ABUNDANCE FROM THE EARTH: The Beginnings of Commercial Mining in Utah BY LEONARD J . ARRINGTON
Next to human resources, available minerals are among our most essential and prized possessions. Mining provides essential raw materials for the tools and equipment used in agriculture, in industry, in transportation and communication, and in the ordinary household. Indeed, mineral products constitute the building blocks of both developing and advanced societies. As a state with a rich endowment of mineral resources, Utah has made, and is continuing to make, major contributions to the nation. When Abraham Lincoln said, "Utah will yet become the treasure-house of the nation,"1 he could hardly have realized that one day the state would have the largest open-pit mine in the world; provide one-third of the immense demands for copper of a nation at war; and lead all the states, in various years, in production of lead, silver, zinc, copper, gold, and uranium, as well as in a number of minor minerals. The beginnings of the commercial exploitation of its mines justifies retelling in this centennial year. Although we cannot exclude the possibility that skilled Navajo silversmiths may have used metals from Utah mines, the first known mining in Utah was done in the 1840's by Spanish-Americans. Silver and gold mines worked by Mexicans have been located near Cedar City and Kamas, Utah.2 Far more extensive and systematic were the mining activities of the Mormon pioneers. There was mining of salt as early as 1847; a community was established devoted to working the coal and iron deposits of Cedar City; fifty young men were "called" to mine gold in California; other groups began to mine coal at Wales, Sanpete County, and Coalville, to mine lead at Las Vegas and Minersville, and to mine sulfur at Beaver; a company was dispatched from southern Utah in 1864 to develop lead and silver mines at Meadow Valley and another group in 1873 to work silver mines in the Uinta region; and exploring parties were organized to investigate reports of the existence of various kinds of minerals in Dr. Arrington is professor of economics, Utah State University, Logan The rewarrh W *w „ A V was done under a grant from the Utah State University Research Council Th7 J n f ^ I Wlsh gratitude for the collaboration of Gary B. Hansen, university research fellow ir, Z^t ^s to express University in 1962-63. Two publications which appeared L l a * " t be u 7 e d i n X T ™ ^ ^ " article give excellent perspective to Utah's early mining history. They are- William <? r- i , d r a " ° n ° r m i s za West: The Story of the Western Mining Rushes, 1848-1900 (Norman 1965V ,'„;, T?' ,„T"', Kodman W Mining Frontiers of the Far West, 1848-1880 (New York, 1963). ' '' - PauI < 1 Edward Tullidge, History of Salt La\e City (Salt Lake City, 1886), 697 2 Edgar M. Ledyard, "Early Mining and Smelting South of Salt Lake Citv " Ar I n , A V , „ „ 1931), 1; J. Cecil Alter, ed., "Those Old Spanish Mines," Utah Historical Quarterh IX ni i ( ^ , UuIy 1941), 129-31; William R. Palmer, "Other Spanish Mines," ibid., 132 *' ' 0ctnber,
