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Boston Consolidated Mining Company

This page was last updated on September 3, 2023.

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Overview

In 1896 Samuel Newhouse began development of the Highland Boy Mine, a mine that had been staked out in 1873. He and his associates formed the Utah Consolidated Gold Mines, Ltd. in Great Britain to promote their interests there. While exploring for gold, large amounts of copper were found and a smelter was soon planned. A smelter with an input capacity of 250 tons per day was completed in May 1899 and was the first copper smelter to be built in Utah. Standard Oil interests purchased control of the company from Newhouse and his associates, also in May 1899, and reorganized the company as the Utah Consolidated Mining Company.

It should be noted here that although Samuel Newhouse was at this time managing director of both companies, the two companies (Utah Consolidated, and Boston Consolidated) were entirely separate from each other, and were organized for separate purposes. The Utah Consolidated (Highland Boy) company was organized to exploit the gold and sulphide copper resources in the Carr Fork region, and the Boston Consolidated company was organized to exploit the low-grade porphyry copper resources, but also mined the higher grade sulphide copper ores when they were revealed as part of their underground operations.

The Boston Consolidated Mining Company had its beginnings with the Stewart mine, located in Muddy Gulch, a branch of the Carr Fork branch of Bingham Canyon, Utah.

(Read more about the Stewart Mine, 1878-1898)

Organized in 1898, Boston Consolidated was an underground mining operation at this time and shipped its ores to the smelter of the Bingham Consolidated Copper Company in the Salt Lake Valley. They did this until 1905 when that contract expired and a new one was signed with the American Smelting & Refining Company, which was building a new smelter at Garfield on the south shore of the Great Salt Lake. Boston Consolidated also announced plans to build a concentrator mill near the Garfield smelter to process its low-grade porphyry copper ores. Construction on what became Kennecott's Arthur Mill began in 1906. Also, in June 1906, with the delivery of the first of many steam shovels, Boston Consolidated began to use a new method of mining, known as open cut mining. Steam shovels were used to remove earth (overburden) from above the copper ore. The ore itself was also removed by shovel, placed into railroad cars and shipped over the Rio Grande Western Railway to the Arthur Mill. This was the beginning of the open-pit mining technique in Bingham canyon.

The Boston Consolidated Mining Company was organized in November 1898 to develop a copper producing property from 51 mining claims located in the upper portion of Carr Fork, with all of the copper coming from sulfide ores. Boston Consolidated was involved in development work until late 1903 when they went into actual production. Up to that time, they had been shipping some sulfide copper ore taken as part of their development work. With the Bingham Consolidated smelting contract in 1903 they were ready for full production.

The Boston Consolidated's open cut mine for the low-grade porphyry copper ore was located at the top of Carr Fork and reached around the mountain high above the workings of the Utah Copper company's mine at the bottom of the main canyon. In 1903 the Copper Belt had built a connection to Boston Consolidated's sulfide (former Stewart No. 2) ore bins located in lower Muddy Gulch, using a system of torturous switchbacks.

Shirl Scroggin, a retired Kennecott employee, wrote:

During the following years the quality of the ores being mined by the open-pit operations gradually deteriorated until by late 1908 practically all of the ore being processed was coming from the underground operations. The financial condition of the company was also getting worse and in January 1910 the company was merged with the nearby, more financially sound Utah Copper Company.

Timeline

November 1898
Boston Consolidated Mining Company organized in November 1898 as the U.S. subsidiary of Boston Consolidated Copper and Gold Mining Company, Ltd. of London. This new company was organized to consolidate 51 claims (350 acres) and develop them as a porphyry property. (USGS Professional Paper 38, page 281)

The following comes from the April 24, 1898 issue of the Salt Lake Herald Republican newspaper:

January 1900
Samuel Newhouse was looking for an alternate to the accepted methods of concentrating copper ore. The following comes from the January 25, 1900 issue of the Deseret News newspaper:

December 29, 1900
The Boston Consolidated mining company had driven 2,811 feet of new development tunnels from October 1, 1899 to September 30, 1900, to determine the extent of its ore body. The company had discovered sulphide ore that held 1 to 3 percent copper. (Engineering and Mining Journal, December 29, 1900, page 762)

