UtahRails, Lead

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Economic Importance of Lead Mining in Utah

The lead mining industry in Utah from the 1870s to the 1950s, acted as a powerful engine for the state's industrial and economic growth. It helped transition Utah from an isolated agrarian society to an industrial powerhouse.

The first discovery for commercial purposes of lead in Utah was in Ophir canyon, east of Stockton, in August 1870. The ore was, as is usually the case, found in combination silver. The focus was on the recovery of silver, but producing lead was always a side benefit due to its value as a normal commercial product.

Before the 1870s, Utah’s economy was almost entirely rural and based on agriculture. Once the mining started, lead provided a high-value product that could be exported via the new transcontinental railroad, bringing significant outside capital into the state.

Lead mining and processing helped build Utah's economy. Before the copper era that started in 1900, the lead mining and smelting industry provided the majority of Utah’s industrial wealth. The mining and smelting drove the expansion of railroads and the smelting centers in Salt Lake City and nearby Tooele.

Lead mining was often the "silent partner" to silver; because the two metals are frequently found together in the same ore (galena), lead production flourished in districts like Park City, Tintic, and Bingham Canyon.

While silver was the "glamour" metal that made headlines, lead was the workhorse. It was the "base" in base-metal mining that made the entire industry profitable. Wherever there was lead-bearing ore, the same ore also contained amounts of silver, copper or zinc, usually all three in at least trace amounts.

Because lead ore is heavy and expensive to ship, it made more sense to build smelters locally. By the early 1900s, the Salt Lake Valley became one of the largest non-ferrous smelting centers in the world, processing ore from across the entire Intermountain West.

Railroad branch lines were built specifically to reach lead-rich areas like the Tintic District and Bingham Canyon. These lines later became the arteries for general commerce to support the economies of these growing small population centers, situated in the canyons where the mines were being worked. Larger than mining camp boom towns, but smaller than the more diversified valley towns and cities.

The need to process lead-silver ores, too heavy to transport long distances, resulted in the construction of several large smelters in the Salt Lake Valley in Murray, Midvale, and Sandy. These smelters made Salt lake Valley the "Smelter City" of the West.

Three Phases

The process evolved through three distinct phases:

The first phase, known as the Pioneer Phase, starting with the experimental plant at Minersville in 1858. Throughout the 1860s the earliest attempts were tried. Before the railroad, lead was mined for immediate survival needs (bullets and paint) rather than profit. Early Mormon settlers built what were mud-brick furnaces to process the lead ore. These were often inefficient and couldn't withstand the high temperatures needed to fully separate lead from the complex ores. Many early attempts failed because the pioneers lacked the chemistry knowledge to handle the zinc and sulfur often found in Utah's lead-silver (galena) ore. These early smelters were often designed to process specific ore from specific mines.

The Lincoln Mine. The First Lead Mine In Utah. Discovered in 1858 by Issac Grundy, Jesse N. Smith, Tarlton Lewis and William Barton, these men and Sidney Tanner, John Blackburn, Edwin Bingham, Samuel Lewis and James M. Rollins, established Minersville and opened the mine in May 1859 by the direction of Brigham Young. First called the Spanish Mine, it was called the Rollins Mine when Rollins became Bishop in 1860, and the Lincoln Mine in 1870. A smelter was built in 1875. The lead was used for bullets and as a medium of exchange for labor and merchandise from 1859 to 1870. (Daughters of Utah Pioneers Marker No. 17. Erected March 20, 1937) (See also: Utah Historical Quarterly; Volume 51, Number 3, Summer 1983)

The second phase, known as the Engineering Boom, came in 1870 and continued through to the years of consolidation after 1900. It included the benefit of experts trained in Germany and Wales. The arrival of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 allowed for the import of heavy machinery and, more importantly, the arrival of European-trained mining engineers.

The third phase, known as the Industrial Giant Phase, came in 1900 and continued through to the end of lead smelting in Utah in 1970. By the turn of the century, the giant corporations with Eastern capital included American Smelting, Asarco, at Murray, and United States Smelting at Midvale. These two conglomerates consolidated the many small operations into two giant smelting complexes.

This third phase was also one of innovation, which included the flotation processes that chemically separated the lead from the silver, gold and zinc, making the processing of low-grade ore profitable. More innovation came as the smelters were forced to install pollution controls in the 1905-1910 period and found that they were capturing valuable minerals that were previously and literally flying out of the smokestacks as dust. To capture the dust, the smelters installed large "baghouses" (essentially giant vacuum filters). The baghouses saved the companies millions of dollars in "lost" lead and silver dust. Another benefit of the pollution controls was that the smelters became so efficient that they began capturing and selling everything in the ore, including arsenic (used for pesticides), cadmium, and sulfuric acid, turning what was once waste into a secondary profit stream.

Rise of the smelter cities and towns, such as Midvale, Murray, and Sandy didn't just happen; they were strategically placed at the crossroads of rail lines and water sources to process lead. The infrastructure of these cities - roads, power grids, and water systems - was largely funded by mining interests.

The "Mining Kings" of the lead and silver era used their profits to build the iconic architecture of Salt Lake City, including the Cathedral of the Madeleine and the mansions along South Temple.

In the period before 1910, lead mining was the single biggest driver of Utah’s transition from a pioneer society to a society based on industrial growth.

