Edward George Stoiber

Abstract of thesis: "Benevolent Business: Edward G. Stoiber and the Silver Lake Mining Complex" by Jennifer Morandi Benson

https://adams.marmot.org/GroupedWork/1550f3c4-7287-6438-3c74-449557...

The search for mineral wealth in Colorado led to the exploration of isolated areas like Silver Lake Basin in the San Juan Mountains. As surface ores were exhausted, miners were forced to increase the depth of vertical shafts where they confronted increasingly complex ores that required sophisticated equipment and engineering expertise to extract. Remote communities like Silverton sought Eastern investment to provide the capital necessary for development, creating a class of absentee owners vulnerable to dishonest promotion while lacking practical knowledge. Regardless, the success of deep mining in Colorado relied on the willingness to gamble. Although many Colorado mine owners resided in the state, few lived at the site of their investment. Edward G. Stoiber possessed several qualities that differentiated him from his peers. Not only did he live on his Silver Lake property, but his wife was also his business partner. Stoiber applied both physical and intellectual capital to his mine, which benefitted the region as a whole. He understood the business of mining and how to make a profit through meticulous development. By embracing cutting edge technologies, he proved he could balance his technical education with practical experience. Most striking was his benevolent approach towards his workforce and generous spirit that defined him as an atypical mine owner.

--

From Silver Lake Basin: A Mining Chronicle Part I

https://westernmininghistory.com/articles/37948/page3/

The Stoiber Era

In the Las Animas District, the key mining outfits that managed to survive the 1882 recession were among the first to boom in response to the positive climate of 1890, and several of these resided in Silver Lake Basin. What followed laid the groundwork for that small area to become one of the most advanced centers of mining technology in Colorado.[22]

While the Iowa was a confirmed bonanza, developments on the Silver Lake claims a short distance north soon overshadowed Robin and Thayer’s relatively simple operation. Sometime after 1885, Edward George Stoiber and Gustavus H. Stoiber apparently purchased the Silver Lake Mine from John Reed and John Collins. After running the Stoiber Brothers Sampling Works on the northwest edge of Silverton for four years, the owners had a significant disagreement in 1887 and divided their mutual assets. Gustavus assumed the sampler and Edward, the Silver Lake claims, which numbered two hundred.[23] Gustavus’ choice was safer because the works provided a reliable source of income, whereas Edward based his decision on the belief the mine would afford great rewards for its high risk.[24]

After Edward took control of the Silver Lake property, he spent two years examining the geological features contained in the Whale,[25] Silver Lake, and Round Mountain claims; conducting assays; staking more claims with the aid of his new wife, Lena; and calculating the optimal manner of development. Unlike most mine owners, Edward took a primary interest in the bountiful low-grade ore and considered the high-grade a bonus. However, he faced the problem that the costs of shipping inferior payrock out of the basin and processing it at the sampling works would exceed returns. Stoiber realized that if he could mine and concentrate the ore in large volumes with a highly efficient system, economies of scale would render the low-quality material profitable at a nominal cost per ton. By 1890, at the age of only 35, the German engineer had designed a plan.[26]

During the late spring of that year, when Silver Lake Basin’s snow blockade consolidated, a small army of workers with mule trains packed in thousands of board feet of lumber, tons of construction hardware and bricks, and the basic necessities of life to Stoiber’s mine. There, at lake level, far above timberline at an elevation of 12,250 feet, they assembled the largest surface plant and mill [27] yet in the Las Animas Mining District. Mules drew ore cars on rails from the mine’s underground stations to the mill,[28] the first built at that altitude. A new story-and-a-half boarding house accommodated a crew of fifty. Workers manipulated heavy timbers for a stout tunnel house that would enclose a blacksmith shop for sharpening drill steels,[29] which miners dulled on a daily basis, in addition to carpentry and machine shops.[30]

Laborers at this original Silver Lake Mill, adjacent to the mine on the northwest side of the lake, first separated out the larger, heavier pieces of solid “shipping ore.” Then from pulverizing the rest of the low-grade product, they generated fifty tons of concentrates per day, which translated into five railroad cars of freight and provided Stoiber his economy of scale. Constructed on at least three stair-step terraces, the mill used gravity, with the aid of water pumped from the adjacent lake, to draw the material through treatment, after which workers dried the slurry [31] and sacked it for shipment. Half the value of the output [32] came from gold and the remainder, from silver, lead, and copper.

