The Ontario silver mine is a
mine
Mine, mines, miners or mining may refer to:
Extraction or digging
* Miner, a person engaged in mining or digging
*Mining, extraction of mineral resources from the ground through a mine
Grammar
*Mine, a first-person English possessive pronoun
...
that was active starting in 1872, and is located near
Park City, Utah
Park City is a city in Utah, United States. The vast majority is in Summit County, and it extends into Wasatch County. It is considered to be part of the Wasatch Back. The city is southeast of downtown Salt Lake City and from Salt Lake City' ...
,
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
.
History
The
lode
In geology, a lode is a deposit of metalliferous ore that fills or is embedded in a fissure (or crack) in a rock formation or a vein of ore that is deposited or embedded between layers of rock.
The current meaning (ore vein) dates from the 17t ...
was discovered by accident on 19 January 1872 by Herman Budden, Rector Steen (Pike), John Kain, and Gus McDowell. The mine was purchased by
George Hearst
George Hearst (September 3, 1820 – February 28, 1891) was an American businessman, miner, and politician. After growing up on a small farm in Missouri, he founded many mining operations, and is known for developing and expanding the Hom ...
through
R. C. Chambers
Robert Craig Chambers (January 16, 1832–April 11, 1901) was an American 19th-century businessman, minerals miner, banker, politician, sheriff, and silver mine supervisor. He had mining investments in many states, and was one of the best-known ...
from the prospectors for $27,000 on 24 August 1872.
Hearst and his business partners
James Ben Ali Haggin
James Ben Ali Haggin (December 9, 1822 – September 12, 1914) was an American
attorney, rancher, investor, art collector, and a major owner and breeder in the sport of Thoroughbred horse racing. Haggin made a fortune in the aftermath of the Cal ...
and
Lloyd Tevis
Lloyd Tevis (March 20, 1824 – July 24, 1899) was a banker and capitalist who served as president of Wells Fargo & Company from 1872 to 1892.
Early life
Lloyd Tevis was born in Shelbyville, Kentucky, the son of Samuel and Sarah (née Greathouse) ...
owned this mine and constructed the necessary infrastructure to make it productive, including hoists and stamp mill. The mine was not profitable for its first three years. According to legend, expenses of development substantially drained Hearst's financial resources. As a result of his straitened circumstances, Hearst sold his home and horses, and even dismissed his servants and enrolled his son
William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst Sr. (; April 29, 1863 – August 14, 1951) was an American businessman, newspaper publisher, and politician known for developing the nation's largest newspaper chain and media company, Hearst Communications. His flamboya ...
in public school. Chambers, who had been retained as manager, brought the bonanza ore body into production by the late 1870s. It eventually produced fifty million dollars' worth of silver and lead.
By the time of Hearst's death in 1891, the Ontario mine had paid him more than $12 million in dividends. This was only one of the four big mines he had bought shares in and that were located in the West, including the Ophir on the
Comstock Lode
The Comstock Lode is a lode of silver ore located under the eastern slope of Mount Davidson, a peak in the Virginia Range in Virginia City, Nevada (then western Utah Territory), which was the first major discovery of silver ore in the United ...
, the
Homestake Mine (South Dakota)
The Homestake Mine was a deep underground gold mine (8,000 feet or 2,438 m) located in Lead, South Dakota. Until it closed in 2002 it was the largest and deepest gold mine in North America. The mine produced more than of gold during its lifetime. ...
, and the
Anaconda Copper Mine (Montana)
The Anaconda Copper Mine was a large copper mine in Butte, Montana that closed operations in 1947 and was eventually consumed by the Berkeley Pit, a vast open-pit mine. Originally a silver mine, it was bought for $30,000 in 1881 by an Irish im ...
. The mine also made manager Chambers one of Utah's Bonanza Kings.
The Ontario mine was credited as being more consistent in yielding annual dividends during the late nineteenth century than any other mine in Utah. The Ontario company's mill was also the birthplace of two significant hydrometallurgical processes, the Russell Process and the Cyanide Process. Edward H Russell (Yale 1878) developed his process for working low grade silver ores by a leaching process, 1883–1884, and young Louis Janin (UC Berkeley) experimented with cyanide on the ores, filing a caveat to patent a cyanide process in 1886.
Between 1874 and 1964, the Ontario Mine produced 41,289 ounces of gold, 55,710,608 ounces of silver, 164,231,209 pounds of lead, 210,350,684 pounds of zinc, and 3,911,102 pounds of copper. Primary
ore
Ore is natural rock or sediment that contains one or more valuable minerals, typically containing metals, that can be mined, treated and sold at a profit.Encyclopædia Britannica. "Ore". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 7 April 2 ...
s included
argentiferous
Silver mining is the extraction of silver from minerals, starting with mining. Because silver is often found in intimate combination with other metals, its extraction requires elaborate technologies. In 2008, ca.25,900 metric tons were consumed ...
galena
Galena, also called lead glance, is the natural mineral form of lead(II) sulfide (PbS). It is the most important ore of lead and an important source of silver.
Galena is one of the most abundant and widely distributed sulfide minerals. It cryst ...
,
sphalerite
Sphalerite (sometimes spelled sphaelerite) is a sulfide mineral with the chemical formula . It is the most important ore of zinc. Sphalerite is found in a variety of deposit types, but it is primarily in Sedimentary exhalative deposits, sedimen ...
, and
tetrahedrite
Tetrahedrite is a copper antimony sulfosalt mineral with formula: . It is the antimony endmember of the continuous solid solution series with arsenic-bearing tennantite. Pure endmembers of the series are seldom if ever seen in nature. Of the two, ...
-
tennantite
Tennantite is a copper arsenic sulfosalt mineral with an ideal formula . Due to variable substitution of the copper by iron and zinc the formula is . It is gray-black, steel-gray, iron-gray or black in color. A closely related mineral, tetrahedri ...
with
pyrite
The mineral pyrite (), or iron pyrite, also known as fool's gold, is an iron sulfide with the chemical formula Iron, FeSulfur, S2 (iron (II) disulfide). Pyrite is the most abundant sulfide mineral.
Pyrite's metallic Luster (mineralogy), lust ...
and
quartz
Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical form ...
gangue
In mining, gangue () is the commercially worthless material that surrounds, or is closely mixed with, a wanted mineral in an ore deposit. It is thus distinct from overburden, which is the waste rock or materials overlying an ore or mineral body t ...
.
The Ontario mine reopened as a tourist attraction in 1995, only to close again after a few years.
A Look Back: Ontario Silver Mine in Park City
The Salt Lake Tribune, July 17, 2015.
References
Buildings and structures in Summit County, Utah
Mines in Utah
Hearst family
1872 in Utah Territory
Landmarks in Utah
Silver mines in the United States
Stamp mills
{{Utah-geo-stub