The labor-intensive nature of lead mining and smelting required thousands of workers. Because many of the early smelters were English companies, the early years from the 1870s to the 1890s brought Welsh and Irish smelter men who had previously been at the great Swansea Works in Wales. The explosive growth of the 1890s brought waves of Greek, Italian, Slavic, and Japanese immigrants to Utah, creating vibrant ethnic enclaves; most notably the mining towns and communities in Bingham Canyon (Highland Boy and Copperton, Copperfield, and the town of Bingham Canyon itself), and the towns the Tintic district (Eureka, Mammoth, Silver City and Knightsville), and Park City, and the smelter towns of Murray, Midvale and Sandy.

Utah became a global hub for metallurgical research. In 1876, Anton Eilers, who had received his technical training in Germany, and at the mining school of Clausthal, also in Germany, came to the Germania smelter in Murray, in charge of metallurgical operations. For the previous seven years he had worked as deputy United States Commissioner of Mining Statistics as assistant to Dr. R. W. Raymond. This work included traveling to all the western mining districts which made him familiar with the natural resources, industries, prospects and people of this entire western country. Mr. Eilers has been called the "father of modern silver lead smelting". He was the first to apply chemistry to metallurgy and to work out the theory of slag formation on an accurate chemical basis.

The technical evolution of Utah's lead smelting industry in the 1890s was a story of moving from trial-and-error small one- two- and three-stack primitive furnaces spread across the territory, to becoming the largest and most technologically advanced smelting center in the world by the 1920s, centered in the Salt Lake Valley.

Timeline of Technical Milestones

There was practically no lead production in Utah up to 1870. In that year Utah mined 23.4 percent of the entire United States production; 45.5 percent in 1872, and above 25 percent until 1878, when it dropped to 23.8 percent. Other great western mining areas began to come into prominence during this period and reduced Utah's percentage of the total U. S. production, although Utah's volume of production continued to increase. (Utah's Mining Industry; An Historical, Operational, And Economic Review Of Utah's Mining Industry; Utah Mining Association; August 1967, page 8)

Gold, silver and lead were Utah’s principal mineral products up to the period 1900 to 1905, when copper surged ahead toward its present leading position. Zinc did not become of real value to the state’s mineral economy until 1925 when the new process of flotation made possible the separation of lead and zinc in the ore. Prior to that, zinc was an objectionable constituent of lead ore, for its presence interfered with the lead smelting process. (Utah's Mining Industry; 1967, page 8)

The critical effect of transportation is illustrated in Utah's history by the fact that mineral deposits had been found in Utah's famous mining areas before the railroad was completed to Utah in 1869. However, there was little mining other than for silver and gold. The lead, copper and other metals could not be profitably transported in wagon trains to eastern markets. Immediately after the railroad reached Salt Lake Valley in 1870, lead and silver mining became a major industry. (Utah's Mining Industry; 1967, page 11)

The End Of Lead (and Zinc and Silver) Smelting In Utah

The mining and processing of lead-zinc-silver provided Utah's railroads with a significant source of business. The end of milling and smelting of the ores in Utah, and the resulting closure of many of the mines, resulted in many branch lines losing their reason for existence. These branches included UP's Park City Branch, D&RGW's Eureka Branch, D&RGW's Lark Branch, the far south end of D&RGW's Marysvale Branch, and the entire Tooele Valley Railway.

During 1969, Utah was producing less than five percent of the nation's lead, with 30 percent of the nation's output being used as an additive for gasoline. There were three mills that were processing lead ore, and one lead smelter (International Smelter near Tooele), and five mines producing lead ore, with an estimated total 1969 output of 39,500 tons.

According to an article in the New York Times, by late 1971 the International smelter at Tooele was processing lead-zinc-silver ores from the following mines (New York Times, November 27, 1971):

These mines all first shipped their ores by rail to the United States mill at Midvale for initial processing and concentration. The ores were then shipped by rail as concentrates to the International smelter at Tooele

In early November Anaconda announced that it would be closing its lead smelter at Tooele, and one week later, the United States company announced "phased shutdown by year's end."

With the closing of the Midvale and Tooele plants, all of these mines were faced with having to ship their raw ores to either the ASARCO and Bunker Hill smelter at Kellogg, Idaho, or to the ASARCO smelter at El Paso, Texas.

All of the mines faced likely shutdown due to the high cost of transportation, and the low market value of lead, zinc and silver. Hecla Mining Company was already sending its ore from the New Park mine at Mayflower to ASARCO at El Paso

November 1971
USSR&M closed its Lark mine, and its Midvale mill and concentrator. The concentrate was being shipped to the International smelter near Tooele. (Deseret News, November 12, 1971)

January 28, 1972
The smelter of International Smelting and Refining Company was scheduled to close on January 1, 1972, but reduced production work continued for another three weeks. (Tooele Transcript, February 11, 1972)

When the Tooele smelter closed, it left over 30 mining properties without a nearby smelter. These mines were forced to close due the high costs of shipment of their ores to the nearest custom smelters at El Paso, Texas, East Helena, Montana, or Kellogg, Idaho. (Mining, Smelting and Railroading in Tooele County, page 111, citing Deseret News of November 9 and 13, 1971)

The Tooele smelter was closed to save costs following Anaconda's loss of its properties in Chile, which were taken over by the Chilean government in 1971. To save the company, its unprofitable properties were either closed or sold. The sell-off did not work, and by 1975, Anaconda was purchased by Atlantic Richfield. (Mining, Smelting and Railroading in Tooele County, page 118)

Copper is still mined, milled, smelted and refined in Utah.

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