Tintic, McIntyre Brothers

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This page was last updated on March 3, 2026.

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(The focus of this page is brief biographical notes of the men that made the mining industry in Utah so successful. Also to establish a timeline using sources not previously readily available.)

As important as the everyday wage worker was to the history of mining in Utah, it was several men with experience, vision and charisma who made the mining industry in Utah so successful. These men developed the networks of mining engineers and financiers to develop the undeveloped or partially developed mining claims to become giant organizations that made money for their shareholders, and in many cases, kept the mines as a decent place to work.

McIntyre Brothers, Samuel and William

The McIntyre Brothers developed the Mammoth mine near Eureka, Utah. They purchased the mine in 1873 from the mine's original discoverers. The last reported shipment from the Mammoth mine was in May 1958 when the mine shipped 120 tons. The last reference to the Mammoth Mining company in newspapers was in October 1986. The McIntyre heirs retained the rights to the Mammoth property until it was sold to the Centurion Mines Corporation in 1993, having previously leased access to the Mammoth dumps to Centurion in 1985.

(Read more about the Mammoth mine)

June 20, 1899
At a meeting of the stockholders of the Mammoth Mining company, the company was reorganized resulting in William McIntyre selling his large block of shares in the company to by his brother Samuel McIntyre, and with William being replaced as president by his brother Samuel. David Evans was not re-elected to the board. (Salt Lake Herald, June 21, 1899, "yesterday"; Deseret News, June 21, 1899)

(Read more about William H. McIntyre)

(Read more about Samuel H. McIntyre)

The McIntyre brothers were legendary for bringing the "Texas style" of ranching to Utah. Their influence was built funds from selling their father's ranch in Texas, and a high-stakes gamble.

The McIntyre family, led by brothers William and Samuel McIntyre, became one of the more wealthy dynasties in Utah's history. Their influence bridged two of the state's foundational industries: cattle ranching and precious metal mining.

Following the events of the 1899, the family's legacy expanded significantly through their industrial, architectural, and financial contributions to Utah.

The Mammoth Mine's "Golden" Era:

The wealth generated by the Mammoth Mine funded some of Salt Lake City's most iconic landmarks, which still stand today:

While Samuel focused on mining, William took his proceeds from the 1899 sale and expanded his cattle empire, to include the McIntyre Ranch, a massive 80,000 acres ranching operation in Alberta, Canada. At its peak, it was one of the largest ranches in North America.

The McIntyre family continued to hold vast areas of land in the Leamington and Tintic areas, embracing as much as 1,000 acres in the Leamington area by 1911. Their ranching operations were known for importing high-quality cattle, but their Leamington operation was irrigated and mostly produced alfalfa and other forms of hay for use on their cattle ranches. (Leamington is about 39 miles south of Eureka)

McIntyre's Barn

The "World's Largest" Barn -- Many published sources make reference to the McIntyre's barn near Leamington as being "the largest barn in the West." Such a romantic and popularized label is easy to apply, but seldom true. The barn was completed in the mid 1890s and measured 100 feet by 312 feet. While impressive in size, the building was not the largest barn by any measurement.

The barn was a landmark in Leamington, Millard County. Its sheer dimensions—100 feet wide by 312 feet long—made it an architectural marvel for the early 20th century. To put that in perspective, the barn was the same size as a standard American football field.

The structure was built to support the massive hay production of the McIntyre Ranch, which was one of the largest operations in the state. Although a full review of online newspapers has not yet found the reference, some sources report that Robert Ripley featured the barn in his "Believe It or Not" syndicated column, likely in the 1920s or 30s, labeling it the "largest barn in the world" (or one of them). While "world's largest" titles are often debated, its inclusion in Ripley's column cemented its status as a curiosity of global interest.

(A review of newspapers and of local histories of the period, finds no reference to the barn. All known references come from later summarized and unsourced histories of the area.)

From the Salt Lake Tribune, August 24, 1969.

The McIntyre barn, where a good deal of hay was "lofted," was 100 feet wide and 312 feet long and stood for 60 years until a big wind collapsed it in 1945.

Ripley of "Believe it or Not" fame mentioned this barn in his newspaper column, saying that it was one of the largest in the world.

The McIntyre ranch furnished one of the best payrolls in Millard County in the early days, hiring 45 to 50 men during the summer months. Some of the best bucking stock in the state was raised on this ranch.

From the Millard County Chronicle Progress, August 26, 1971.

McIntyre Barn: Located on the McIntyre Ranch, it was 100 feet wide and 312 feet long. It lasted 60 years, until 1945 when it was blown down during a wind storm. Several years "Ripley" mentioned it in his news column "Believe it or not", that the barn was one of the largest in the world.