Stoiber implemented several innovations that set his mill apart from others in the area. Its enclosed coal-fired power plant created enough steam to heat that structure as well as the boarding house.[33] Also, a flume carried at least 500,000 tons of piped mill tailings [34] directly into Silver Lake’s north end, creating an artificial beach and a long peninsula that separated the northern and southern lake portions. Unfortunately, this operation, along with those of the mine’s neighbors, killed the aquatic life.[35]

Around 1891 Edward Stoiber built his own AC power plant, evidently the second in the state, down on the Animas River. Power lines transported electricity two miles, too far for DC (direct current), up to his property at Silver Lake Basin. This facility lit the remote building interiors and ran, to perfection, some small motors in the mill. Also, over the course of the summer, muleskinners hauled up supplies and coal so the mine and mill could run through the winter.[36]

The Silver Lake Mines Company reported 1891 revenues of $254,908 [37] (about $6,800,000 in 2015) to the United States Mint; it constituted approximately twenty-five percent of the total production of San Juan County.[38] Of course, the company’s heavy expenses offset much of this total, resulting in a smaller profit figure.

After two successful years of mining and milling, Edward Stoiber expanded operations in 1893. Lena, the company’s personnel manager, increased the workforce to 130 and had her husband build a second boarding house, which provided amenities heretofore unseen in the Las Animas Mining District. These included a dining hall, a kitchen equipped with a brick oven, and a water tower suspended in the rafters. Thus the building offered running hot and cold water as well as flush toilets, and steam radiators furnished heat.[39]

But that year the Colorado mining economic climate worsened. The Panic of 1893 prompted Congress to repeal the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, causing the Silver Crash of that year,[40] and as a result, almost every mining company in the Las Animas District closed. Most of the mines that continued operating from the early 1890s into the ensuing depression, including the Iowa and the Silver Lake, were proven gold producers. Edward Stoiber, along with a handful of other mine owners, responded to the Crash not by curtailing operations but by taking the opposite approach. They poured capital into underground development, mechanization, and mill improvements on a scale the county had not yet seen. Their purpose was to extract and concentrate product in economies of scale great enough to dramatically reduce the cost per ton, rendering low-value ores profitable to mine even during the financial decline.[41]

Meanwhile at the Iowa, in 1893 Edward’s Stoiber’s brother, Gustavus, joined Robin, Thayer, and two more investors, H. W. King and R. W. Watson, in organizing the Iowa Gold Mining and Milling Company to labor at that Silver Lake Basin property. This consolidation made the Iowa second only to the Silver Lake in terms of implementing economies of scale, and an enlarged workforce drove two adits into the vein system in order to work it simultaneously at different levels.[42]

Edward Stoiber built a second AC power plant on the Animas River, which also furnished current to his brother’s Iowa Mine, in 1894.[43] Waterwheels ran dynamos to generate electricity for hoisting and pumping and for lighting the remote mines and buildings.[44] At the same time, at the Iowa, Gustavus installed the most advanced compressed-air system in the Las Animas District, which provided energy to the piston rock-drills at that mine and, later, the Silver Lake. Gustavus convinced the U.S. Postal Service to locate the misspelled Arastra Post Office at the Iowa in 1895, while Edward housed most of the combined workforce at the Silver Lake.[45]

During this period, the two Stoiber holdings ranked among the greatest producers in the region, thanks to the owners’ work ethic and, equally important, their frugality.[46] They paid close attention to operating costs and squeezed efficiency at each opportunity.[47] The brothers’ great success depended on a coordinated effort, which brought about reconciliation. Edward and Lena became two of the largest stockholders in the Iowa company.[48]

Edward Stoiber’s Silver Lake Mine boasted ten miles of underground passages at numerous adit [49] levels to work the vertical veins simultaneously at different elevations, creating an ore factory that yielded silver, gold, lead, copper, and zinc. A central internal shaft linked the various levels.[50]

Although his venture earned a profit, Edward realized the need for a more efficient process. Workers could access his mine solely by a steep, mile-long trail that only mules could travel. So in 1895 he contracted with William M. Frey [51] to construct an 8,640-foot Bleichert double-rope, gravity-drawn tramway,[52] capable of moving five tons of crude ore and concentrates per hour from his mine to a shipping terminal he’d built earlier partway down Arrastra Gulch. Once completed, this tram segment attracted notice for its long spans, one of which stretched almost 2,200 feet across a snowslide area.[53]

