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Show HOW LEAD MINES FATHERED UTAH SMELTING 1 f ' - I a I r"TJS"! N iFl1.i."!!!7ff.4- .;t' 1 By W. H. EARDLEY, Manager M id vale Plant of United States S. R. & M. Co. NOT sliver, not gold, not copper Is Utah's greatest breadwinner. breadwin-ner. Its prize product is lead. Though you may be awed by the tremendous tonnage of copper from one camp you "will learn from carefully care-fully kept statistics that lead has surpassed it by 47. During the 71 years from 1S64 to 1935, inclusive, inclu-sive, 3,720,459 tons of lead "was produced, against 2,535,452 tons of the red metal. Lead ore cropping from the ground gave the first intimation that this might be a mineral state and lead mining gave birth to the first smelting operations here. It was in Beaver county, about four miles northwest of the present site of Minersville, in the year 1S5S, that the extraction and reduction of the metal began. Isaac Grundy and associates dug some ore from what was called the Rollins mine, since named the Lincoln. The lead in the rock was ideal material for bullets to shoot Indians. Melting1 it out was the next task. A crude j furnace was erected by Grundy, Jesse N. Smith, Tarleton Lewis and William Barton. It was the first smelting plant in Utah. The ball having started, the search for lead mines spread. Soldiers under Gen. Patrick E. Connor Con-nor discovered ore in Rush valley. Mining called for smelting. Almost as fast as mines were found furnaces furn-aces sprang up. One oC the earliest earli-est was built near Stockton in 1864. It was purchased by I. S. : Waterman Water-man in 1871 and is said to have been operated successfully for a number of years. . Also in 1864, a, second lead furnace was built at! Stockton by the Rush Valley Smelting Co., formed by officers at Camp Douglas. That summer and fall six other smelting furnaces were erected in and around Stockton. Stock-ton. Some got no further than their trial runs.. By 1866 ore was being produced in Little Cottonwood canyon southeast south-east of Salt Lake and the smelters followed, locating usually in the vicinity of the city, where water was plentiful. Lead strikes at Bingham further stimulated smelter-building in Salt Lake valley. The first to ship bullion was the plant of Woodhull Bros., in September, Sep-tember, 1S70. From 1870 to 1874 there was an epidemic of new plants and a steady growth in size and efficiency reflecting the development of new lead mines. Beaver county, scene of the first experiment, came back into the picture with smelters at Shaunty Springs and Milford. In the late nineties, with better transportation, trans-portation, many combinations and consolidations took place. Fewer and bigger plants were in order. Mills were built to concentrate low-grade low-grade ore preparatory to smelting. By 1911 the dozens of little plants had coagulated Into three major smelting companies. The lead smelter of the American Smelting & Refining Co. was constructed con-structed at Murray in 1902, the plant of the United State S. R. & M. at Midvale in 1902, and that of the International Smelting Co. at Tooele in 1911. Flotation Is now used in the treatment of lead-zinc 1 ores by the U. S. S. R. & M. Co.,' the International, the Combined Metals Reduction Co. at Bauer and the Silver King Coalition mill at Park City. The merging of the smaller smelting companies into larger ones made profitable the production produc-tion of ore theretofore too low grade to mine and smelt and actually ac-tually increased the demand for workers. This is confirmed by figures fig-ures compiled for December, 1935. It places the number of tons of ore milled in . zinc-lead flotation plants at 52,000; tons of chai-ge treated at lead smelters, 31,253; tons of coke used at lead smelters, 4,022; tons of coal used at lead smelters, 1,553; gallons of oil used at lead smelters. 4.762: feet of gas 1 !used at lead smelters, 24,363,000; i cost of supplies and equipment used, $135,033.64 ; paid railroads for freight on products received and shipped, ?262,S39.95; men on payroll at lead smelters and lead-zinc lead-zinc flotation mills, 1,387; estimated number of men employed in Utah to produce fuel used by lead smelters, smelt-ers, 93; estimated number of men employed in Utah to produce scrap iron, lime sand and lime rock used, 45; estimated number of men employed em-ployed in Utah by railroads to handle freight in and out of lead smelters and mills, 525; total number num-ber of men directly employed in Utah to carry on lead smelting , operations, 2,080; estimated dependents de-pendents for each man employed 4.3; number of persons in Utah directly di-rectly dependent upon lead smelting, smelt-ing, 8,944. i Assuming that the number employed, em-ployed, indirectly to raise foodstuffs; food-stuffs; furnish heat, light, water . and amusements; manufacture the goods' used and transport and distribute dis-tribute the commodities to the workers and their dependent families, fam-ilies, is as great as the number directly di-rectly employed, we may say that nearly 18,000 persons in Utah depend de-pend on the lead smeltiiig industry for support. And this does not include in-clude the men employed at the mines to produce the ore treated. |