Under the barn was corrals, the entire length. On the north there was a "lean to" that had horse stalls and could accommodate around 40 head of work and saddle horses.

They also had a stack of hay the full length of it, plus storage and shelter for farming equipment.

More unsourced later histories make note of the McIntyre family's internal troubles. Supposedly, Samuel was known for being an incredibly stubborn person, which eventually led to a bitter lawsuit between him and his son, Samuel McIntyre Jr. In the early 1900s, Samuel Jr. successfully sued his father to have the family's assets, including the Samuel McIntyre Investment Company and control of the Mammoth Mine, divided among the heirs while Samuel Sr. was still alive.

(Research has not yet found a newspaper reference or documented court case of this reported "fallout" between father and son.)

A Brief History of the McIntyre Ranch

By Wm. H. McIntyre Jr.

(Published in the September 1947 issue of Canadian Cattlemen)

(Excerpts covering the family until the move to Canada in 1894; focus is on Samuel McIntyre, the mining magnate.)

(Minor editing by Don Strack to improve readability.)

The complete story of the McIntyre Ranch from the beginning without starting with a short life history of its founder, William H. McIntyre of Salt Lake City, Utah. He was born in Grimes County, Texas, about 40 miles north of the present city of Houston, Texas in the year 1848. His father was William McIntyre of Scotch-Irish descent and who never left a photograph of himself or an account of his parentage. William often remarked that he would give a lot to have a picture of his father, who was a farmer who owned Negro slaves and was an active land trader. When the United States—Mexican War broke out, the elder William McIntyre enlisted in the United States Army as a soldier and fought during the war under General Sam Houston. At the close of the Mexican War, soldiers were given script which entitled them to take up land. He used all of his script for acquiring land and also traded horses and mules to other soldiers for their script, so that at his death, which was one year after my father was born, he had a large tract of fine fertile land north of Houston.

William McIntyre left three sons; the eldest being Robert, the second Samuel Houston and the third William Howell. Shortly after his death his widow married again, her second husband being a musician named Moody. Mr. Moody converted to Mormonism and moved his newly acquired family to Salt Lake City, Utah, which city was then in its infancy. The three boys received a very meager education in the Salt Lake City schools and then went to work cutting logs out of the mountains on contract for the United States Government for use at Camp Douglas, which later became Fort Douglas at Salt Lake City. They also worked driving scrapers for moving dirt for the building of the Union Pacific Railroad. Mr. Moody and family were then sent to St. George, Utah, by Brigham Young on what was known as the Cotton Mission, the purpose of which was to grow cotton in the semi-tropical climate of southern Utah. After settling in St. George, Utah, the oldest brother, Robert, went to work for a rancher named Whitemore. One winter while they were gathering cattle in the Northern part of Arizona, Navajo Indians surrounded them, killing both Whitmore and Robert McIntyre and taking the cattle.

The remaining brothers, William H. and Samuel H. then took up freighting with mule teams from California into Salt Lake City and occasionally northwards into the booming mining town of Virginia City, Montana.

Around 1870, William H. and his brother Samuel went back to Texas for the purpose of selling the land which their father had left for them. An uncle, Robert McIntyre, the elder William's brother, had kept the taxes on this land paid, hoping that his nephews would some day come back and live on it. During this time the Civil War had been fought and all the Negro slaves had been freed. One old ex-slave hearing that "his boys" had come back to Texas, walked a distance of 50 miles in order to see them. William and Samuel sold the tract of land and were paid for it in gold coins of many different countries, Spanish, Portuguese, Mexican, U.S., and perhaps those of several other countries. The purchaser of their land had been saving his money for many years in a big raw-hide trunk and so it took considerable counting and figuring before the deal was finally completed. After the sale of their land, the two brothers, William and Samuel, started buying cattle in Texas.

Over Chisholm Trail

The cattle buying began in the month of October, and by April of the following year they had together between 6,000 and 7,000 Mexican longhorns which they headed for Utah over the long trail, which was the general route of the Chisholm Trail. When they started from Texas during the month of April, many of their cattle were so poor that they had to tail them up each morning to begin the drive. The drive was really a grazing process, letting the cattle graze slowly across the plains eating the grass as they went. At this time there were many Indians and buffalo along the route going through the Panhandle of Texas and Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. The cattle were grazed during the daytime and night-herded at night. Very often bands of Indians would hold them up and demand a number of their cattle; sometimes their demands were made in very war-like tones. The McIntyres stood their ground and would compromise by giving them two or three animals in place of the 50 or 100 head which they had demanded. Even though the Indians were a constant danger, the McIntyres considered the buffalo an even greater danger. One bunch of buffalo would start running and in their course pick other buffalo, and soon a whole herd was on the run. It was almost impossible to change the direction of the buffalo stampede, and so there was a constant fear that the buffalo stampede would run through their herd of cattle and take a big part of it with them.

