Horn Silver Mine at Frisco, Utah

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This page was last updated on January 22, 2023.

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Overview

Railroad service reached Frisco in June 1880 when the Utah Southern Railroad Extension finished its route south from York, just south of today's line between Utah and Juab counties. Utah Southern Railroad Extension was a Union Pacific-controlled company, and within a year, UP had taken control of two connecting lines: Utah Central Railway (between Ogden and Salt Lake City) and Utah Southern Railroad (between Salt Lake City and York). The Utah Southern Railroad Extension as organized as a Union Pacific enterprise to extend the rails of Utah Southern south to reach the silver mines at Frisco, the largest of which, the Horn Silver mine, was partly controlled by men who were also directors of Union Pacific. Union Pacific consolidated its control of the three roads by organizing the Utah Central Railway in July 1881, a merger of Utah Central Railroad, Utah Southern Railroad, and Utah Southern Railroad Extension.

The mines at Frisco were found to be very rich in silver and lead ores. By the end of 1882, the Horn Silver mine alone shipped $6 million worth of ore.

The following comes from the recollections of D. P. James, published in The Union Pacific Magazine, January 1931, page 35:

This famous old mining property which has paid fifty-four million dollars in dividends, was discovered April 5, 1875, by James Ryan and Samuel Hawks. A shaft was commenced and had been sunk about 3o feet in the ore when the claim was sold, February 17, 1876, to A. G. Campbell, Mathew Cullen, Dennis Ryan and A. Byram, to whom is due the credit for having developed and brought the mine to a state of profitable production.

February 17, 1879, the mine came into the possession of the Horn Silver Mining company and was worked by that company until 1928, when it was taken over by the Tintic Lead company, of Eureka, Utah. At the present time ten carloads of ore are being shipped weekly to the smelters.

My mother remembers 30 years ago, when box cars were used in shipping ore from the Horn silver mine, that 25 cars went out each day loaded to capacity.

The following comes from History Blazer, January 1986:

When the Horn Silver Mine Crashed In

By Miriam B. Murphy

The story of the Horn Silver Mine, one of the great producers in Utah and American mining history, reads like pulp fiction: Two prospectors casually discover a rich ore body, a bankrupt financier promotes the venture, the boomtown of Frisco becomes one of the wildest mining camps in the West with a murder or two every evening, a tough lawman who shoots on sight begins to clean up the town, after producing millions the huge mine collapses, and Frisco becomes another ghost town.

It all started in September 1875 when prospectors James Ryan and Samuel Hawkes, who were working a galena mine in the San Francisco Mining District of Beaver County, tested a huge outcropping they passed each day. They found a solid ore body and immediately staked a claim to it. The two men decided to sell the claim rather than work it, fearing perhaps that the ore body was not as large as it appeared. By the late 1870s the new owners had extracted 25,000 tons of ore with a high silver content. The town of Frisco had sprouted up near the mine, some 17 miles west of Milford. But developing a mine in that remote area, some 175 miles from the nearest railhead, required more financial muscle than was locally available.

Enter Jay Cooke, the financial genius who had come up with the idea of selling federal bonds to pay for the Civil War. In 1870 he was reportedly the richest man in America and the nation's leading banker. By 1873 he was broke. The Franco-Prussian War and the Panic of 1873 had dealt a fatal blow to his promotion of bonds to construct the Northern Pacific Railroad. Even his mansion near Philadelphia had been taken by creditors. Cooke had never been interested in mining investments, but a friend convinced him to take a look at the Horn Silver Mine in far-off Utah. Following a complicated series of events "Cooke induced the owners to bond the property to him in consideration of his promise to give them railroad connections." Cooke did not have a dime to put into the venture, but he still had his genius for organizing and promoting. He was able to convince the mine owners and the LDS church to each provide a quarter of the capital needed. The remaining half was guaranteed by Wall Street financier Jay Gould. Within a few years Cooke was again rich, selling his shares in the Horn for an estimated $1 million. Exit Jay Cooke.

By 1879 the United States Annual Mining Review and Stock Ledger was calling the Horn "unquestionably the richest silver mine in the world now being worked." Frisco fairly buzzed with activity. Two smelters processed ore from the mine, and the company had developed a number of other needed facilities, including charcoal kilns, an iron reflux mine, a telegraph line to Beaver, and several stores in Frisco. Still, smelting on site was difficult and expensive due to the scarcity of fuel, water, and iron ore. With the completion of the Utah Southern Railroad Extension to Frisco on June 23, 1880, ore could be shipped to the Francklyn smelter near Murray, Utah, for processing. During its peak years some 150 tons of ore a day were sent to the Salt Lake Valley for smelting. By 1885 the Horn had produced more than $13 million and paid its shareholders $4 million in dividends. Some of its ore averaged 70 to 200 ounces of silver per ton.

The town of Frisco quickly became a center of vice and crime. Like many a boomtown in the West its streets were lined with saloons (21 according to one count), gambling dens, and houses of prostitution. One writer called it "Dodge City, Tombstone, Sodom and Gomorrah all rolled into one," noting that murders occurred so often that city officials contracted to have a wagon pick up the bodies and take them to boothill for burial. Eventually Frisco's reputation had become so tarnished that Marshal Pearson from Pioche, Nevada, was hired to clean up the town. He allegedly told the lawless elements that he did not intend to make arrests. Instead, he planned to shoot on sight anyone he saw breaking the law. He supposedly killed six outlaws on his first night in town.

