almost 4,220 feet, expanding the shoreline and causing millions of dollars in damage. Today there are four companies extracting minerals from the lake: Great Salt Lake Minerals and Chemicals, Morton Salt; Akzo Salt, and American Salt. The lake contains approximately 90 billion dollars worth of minerals and will therefore continue to play an important role in Utah's economy.

Ms. Thatcher is collections coordinator, Utah State Historical Society.

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