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Show The Story of Garfield ' ; j 1 r i ; S ' ' i I S , , ' ; ' i - : r; ' . ff- - -1 l l ASA s, t ft vA&A A ft - j mmmmmwmMjmmW' vm i m, nunmiinjuiwuinni ' rrr' n- fe i . I " rcri h , '; .. v'V.'T . iifc&M;:JS' .-.v. - - . - The process of smelting in a measure is similar to flour milling separating the grain from the chaff. Here is the chaff or waste being loaded onto dump cars at Garfield. (Editor's Note: This is the eighth of a series of eight aricles titled "The Story of Garfield.") Garfield is one part of an industry indus-try that makes Utah the leading smelting center in the world. Others are the Midvale plant of the United States Smelting Refining and Mining Min-ing company; the Murray plant of the AS&R; the Tooele plant of the International Smelting & Refining Refin-ing company. The Murray and Mid-vale Mid-vale plants are lead smelters, the Garfield plant is a copper smelter while Tooele has both lead and copper smelters. The smelting industry had its beginning in the early fifties, when the early settlers melted down lead bullets at the Lincoln mine in Beaver county. These bullets were used to fight the Indians. Many years before the advent of the trans-continental railroad a number of crude smelters were built at various properties throughout through-out the state. They were built of adobe brick, or stone and treated only a few tons of carbonate or oxidized ores daily. All the early efforts were devoted to lead smelting. Copper ores in the district had not yet made their appearance in large quantities and the red metal associated with lead was to be shunned as a thing of evil, even as zinc was shunned in the lead furnaces. Metallurgical improvements, however, were rapid and marched hand in hand with the advance in Utah mining. In fact, smelting practices led in the development de-velopment of Utah mining, as with each improvement in smelting practices prac-tices new ore bodies were opened to commercialization. The development of copper irt th.e Highland Boy mine at Bingham brought about the erection of a copper cop-per smelter in the last decade of the nineteenth century and the introduction in-troduction of copper metallurgy as practiced elsewhere. As the great camp of Bingham developed, copper cop-per smelting progressed. A total of six copper smelters were built during dur-ing the early days at Bingham, culminating cul-minating about 40 years ago in the building of the huge concentrators and smelter near Garfield. Thus Garfield has been an important impor-tant factor in the destiny of Utah and will continue to have an important im-portant bearing upon the future of the state, provided that the cooperation coopera-tion of every individual is given in providing a healthy industrial condition con-dition which makes for a healthy economic situation and for the betterment bet-terment of individuals generally. (This completes the series of articles ar-ticles titled "The Story of Garfild.") Watch for articles regarding other plants. |