In 1896, with a labor force of 125, Gustavus Stoiber, Robin, and the other Iowa investors made significant progress toward building an empire as large as Edward’s Silver Lake. The partnership hired the Trenton Iron Works to construct its own Bleichert tramway. It ran parallel to the Silver Lake line, terminating at a concentration mill constructed the previous year at timberline in Arrastra Gulch, a mile or so up from the Animas River. The same year, the party gained advantage when it purchased the Tiger Mining & Milling Company, which had just be- gun work on the Royal Tiger Mine, the operation directly across Silver Lake from the Iowa on the lake’s east side. That group had done little with the property because it could not bear the development costs and was eager to sell. Like the Iowa, it yielded mainly lead. Once Gustavus and Robin had erected a surface plant and boarding house there, they invested in underground expansion and increased production.[54]

Edward Stoiber built a third boarding house at the Silver Lake, five stories high including the basement, which saw completion in 1897.[55] At that time the mine employed about 300 workers, many of them immigrants from Austria, Italy, and Finland.[56] The newest structure featured the same luxurious amenities as its predecessors and, in addition, a ventilation system, barbershop, laundry room, library, and reading room, as well as bathrooms and spacious “sleeping apartments” that accommodated no more than four men each. The dining room could seat 250 at a time. Stoiber piped in fresh water and collected and burned kitchen trash in a dedicated furnace. Dishwashing machines, drying tables, and two brick ovens ventilated by chimneys adorned the cooking area. The Silverton Standard proclaimed it “the best boarding house in the state, if not in the United States.”[57]

Unlike the other mine owners in the basin, Edward Stoiber was concerned [58] enough with the lake’s water quality to install a primitive sewer system, virtually unknown on the mining frontier, for his boarding houses at the Silver Lake. Mill tailings covered the septic tanks.[59]

By the end of 1897, the Stoiber brothers had transformed Silver Lake Basin into an industrial landscape. Their three mines, from which an octopus of roads radiated outward, took on the appearance of massive factories, creating noise audible within all the surrounding basins.[60]

San Juan County’s well-capitalized mining companies, such as the Silver Lake, had utilized electric hoists for raising cages [61] between the various levels within the vertical shafts as early as 1895. Ever the progressive, since his mine already had an electrical infrastructure, Edward Stoiber decided to experiment with innovative electric-model drills. By January 1899, miners at the Silver Lake were successfully using these tools in its stopes,[62] drawing the attention of industry experts,[63] although the machines, while portable and convenient, were somewhat too lightly constructed for the work required of them.[64]

In 1898 Edward commissioned Frey to build a 6,200-foot tramway extension [65] from where the first segment ended at a temporary station just above the Iowa mill, to a massive, newly constructed ore-storage terminal on the south side of the Animas River, west of the mouth of Arrastra Gulch. The project increased the line’s capacity from five to thirty tons per hour. This terminal served as a base station for the Silver Lake Mine and included an assay shop and freight yard. The second tram section enabled Stoiber to haul concentrates from his mine on the lake all the way down to a branch of the Silverton Railroad that Otto Mears constructed especially for him. The two tramway segments together totaled almost 15,000 feet, making it one of the long- est systems in the state.[66]

Despite the successful operation of his elongated tramway, Edward Stoiber’s mill on the lake proved uneconomical. As a result, in 1900 he built a second one at the site of his storage terminal and abandoned the original. The new mill building alone covered two acres and descended from ore-holding bins on flat ground at the top. The product, in various stages of crushing and concentration, proceeded via gravity down a series of ten stair-step terraces to the valley floor. The structure was able to treat 1,000 tons of payrock every twenty-four hours, more than many mines generated in a month.[67]

Because of Edward Stoiber's advanced, enlightened concepts of mining, milling, and improving employee worker conditions, his Silver Lake became a model that similar companies across the West imitated by the late 1890s.[68] He created a legacy by which his astute contemporaries could learn and profit.