The two brothers arrived in Utah some eight months after their start from Texas with most of their cattle fat. They took up land in the Tintic district, some miles south of Salt Lake City. They wintered their cattle there the first winter and sold them the following spring at $24.00 per head. These cattle had cost $3.75 per head in Texas. After selling this bunch they went back to where Omaha is now and bought other cattle and moved them to Utah. Thus began their ranching business. They operated as partners until sometime in the 1880s.

During the 1880s they traded cattle for an undeveloped mining property known as the Mammoth Mine at Mammoth, Utah. They developed this mining property which produced a lot of rich ore and is still an operating mine at the present time. During the 1880s they divided their partnership and then carried on individually. The year 1886 was very dry, and as a consequence grass and water was inadequate for wintering cattle in Utah. William H. McIntyre removed a large part of his cattle south to south-eastern Wyoming where feed was more abundant, and took the chance of wintering in Wyoming. That winter of 1886 and 1887 was very severe and he lost practically all of his cattle which he had just moved there. He had as many skinned as it was possible to do, and so, by the time spring came, about all he had left of his venture was a large bunch of hides.

It was during the late 1880s that sheep had moved into Utah in great numbers and what had been a good cow range was rapidly being "barked" by the sheep and spoiled for cattle. William began thinking about greener pastures. A friend and business associate of his, W. W. Riter of Salt Lake City, had spent about a year's time in the Cardston district of Alberta mainly in the hope of bettering his health, and he told William about the big open country with hardly anyone in it and worlds of grass. The description of Alberta given by Mr. Riter persuaded William to go up and have a look at this country. The name Canada immediately conjured up thoughts of long, cold winters in his imagination, and consequently he determined to give Canada a long look before making any permanent move towards locating in that country.

William H. McIntyre was a man of unusual type, of powerful physique, straight and erect in his carriage, standing about six feet three inches in height and weighing about 225 pounds. He wore a small goatee beard and mustache and was an ideal Southern Colonel stamp, but unlike a Southern Colonel, he was reserved and quiet in his manner. He could run an irrigation ditch with his eye, knew how to do a real job of building, had a keen eye for sizing up a cow or a horse, and had a remarkable sense of values. He often told me that one life was not long enough in which to get things done, saying that a man has to be 45 or 50 years old before he really knows just what he wants to do and from then on there is not time enough left in which to do it. He died at Salt Lake City in 1926 at the age of 78 years. While during his long life he had no church affiliation, he always maintained a high moral standard. When 30 years old William had married Phoebe Ogden Chase. Her grandfather, Isaac Chase, was the first flour miller in Utah, and his old mill stands as a pioneer relic in Liberty Park at Salt Lake City. What is now Liberty Park was his farm, later passing to Brigham Young. There is a caretaker's house standing in this park which used to be the home of Isaac Chase. My mother was born in this house."

Around 1891 William went to Cardston, which was then a small Mormon village, and employed one of the early settlers there, the late C. T. Marsden, to drive him around that part of the country. He made numerous visits during the next three or four years and looked at the country in the spring, summer, fall and the winter, and also to see how the few cattle and horses which belonged to the early settlers had come through the winter and how fat they were the following fall. After about three years of such inspection and deliberation he decided to make his bet in the Milk River Ridge country some 25 miles east of Cardston. This land at that time belonged to the Alberta Railway and Irrigation Company and they were anxious for settlers to come in and purchase the land which they owned.

Mother McIntyre (1828-1908)

Margaret Anglin McIntyre Moody (8 January 1828 – 1 June 1908) (KWJ1-WJK)

Margaret Anglin married William McIntyre in Montgomery County, Texas, on August 25, 1842. She was 14 years old, and he was 32 years old. He died in 1849 at La Grange, Fayette County, Texas. They had three sons, Robert (1843), Samuel (1845), and William (1848).

The next year, at age 22, she married John M. Moody on January 2, 1850 in Grimes, Texas. Her three sons with William McIntyre were ages 7, 5 and 2 at the time. She and Moody had a daughter, their only child together, in October 1850. Moody was 28 years old at the time of their marriage. She became a member of the LDS faith in March 1850, shortly after her new mother-in-law had joined the faith in January 1850, 10 days after John Moody and Margaret were married. Moody's brother William became a member in November 1851, and Moody himself became a member in July 1953.