1903
The Copper Belt railroad built two spurs to get the ore traffic of other mining companies in the canyon. The new construction included a spur to Boston Consolidated mine and the Yampa Consolidated mine, both in Carr Fork, along with another spur to the Yampa Consolidated's smelter. (1909 Bingham Commercial Club Souvenir booklet)

April 5, 1903
A party of engineers who came to camp this week are reported to be making the final survey of the Boston Consolidated aerial tramway. To make its lower terminal below that of the United States, it will have to cross the Highland Boy tram." (Salt Lake Herald, April 5, 1903) (The Boston Consolidated never did complete this planned tramway.)

May 1903
The Copper Belt railroad had surveyors in the field surveying an extension that was to reach the Boston Consolidated and Yampa mines in Carr Fork. If completed, the extension would also capture considerable traffic from the Utah Consolidated Highland Boy mine that was currently going entirely by team. (Deseret New, May 30, 1903; Salt Lake Herald, May 31, 1903)

June 4, 1903
The survey was completed on June 4th. (Salt Lake Herald, June 15, 1903, "probably next week will see the grading begin")

The Boston Consolidated extension of the Copper Belt railroad "will be completed within thirty days." (Salt Lake Herald, September 14, 1903)

July 1903
A Boston newspaper announced that Boston Consolidated would soon build its own smelter, and that the company had secured the service of George K. Fischer, who had recently completed the Highland Boy smelter, and the United States smelter. (Deseret News, July 7, 1903)

October 1903
The new Copper Belt spur for Boston Consolidated was built after the mining company signed a two-year smelting contract to supply the Bingham Consolidated smelter in Midvale with 200 tons of ore per day. By October 1903, Boston Consolidated was shipping as much as 500 tons per day from the Carr Fork mine. The mine was shipping 4,000 tons by February 1904. (USGS Professional Paper 38, p. 381)

Considering that the average rail car at this time had a 30-ton capacity, 500 tons per day would have been about 16 carloads per day, and 4,000 tons per month would have been a total of about 133 cars per month, or just four carloads per day, averaged out over the month. This ore was all moving over the Copper Belt line to Bingham, then by RGW to Midvale.

January 1905
Boston Consolidated announced that they would begin working their porphyry property, and in June, they announced that they would build a concentrating mill adjacent to the new ASARCO smelter. This mill would use a different method than the one selected by Utah Copper to concentrate its low-grade copper ore. The final location was selected in November. (Mines and Minerals, May 1908, pp. 453, 455)

Autumn 1905
Boston Consolidated built a small 20-ton experimental mill to test their own proposed method of concentrating the low grade copper ore. The mill was located adjacent to Utah Copper's main tunnel opening in Main Canyon and served by Copper Belt's "Yampa Spur," and went into operation during early 1906. (Mines and Minerals, May 1908)

Boston Consolidated ordered its first shovel in mid November 1905; noted as being the first steam shovel to be used in Utah. (Salt Lake Mining Review, November 30, 1905, page 14,"Trade Notes")

July 1905
As part of its 1905 expansion, Boston Consolidated began planning for open-cut mining of its own porphyry property. In July, the company sent representatives to iron mines in upper Wisconsin, and to the Sun Rise iron mine in Wyoming to investigate open cut mining by steam shovel. In December, they received their first steam shovel, after having ordered it just a month before. Although the shovel arrived in December, getting it shipped up to the site of the open-cut operations, and getting it properly assembled took almost six months, and shovel operations finally began on June 24, 1906.