Meanwhile, by 1898 miners at the Iowa had driven around 8,000 feet of underground workings on its four levels. The owners acquired the Black Diamond and other claims and initiated further underground development at their second property, the Royal Tiger. That year they built a tramway segment across the lake that allowed miners at the Royal Tiger, which had no mill, to send its product into the Iowa terminal, where workers coupled the buckets onto the main line. The mobile receptacles then coasted down to the Iowa Mill, where men emptied them and sent them back up to the Royal Tiger and Iowa for filling. In addition, the following year the Iowa partners added another section to their main tramway line. The lengthened system, known as the Iowa-Tiger, extended its reach from the Iowa mill to the company’s own ore-storage and - loading terminal located on the Animas River, where Otto Mears constructed a second spur to furnish direct service on his Silverton Railroad.[69] By 1900 the Royal Tiger was producing a greater volume than the Iowa.[70]

During this period, Edward and Gustavus together drove the Unity Tunnel,[71] actually an adit, likely named to reflect their fraternal cooperation. Via this ambitious project, the brothers penetrated 3,000 feet of solid rock to undercut the vein systems of both the Silver Lake and Iowa Mines. Their goal was to provide a platform for miners to stope [72] the veins 700 feet upward to the existing operations and to also serve as a central artery through which workers could haul the deep ore out. Although they began boring in 1895, the Stoibers did not complete the connection with the deepest workings in the Silver Lake Mine until 1901. To service the adit, the brothers built another surface plant that included many of the same components found at the two mines.[73] Then in 1900 they linked the portal with the main line by tramway.[74]

In 1899 an unnamed partnership leased the Buckeye Mine, the fourth player in Silver Lake Basin, idle since Mears quit his contract ten years earlier. The investors rehabilitated the critical excavations and began production, mainly of lead ore,[75] and activity lasted several years. This venture marked the last known occupation of the site, which lacked a mill. However, individuals or small companies could have worked it some time after that.[76]

In early 1901, after completing the Unity Tunnel, Edward Stoiber sold his Silver Lake mining properties to the Guggenheim family’s exploration company for $2,350,000 [77] (about $67,708,000 in 2015). He stipulated the corporation would retain him as consultant until the new mill was finished and treating ore successfully, which proved true that May.[78] Then he and Lena retired to Denver and traveled Europe.[79]

Footnotes:

