Southwestern New Mexico Mining Towns
By Jane Bardal
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About this ebook
Jane Bardal
Jane Bardal's previous publications include "Southwestern New Mexico Mining Towns" and "Oral Histories from the Grants Uranium District," in the Mining History Journal. She teaches psychology at Central New Mexico Community College.
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Southwestern New Mexico Mining Towns - Jane Bardal
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INTRODUCTION
People love to hear stories of the exploration and discovery of mineral wealth in the American West. Paige Christiansen, in The Story of Mining in New Mexico, describes the rushes that occurred to various parts of the state in response to the latest gold or silver strike. He ends his story around 1900 and briefly mentions that New Mexico then entered the age of industrial mining, where legend, myth, and romance have no role.
This era of industrial mining may not be viewed as romantic, but it is important to understand this part of our nation’s heritage. In contrast to the popular image of the lone prospector striking it rich, most miners worked for low wages as employees of large corporations. Instead of the familiar stories of Wild West towns filled with gamblers and prostitutes, most towns in the early 1900s emphasized their law-abiding characters. While many miners were single men, many others had families. Although the hastily constructed mining towns may be considered romantic in modern lore, by the early 1900s progressive reformers regarded a tent or shack as substandard housing.
Miners faced dangerous conditions on the job, and many died from industrial accidents. Between 1911 and 1920, an average of 787 miners died on the job each year in the United States. Employers instituted a dual-wage system that discriminated against Mexicans and Mexican Americans, who were relegated to the lowest paying and most dangerous jobs. Workers tried to form unions in order to gain higher pay and safer working conditions, but usually lost battles against management. Corporations tried to head off unionization by providing better housing and other amenities in company towns. Conditions for miners improved with New Deal legislation. Workers were better able to organize and bargain for higher wages. Discrimination lessened as workers won battles in the 1950s.
Advances in mining technology made development of mines in the West possible, according to Rodman Paul’s Mining Frontiers of the Far West: 1848–1880. These advances continued into the 1900s. In Mogollon, early milling efforts were a failure, but newer cyanide methods made mining gold and silver profitable. Advances in the use of steam shovels and open-pit mining methods allowed John Sully to develop the vast copper deposits at Santa Rita. Flotation methods were developed around 1916, which made it possible to profitably concentrate ore from low-grade copper deposits at Santa Rita and Tyrone.
Paul also describes how the development of mining in Colorado required the investment of eastern capital, with the profits going to those corporations. This was also true of New Mexico, where a large amount of capital was necessary to develop mining operations. Investors risked money in ventures whose outcome was far from certain. Eastern capitalists invested in the mines at Santa Rita and Mogollon, and Phelps Dodge Corporation developed the mines at Tyrone.
The Chino Mine was a large-scale industrial mine that needed large amounts of capital to operate. In the years from 1911 to 1922, the company made over $42 million in profit, with nearly $30 million in disbursements to stockholders. Mexicans were usually employed as common laborers and were paid $2.10 per shift in 1923. More skilled work went to Anglos. Machine men were paid $3.25 per shift, shovel engineers $6.50, and churn drillers $4.75.
Mining advanced settlement into remote areas throughout the West, impacting the Native Americans in those areas. This was also true in southwestern New Mexico. Don Francisco Manuel Elguea mined at Santa Rita as early as 1804. Gold drew men to Pinos Altos in 1860, and Fort Bayard was established to protect the miners and settlers from the Apaches. Sgt. James Cooney discovered silver in the Mogollon area while he was on a scouting mission from Fort Bayard, but the Apaches fiercely fought the encroaching Anglos before being subdued.
The mining frontier advanced in a haphazard fashion. While Frederick Jackson Turner, in The Significance of the Frontier in American History, conceptualizes a western march across the continent, Rodman Paul emphasizes the movement of miners from both the West and the East. The ferocity of the Apaches kept miners out of many parts of southwest New Mexico until the 1880s, and by this time, the mining frontier was closing in many other states.
Americans idealize the figures of the Old West—the prospector, the miner, and the cowboy, and the heritage of opportunity and hard work. But we seem to skip over the time period of the early 1900s, when miners worked for low wages and eastern corporations developed colonial relationships with the western states. It is important to remember that miners fought for improved pay and safer working conditions. Corporations developed the mines, not the individual with his pick and shovel. Copper has many industrial uses that made life better for all Americans, such as the electric wiring in homes and automobiles.
Postcards with pictures came into existence in 1901 with a change in postal regulations. A mining camp of any size at all would have a post office, and people wrote each other more frequently than today. People wanted to show off signs of development and progress in their towns, such as tree-lined main streets and substantial buildings. They were also proud of industrial developments, such as the mining operations shown in this book. Postcards showed the day-today operations, such as steam shovels, trains, freight teams, and concentration mills.
The focus of this book is on mining between 1908 and the 1920s, because most of the postcards in this book were printed by local publishers during that time. In contrast to these early postcards, today there are few postcards of mining operations. The most common mining postcard currently found in southwestern New Mexico is an overview of the Chino Mine, but few show modern mining operations. These types of postcards were last printed in the 1960s.
This book will tell stories of people and mining-related towns in southwestern New Mexico in the early 1900s through the postcard images of that era. Silver City diversified its economy early on, so it avoided the reduction in size