In February 1906, Boston Consolidated began surveys for a two-mile rail line that would connect the steam shovel porphyry levels of mine with the Copper Belt line. Construction of the new line, located at the top of Carr Fork, was delayed by winter weather. (Mines and Minerals, May 1908, p. 454; Engineering and Mining Journal, Volume 81, March 3, 1906, p. 436, item dated February 24)

April 14, 1906
The company broke ground for its new concentrating mill at Garfield. The national press saw this as a good opportunity to compare the methods of reduction to be used by the two companies: Utah copper would be using roller mills to crush the ore and Boston Consolidated would be using stamp mills. (Engineering and Mining Journal, Volume 81, April 21, 1906, p. 724, item dated April 14)

July 1906
In July, they ordered from the S. G. Shaw Company of Denver, another forty cars. these would be of seven-ton capacity. (Salt Lake Mining Review, Volume 8, number 7 (July 15, 1906), p. 32)

December 30, 1906
Boston Consolidated had received their Shay. In a news item about a new Shay for the Copper Belt, "The Rio Grande has ordered another Shay engine for the Copper Belt, which has already been shipped from Dayton, and is expected here within a few days. This with the new No. 10 of the Boston Co., will do much to relieve the freight congestion on the Copper Belt." (Salt Lake Mining Review, December 30, 1906, "Around The State," quoting an item in the Bingham Bulletin)

In mid January 1907, Boston Consolidated converted from steam power to electric power, drawing their electricity from the lines of Telluride Power Company. (Mining Reporter, January 24, 1907, "Boston Consolidated - The change from steam to electric power was made at this company's property at Bingham last week. A new 200 H. P. compressor was put into commission, the power being furnished by the Telluride Power Company. Both steam and electric plants are still in operation, but the steam plant will soon go out of commission.")

In May 1907, Boston Consolidated was using four steam shovels, with five-yard dippers, and nine small narrow gauge steam locomotives in its porphyry operations to mine and ship as much as 750 tons per day. The company was also still shipping from its underground sulfide mine. In addition to moving Boston Consolidated's 750 tons, the Copper Belt line was being kept busy with the other producers in the district, including (in Carr Fork) the Utah Consolidated's Highland Boy mine, the Utah Apex mine, and the Bingham-New Haven mine; and (in Main Canyon) Utah Copper, Ohio Copper, and Bingham Consolidated. U. S. Mining was using its aerial tramway to move its ores down to a loading bin on the RGW Bingham Branch at Bingham. (Mining and Scientific Press, May 11, 1907, p. 597)

Of the producers in Carr Fork, the Bingham-New Haven Copper and Gold Mining Company had been organized in October 1902 to consolidate the Zelnora, Morning Star, and Frisco properties, located along north slope of Carr Fork. (USGS Professional Paper 38, p. 383)

Utah Apex Mining Company had been organized five months earlier, in May 1902, in Maine to consolidate 33 claims (254 acres), also on Carr Fork's north slope. (Wegg, p. 77)

In a 1907 mortgage to fund its continued expansion, Boston Consolidated listed the following.

• Four 90-ton steam shovels
• One 90-ton Shay standard gauge steam locomotive
• Two 25-ton narrow gauge four-wheel steam locomotives
• Nine 17-ton narrow gauge four-wheel steam locomotives
• Two 40-horsepower electric narrow gauge locomotives used in its underground mine
• 200 four-yard narrow gauge dump cars
• 4,000 feet of standard gauge track
• 5-1/2 miles of narrow gauge track, including underground trackage
• One locomotive roundhouse
• £300,000 ($1,461,000) loan from Boston Consolidated Copper and Gold Mining Co. Ltd. of London England, to Boston Consolidated Mining Co. of New York.

In September 1907, a contemporary trade publication, Mines and Minerals, stated that Boston Consolidated was using four of the five shovels they owned (four Marions and one Vulcan, all being 90-ton shovels with five-yard dippers). Boston Consolidated was also using ten 18-ton Porter locomotives (each pulling trains of 10 to 12 four-yard capacity cars) and two 28-ton Porter locomotives (each pulling trains of 15 to 20 four-yard capacity cars). ("Mining at Bingham, Utah," Mines and Minerals, Volume 28, September/October 1907, p. 90; photo of Boston Consolidated on page 92; photo of Utah Copper on page 92; photo of Bingham canyon on page 92)

November 1907
Boston Consolidated's new steel ore bin, at the base of the new incline tramway, went into operation. To ship the large quantities of ore from the porphyry mine that would be needed to keep the new mill in operation, in November 1907, Boston Consolidated completed a gravity tramway and ore storage bin. The 2,100 foot long tramway designed and built by S. B. Stine and Company Oseola Mills, Pennsylvania, at an average 27 percent grade with three 400-ton wooden storage bins located at the top (open cut mine) and at two intermediate (underground mine) levels. The tramway consisted of two parallel pairs of tracks, with counter-balancing skipcars of 12-ton capacity each, giving the tramway a 300 tons per hour total capacity. At the bottom, the skips fed a 3,000-ton storage bin, 36 feet in diameter and 40 feet high.