• 22 Eric Twitty, Historic Mining Resources of San Juan County, Colorado (Washington, DC: U.S. Dept. of the Interior, National Park Service, revised Mar. 1992), 73.
• 23 Karen A. Vendl and Mark A. Vendl, Mines around Silverton (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2015), 34.
• 24 Eric Twitty, Basins of Silver (Lake City, CO: Western Reflections Publishing Co., 2009), 147-148.
• 25 Frederick Leslie Ransome, A Report on the Economic Geology of the Silverton Quadrangle, Colorado (Washington, DC: U.S. Geological Survey, 1901), 149.
• 26 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 149.
• 27 A mill was a building in which complex machinery reduced or concentrated raw ore for smelting.
• 28 Ransome, A Report on the Economic Geology, 40, 156.
• 29 Drill steels were implements miners underground struck with hammers to chisel ore-bearing rock.
• 30 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 149.
• 31 Slurry is a thin mixture of water with a fine, i
• 32 Ransome, A Report on the Economic Geology, 94.
• 33 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 151.
• 34 Tailings were waste products from milling (not mining).
• 35 Renee Vardy, The Study of the Effect of Long-Term Water Cover on the Mill Tailings of Silver Lake Mill #1, near Silverton, Colorado (Unpublished Master of Science Thesis, Wichita State University, 2009) 39.
• 36 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 152.
• 37 Ransome, A Report on the Economic Geology, 149.
• 38 Colorado legislators had recently carved San Juan County out of La Plata County.
• 39 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 153.
• 40 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 160.
• 41 Twitty, Historic Mining Resources, 83.
• 42 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 147, 171, 173.
• 43 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 166.
• 44 Ransome, A Report on the Economic Geology, 156.
• 45 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 172, 174-175.
• 46 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 174.
• 47 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 329.
• 48 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 174.
• 49 An adit was a horizontal mine entrance.
• 50 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 177.
• 51 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 170.
• 52 A tramway was an aerial, usually gravity-driven means for transporting ore. It consisted of one or two wire ropes suspended over a series of towers. Its contemporary counterpart is the motor-driven ski lift. The Bleichert system, named after its inventor, featured two wires: a stationary track cable fixed to the tower tops, and a lower traction cable that pulled buckets clamped to it and ran in an endless, closed loop.
• 53 Robert A. Trennert, Riding the High Wire: Arial Tramways of the West (Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2001), 67.
• 54 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 170-173.
• 55 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 176.
• 56 Karen A. Vendl and Mark A. Vendl, Mines around Silverton (Charleston, SC: ArcadiaPublishing, 2015), 37.
• 57 Mark A. Vendl, Duane A. Smith, and Karen A. Vendl, My Home at Present (Lake City, CO: Western Reflections Publishing Co., 2013), 10-11, 105, 107.
• 58 Vendl, Smith, and Vendl, My Home at Present, 107.
• 59 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 176.
• 60 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 178.
• 61 Ransome, A Report on the Economic Geology, 156.
• 62 A stope was an area worked vertically between two mine levels.
• 63 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 197.
• 64 Ransome, A Report on the Economic Geology, 156.
• 65 T. A. Rickard, Across the San Juan Mountains (Ouray, CO: Bear Creek Publishing Co., 1980), 66-67. Rickard wrote the book in 1902
• 66 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 193.
• 67 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 203.
• 68 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 187.
• 69 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 205, 211.
• 70 Ransome, A Report on the Economic Geology, 160.
• 71 Not to be confused with the mine of that name on the east slope of Hazelton Mountain
• 72 To stope was to excavate vertically, extracting ore between two tunnel levels.
• 73 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 213, 215-217.
• 74 Ransome, A Report on the Economic Geology, 156.
• 75 Ransome, A Report on the Economic Geology, 161.
• 76 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 218.
• 77 Apparently around $1,300,000 cash and the remainder in stock.
• 78 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 239.
• 79 Twitty, Historic Mining Resources, 99.
• 80 To pinch out is to diminish to the point it disappears.
• 81 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 242.
• 82 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 244.
• 83 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 220.
• 84 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 245.
• 85 Vendl and Vendl, Mines around Silverton, 43.
• 86 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 245-246.
• 87 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 254-255.
• 88 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 252.
• 89 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 256.
• 90 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 257.
• 91 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 258.
• 92 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 259-261.
• 93 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 245-247.
• 94 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 247.
• 95 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 247.
• 96 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 261.
• 97 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 262.
• 98 A hanging wall was the mass of rock overlying a mineral lode.
• 99 Free gold is that found in a pure state, not combined with other minerals.
• 100 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 262-264.
• 101 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 277-278.
• 102 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 279.
• 103 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 279-280.
• 104 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 287-289.
• 105 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 290.
• 106 Twitty, Historic Mining Resources, 133 107 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 292.
• 108 Twitty, Historic Mining Resources, 134. 109 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 294-295.
• 110 Twitty, Historic Mining Resources, 134. 111 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 308, 323.
• 112 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 333-334.
• 113 Emil Fischer, "Map of Red Mountain and the Mining Region of San Juan, Ouray, San Miguel, and Dolores Counties, Colo.," Chicago: Rand McNally and Co., 1891.
• 114 Not to be confused with the mine by that name in Dives Basin nor the one located at the base of Sultan Mountain.
• 115 In his 1905 "Map of the San Juan Triangle," George Samuel Clason referred to this claim as the White Diamondwhereas Emil Fischer, on his 1891 map, referred to it simply as the Diamond.
• 116 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 328.
• 117 Twitty, Basins of Silver, 342.
• 118 http://www.co.pueblo.co.us/cgi-bin/webatrallbroker.wsc/atrpropertys..., accessed July 2015.
• 119 Vardy, The Study of the Effect, v.
• 120 Vardy, The Study of the Effect, 43.
• 121 Vardy, The Study of the Effect, 46.
• 122 Cribbing was a timber framework that lined a mine shaft or, in this case, a steep slope, to contain loose rock.
• 123 https://www.durangoutdoors.com/nearby-trails/arrastra-gulch-to-silv..., accessed July 2015.
• 124 Ransome, A Report on the Economic Geology, 145.
• 125 Terrance M. Kerwin, e-mails to the author, 12 April and 11 June 2015.
• 126 The Engineering and Mining Journal, 5 May 1906, 865.
• 127 https://books.google.com/books?id=IgQcAQAAMAAJ&pg=P A271&lpg=PA271&dq=%22edward+G.+Stoiber%22+Gunnison&source=bl&ots=GGGY7dEqJw&sig=YqjNRzbniadaecPP0UDW2z_beMw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiy1rLJlZPKAhXHMGMKHeoqCJAQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=%22edward%20G.%20Stoiber%22%20Gunnison&f=false, accessed July 2015. This source reported Stoiber lived in Gunnison, Colorado, in 1883.

--

From The Salt Lake Herald of Monday, April 23, 1906:

Died of Typhoid

Denver, April 22 - Edward G. Stoiber, a millionaire mining man, formerly owner of the Silver Lake mines and mills near Silverton, Colorado, died at Paris, France, yesterday of typhoid fever.