Then, on the morning of February 12, 1885, after the night shift had come to the surface, the day crew was told to wait because tremors were shaking the ground, and the Horn had experienced several cave-ins previously. Within minutes a massive cave-in closed the main shaft and collapsed tunnels down to the seventh level, shutting off the richest part of the mine. The cave-in was felt as far away as Milford where some windows were reportedly broken. Rain and snow had recently soaked the ground and added tremendous weight to the supporting timbers in the tunnels below. Additionally, the operators, in their hurry to take wealth from the mine as quickly as possible, had not adequately timbered the maze of tunnels. Fortunately, the cave-in occurred between shifts and no one was killed.

In less than a year the Horn was producing again on a limited scale. By 1891 quarterly dividends averaged $50,000, and the "Horn was still one of eight leading silver mines in the United States which, collectively, had produced more than half of the nation's total silver production value." The Horn had recovered and continued to produce varying amounts of silver and other metals for a succession of owners for another six or seven decades. But the cave-in had doomed infamous Frisco, once home to several thousand residents and a thriving place of commerce--some of which was even legal.

Sources:
-- Leonard J. Arrington and Wayne K. Hinton, "The Horn Silver Bonanza" in The American West: A Reorientation, ed. Gene M. Gressley (Laramie: University of Wyoming, 1966)
-- Harold O. Weight, "When the Horn Silver Caved," Westways, February 1952; George A. Horton, Jr., "An Early History of Milford" (M.S. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1957)
-- George A. Thompson, Some Dreams Die: Utah's Ghost Towns and Lost Treasures (Salt Lake City: Dream Garden Press, 1982)

Timeline

June 23, 1880
Utah Southern Railroad Extension tracks completed to Frisco, 137.24 miles from the Utah Southern connection at Juab. The next day the railroad began shipping ore from the Horn Silver Mine. (Salt Lake Herald, June 25, 1880; Reeder, p. 143; Athearn, p. 280)

September 16, 1887
"The Utah Central road has closed its Frisco freight, ticket and telegraph offices, as they don't pay. Trains will run up there from Milford just the same, but all the clerical work will be done either at Milford or by the conductors." (Salt Lake Daily Tribune, September 16, 1887)

1928-1931
Tintic Lead Company purchased the claims of the old Horn Silver Mine near Milford in 1928. The following is a summary of several online newspaper searches.

During its years of operation prior to 1928 the Horn Silver mine was shipping 1000 tons per month. In 1921, the Horn Silver mine shipped "a few" carloads of "mill ore" to the Tintic mill at Silver City. By early 1922, a grand total of 22 carloads had been shipped.

A check of the Mines Handbook for 1922 shows that the pioneering Horn Silver Mining Co. of 1879 was reorganzied in 1917 as the Horn Silver Mines Co.

In 1928 the Horn Silver mine was acquired by the Tintic Lead Company. Newspaper articles show that it was after this acquisition that several improvements to the mine were made, employing 27 men to put mine back into production, including retimbering of many of the tunnels, and improvements of surface workings. Within a month 50 men were working and the company was spending $10,000 per month putting the mine and "surface plant" into shape "for operations on a large scale." At the time, the Horn Silver mine was the fourth largest silver (and lead and zinc) mine in Utah), after the Park Utah mine in Park City.

By mid April 1929 Union Pacific was busy rehabilitating its spur tracks in anticipation of large shipments. However, it appears that the concentrating mill was not to be put into operation, with all ore coming out of the mine and being shipped directly to area smelters. A total of 15 carloads had already been shipped by leasers who were busy rehabilitating and extending the various tunnels and shafts. The mine company itself had been involved in straightening and expanding the main hoist shaft, and installing a modern triple-compartment hoisting system.

A newspaper report for April 21, 1929 shows that the mine company had spent $250,000 putting the surface plant "into perfect order." This included a steam-driven hoist, machine shops, sawmill, electric gear, an assay office, and a blacksmith shop. The 150-ton mill located on site was in running order, "but will not be used, inasmuch as the ore can be profitably shipped without treatment."

A new modern compressor was installed in June 1929, along with new modern electical transformers and switch gear. Also in that month, 70 men were employed, and during the first week alone a total of ten carloads of ore was shipped to the smelter. By September the mine was shipping 15 cars per week. Production began on May 1st, and by the end of 1929, the mine had shipped a reported 11,000 tons of ore, or about 220 carloads for the eight months of production, or about 8-10 cars per week, with railroad service being on a weekly basis. Thirteen cars were shipped in mid-February 1930. The total for March 1930 was 49 carloads of ore, and a total or 370 cars for the entire first year of production, ending in April 1930.

Production during 1931 was only for gold ore from the same vein as the adjacent Frisco Lulu mine of another company, with only the highest value lead-silver ore being shipped. Prodution stopped in September 1931 due to unstable metals prices. By late 1932 the Tintic Lead company was concentrating its activity at the company's Buckhorn mine several miles west Frisco, which mine was producing ore of a higher value than that of the Horn Silver mine.

More Information

Newhouse Mines & Smelters Company -- Information about the Newhouse copper mine (Includes information about the Newhouse Extension railroad line between Frisco and Newhouse.)

Western Utah Copper District -- Information about the development, after the railroad, of the copper resources near the former Newhouse copper mine.

West of Milford -- Information about the railroads and mines west of Milford, Utah; includes information about the abandonment of railroad service to both Frisco and Newhouse.

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