In late 1852 or early 1853, the members of the Moody family decided to move to Salt Lake City, and William and his wife and children, along with their mother, who had also become a member, left Texas in March 1853. They were living in the Grimes, near Houston, and took a steamship to New Orleans, then river boats to Keokuk, Iowa.

The group included Margaret and her three sons, and Margaret's own sister, Rebecca, whose mother was their father's second wife who had died with Rebecca's birth. The group left Keokuk as part of a wagon train bound for Council Bluffs, and departed Council Bluffs as part of the Moses Daly Company on July 6, 1853. This was a wagon train made up of family wagons, and freight wagons moving provisions to Utah, and not one of the more famous hand cart companies.

The group arrived in Salt Lake City on September 20, 1853. John Moody had remained in Texas to tie up his affairs, becoming a member of the church in July 1853, while still in Texas. Moody left Texas in early 1854, and traveled to Salt Lake City as part of the Washington Jolley Company, rejoining Margaret and their children when the Jolley company arrived in Salt Lake City on September 21, 1854.

Moody embraced the policies of the church at the time and in 1856-1857 while living in Salt Lake City, he married two other women in polygamy marriages. Right after this second marriage in 1856, John Moody and his brother William served a church mission in Texas. The Moodys accompanied a group from Texas to Salt Lake City in 1857. Among them was a young woman named Sarah Damron, who John took as his third wife later in 1857. He married a fourth woman in 1878 while they were living in St. George.

This was after he and his family of three wives and their children had moved to Pine Valley in southern Utah in 1861. Then when Brigham Young asked for families to settle the St. George area, Moody and his family moved to St. George in October 1863, as one of the earliest settlers of the area. Margaret and her three sons were among the Moody family group that moved to St. George in 1863. The boys were 20, 18, and 15 at the time.

It was just after this that the three McIntyre sons sought their own paths in life. As mentioned in a later history, "While in St. George, Robert began working for James M. Whitmore, who owned a ranch in nearby Pipe Spring, Arizona. Indian skirmishes and raids were becoming increasingly frequent. Navajo Indians drove off the herd of cattle on the Whitmore Ranch at Pipe Spring. Whitmore and McIntyre were both killed by the Indian band while trying to regain the herd." Robert was killed on January 8, 1866. Samuel was just 21 years old at the time, and William was still 19 years old.

After Robert's death in 1866, that same later history mentioned, "The remaining brothers, William H. and Samuel H. then took up freighting with mule teams from California into Salt Lake City and occasionally northwards into the booming mining town of Virginia City, Montana. Around 1870, William H. and his brother Samuel went back to Grimes, Texas for the purpose of selling the land which their father had left for them. An uncle, Robert McIntyre, the elder William's younger brother, had kept the taxes on this land paid, hoping that his nephews would some day come back and live on it. After the sale of their land, the two brothers, William and Samuel, started buying cattle in Texas." In April 1870, the McIntyre brothers moved their herd of about 7,000 animals from Texas to Utah, beginning their own history as cattle men. Samuel was 24 years old, and William was 22. Three years later, in 1873, Samuel and William traded a portion of their cattle heard for a percentage of ownership of the Mammoth mine, beginning their lives as mining magnates.

Margaret McIntyre remained with John Moody until 1879. John Moody took his fourth polygamy wife in 1878, when he was 56 and the new wife only 18. Soon after, Margaret, who was 50 at the time, asked for a divorce, which was approved in the fall of 1879. John Moody then left St. George after being counted in the 1880 census. He moved from the St. George area to a ranch near Thatcher, Arizona, east of Phoenix, where he died in January 1884.

Margaret was counted in the 1880 census, living in Salt Lake City as a divorced woman, with her daughter Mary and Mary's husband Robert Wilkinson and their three children, and her adopted son Frank Langford, who she had adopted after his parents had died en route from Texas to Utah in 1853, as part of the original Moody group. Frank Langford was just 3 years old in 1853.

The 1900 U. S. census found Margaret (as Margaret Moody), at age 71, still living with her daughter Mary Moody Wilkinson, but in Mammoth. Margaret was working as a timekeeper at a local mine. Her daughter had remarried and was now married to a James Donahue, who was superintendent at the same mine in Mammoth.

Margaret Anglin McIntyre Moody died on June 1, 1908 at age 82. At the time she was living in the Lenox Hotel in Salt Lake City. Her funeral was held in the home of her son, William in his home on Seventh Avenue in Salt Lake City.

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