Late 1907
In late 1907, to allow movement of its copper ores to RGW's new Low Grade line, Boston Consolidated completed a one-mile rail connection between the new Copper Belt Junction (where the upper end of the new Rio Grande Western's Low Grade Line connected with the Copper Belt) and the company's ore bin in the lower part of Carr Fork. The new ore bin was at the base of the new gravity tramway. The cost of the railroad connection, which included a tunnel, was $22,842. (Mines and Minerals, May 1908, p. 455; Mining Scientific Press, April 17, 1909, p. 553; Mines and Minerals, December 1909, p. 264)

January 13, 1908
According to the 1908 Boston Consolidated Directors Report, the first ore was mined by the new Boston Consolidated open-cut operations on January 13, 1908, and on January 27, the new concentrator mill at Garfield (later referred to as the Arthur Mill), was placed into operation. The Directors Report also included the following highlights.

• With its new rail connection completed, and its new gravity tramway and storage bin in place, the new expanded Boston Consolidated's operations began.
• Although the company's open-cut shovel operations began in June 1906, they were involved in testing, development of the new method, and removal of overburden to gain access to the ore itself.
• The incline tramway connected with tracks from the various steam shovel levels, as well as with tracks to the underground mine tunnels. (page 12)
• The connecting Rio Grande Western track was put into use on January 11, 1908. RGW repeatedly made offers to purchase the connecting track but Boston Consolidated refused the offers because they were aware of the connection's strategic location, in relation to other railway companies in the canyon. (page 13)
• The first section of the new Boston Consolidated mill at Garfield was put into operation on January 27, 1907. (page 13)
• The first porphyry ore was mined by steam shovel and shipped to the new mill on January 13, 1908. (page 10)
• Sulphide ores were taken from the underground mine by electric locomotives, to the ore bin at the mouth of Armstrong No. tunnel, where the ore was loaded into standard Gauge rail cars and shipped to the smelter at Garfield. (page 23)
• The transportation agreement with Rio Grande Western was to expire on December 31, 1926; for movement of ore valued at $5 per ton the cost varied from 27.5 cents per ton for wet ore (25 cents per ton after five years), to 28.7 cents per ton for dry ore. (page 30)

Boston Consolidated's Shay locomotive had been delivered less than a year before, and was used to move cars and materials from the RGW connection at Copper Belt Junction, along the spur up Carr Fork, through the tortuous switchbacks to the top of Carr Fork, where Boston Consolidated had maintenance shops for its mine locomotives and steam shovels.

January 1908
The mill of the Boston Consolidated company was not placed into operation until January 1908. The company had chosen the site, about two miles west of the Utah Copper Magna mill, in July 1905. But because of construction delays caused by the sudden demand in San Francisco for structural steel and other construction materials to rebuild from the April 1906 earthquake and fire, Boston Consolidated was not able to complete its new mill as rapidly as did Utah Copper.

March 16, 1908
Boston Consolidated reported that it was shipping 400 tons of sulphide ore daily to the Garfield smelter. (New York Times, March 16, 1908)

(This sulphide ore was all coming out of the underground mines, which in-turn were loading the ore into rail cars at the ore bins of the Armstrong tunnel, at the junction of Muddy Gulch and Carr Fork. The same site was where Boston Consolidated had its power house that furnished electricity and compressed air to all of the Boston Consolidated company's mines.)

(Read more about the Armstrong Tunnel, an important and visible part of mining activity in Carr Fork)

September 30, 1908
Boston Consolidated's annual report for the accounting year ending September 30, 1908, issued on February 19, 1909, reported that the initial success of the company's open-cut operations was dimming. The company found that the high iron content of the ore it was taking by open-cut operations made the difficult to concentrate, and the costs were too high. The company announced that they would end their open-cut operations, but continue to ship both sulfide and porphyry ores from their underground operations. (Salt Lake Herald, February 20, 1909)

October 26, 1908
Boston Consolidated had started actual mining operations with steam shovels "six months ago." Prior to that time (and since summer 1906) the steam shovels had been used to strip overburden from the ore body. When mining was started with steam shovels, the ore was found to be too high in iron content for economical smelting, and mining had focused on underground operations. A upraise was extended upwards from the Ben Hur tunnel, and reached within 50 feet of the surface operations. The ore was found to be neutral in its iron content, meaning that surface mining could resume after the iron-bearing ore was itself removed, thus once again opening up the massive quantities of ore to development. (Salt Lake Herald, October 26, 1908)

February 15, 1909
Boston Consolidated resumed open cut mining, using steam shovels. Open cut mining had stopped during late 1907 or early 1908. "When work stopped over a year ago, it was stated that the stripping was too expensive and that it was better mining and more economical to follow the system of tunnels in the porphyry dike. This has been followed with excellent results. The hill is a network of tunnels. The Ben Hur tunnels particularly have yielded up an enormous tonnage of the low grade metal." (Salt Lake Telegram, February 15, 1909)

December 17, 1909
The Guggenheims announced that their interest in Boston Consolidated Copper and Gold Mining Company, and Nevada Consolidated Copper Company, would be merged and consolidated with their interest in Utah Copper Company. The exchange was to be one share of Utah Copper for 2-1/2 shares of Boston Consolidated, and 2-1/4 shares of Nevada Consolidated. (New York Times, December 18, 1909, "yesterday")

The Boston Consolidated Directors Report for the year 1909 showed that there had been very little use of steam shovels and open-cut mining during 1909. Sufficient ore, both sulphide and porphyry, was being mined from the underground mine. The cost of open-cut mining was higher than the value of the ore being mined by that method.

March 1, 1910
Boston Consolidated Mining Company was merged with the Utah Copper Company, with two and a half shares of Boston stock being traded for each share of Utah stock.

July 1910
"The Boston Consolidated gravity plane, at Bingham, Utah. Its length is 1,900 feet and its vertical height 737 feet, thus giving an average grade of 22 degrees 49 minutes, although its maximum grade is about 29 degrees. Probably this is the longest and steepest ore plane in the United States. The arrangements are such that the cars can be loaded at the three receiving bins which are seen to span the tracks. The skips are large and have a capacity of 12 tons. One double-track unit, lowers 1,350 tons of ore per shift of 8 hours." (Mines and Minerals, July 1910, page 715)

The 1910 merger of Utah Copper and Boston Consolidated was the result of the intense competition between the two mining giants in Bingham Canyon. The workings of the Boston Consolidated were high above those of Utah Copper and there were continuing safety problems with the control of loose materials and slides from above. Both companies wanted to expand their operations but each was hindered by the other. Jackling was quoted as saying "I knew that either they would take us or we would have to take them".

Preliminary merger talks were started in early 1906, but by mid March, the talks broke off because the two parties could not agree on the tonnage of ore reserves that each company had available. The talks had been between Samuel Newhouse for Boston Consolidated, and Daniel Guggenheim, president of American Smelting Securities, which held controlling interest in Utah Copper. (Engineering and Mining Journal, Volume 81, March 31, 1906, p. 630, item dated March 24, 1906)

Between 1908 and 1911, while the Bingham and Garfield was being built, the traffic patterns from the mines in the canyon were changing. The three large smelters that had been built in Salt Lake Valley, starting in 1899, were the subject of a suit brought in 1905 by farmers over crop damages from air pollution in the agricultural areas surrounding the smelters. The settlement of the suit called for the mining companies to stop processing copper sulfide ores at their Salt Lake Valley smelters.

Locomotives

(Read more about Boston Consolidated's Locomotives, including their narrow-gauge mine locomotives, and their standard-gauge Shay locomotive)

More Information

Corporate information for Boston Consolidated Mining Company

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