Rio Tinto was a relatively "new" mining camp, and its aim was getting copper out of the ground.
HISTORY IS GIVEN OF RIO TINTO DISCOVERY
This following is some of the early history of the Rio Tinto copper mine at Mountain City, Elko county, as told by S. F. Hunt, the discoverer. who is spending a few days in Reno attending to tax matters and visiting with old friends.
"I went into the district in 1919," he said, "The ground where the mine was finally developed had been previously located as 'sheep claims.' Prospectors had the habit of locating it for the water, which flows across it, as placers, in the hope of selling the ground to sheep men, where they could water their flocks. Some of them did a little digging but never found any gold. It was abandoned time and again, the only locator making a sale exchanging it for two wild mustangs 'fuzzy tails' they are called. When I arrived on the scene the ground was open and I was attracted by a wide iron gossan [intensely oxidized, weathered or decomposed rock, usually the upper and exposed part of an ore deposit or mineral vein], which, my geologic studies led me to believe, covered a copper deposit. It was barren on top and I didn't even see a trace of copper until a depth of 227 feet was reached, where the sulphide zone was encountered. For years I toiled along with scant money and facilities, with what help my friends could give me and money from the sale of stock in a company we organized. But we were rewarded, for the ore was rich. We continued the shaft to the 250-foot level, cross-cutted the ledge, a distance of seventy feet and then drifting seventy-five feet each way on the vein. While doing this work we extracted five hundred tons of ore that averaged 40.2 per cent copper at the smelter, and put in sight a hundred thousand tons of ore that averaged the same grade. There was not one bucket of waste in crosscut or drifts. Then we sold out to the International Smelter, a subsidiary of Anaconda, and that company sank to the six hundred-foot level, with a five-compartment shaft and is said to have ore to the bottom, although It is not shipping. This sale was made February 26, 1932, and I went straight from there to a Salt Lake hospital and remained there for a long time, getting patched up."
Mr. Hunt is a mining engineer as well as a geologist, and has mined in most of the camps of Nevada and Utah, and from Alaska to Mexico. For a long time before it was sold he was one of the owners of the Tybo mine, sixty miles east of Tonopah, and is still a stockholder in the Treadwell - Yukon company, which purchased it a few years ago.
-Reno Evening Gazette, March 2, 1935
Stock in the Rio Tinto mine was sold before any rock was even moved, and the copper was right where Hunt said it would be. Activity here created a rush which energized nearby Mountain City and created the town of Patsville, a mile to the east. In the summer of 1932, Anaconda Copper bought the mine, and the town grew, with many houses and apartments being constructed, along with schools and theaters. In September of 1936, the newly constructed mill started operating. By 1947, though, the mill had shut and the town began to empty, with the post office finally closing in 1948
Mining got serious when Anaconda moved in.
ANACONDA COPPER MAKES A THIRD MINING VENTURE IN NEVADA IN RIO TINTO MINE
The Anaconda Copper Company, as announced in the Journal Friday morning, has taken over the Rio Tinto mine near Mountain City, north from Elko near the Idaho border. R. C. Dugdale has been retained as superintendent. The property was located by S. F. Hunt some 12 years ago. He has brought the property to its present stage of development under the most adverse circumstances. First, he had to overcome the prejudice of many as against a copper property and the great amount of dead work required to get under what Germans terms the "iron hat," the iron gossan that caps the copper deposit.
-Nevada State Journal, July 18, 1932
Dwelling places, support buildings and mills were built.
BIG COPPER MINE IN ELKO COUNTY IS ATTRACTING ATTENTION
Shares in Demand at Around Six Dollars ; 300-ton Mill Is Authorized
100 Tons Being Shipped Daily ; Average Said to Be 30 Per Cent
Interest is growing in the Rio Tinto mine, owned by the Mountain
City Copper Company, as shown by the constantly increasing price of the stock. It has been advancing steadily recently and is now quoted around six dollars a share.
PURCHASED BY ANACONDA
The present company purchased the controlling shares of the Rio Tinto Corporation for twenty-five cents a share, it is claimed, early in 1933 and later in the year it advanced to forty-five cents. In 1934 sales were made around a dollar, and up to two dollars or more last year. The recent advance has been rapid. After gaining control and forming the Mountain City Copper Company, a subsidiary of Anaconda, operations were commenced under the management of J. 0. Elton, of Salt Lake, and a three-compartment shaft was sunk to the five hundred foot level in an immense body of ore of high copper content, and a winze was sunk to the six hundred.
VEIN OF GREAT SIZE
A town was built for the employes and the work of blocking out ore has since been pursued. It is said that the ore in places has a width of eighty feet between walls and that it has been opened for a distance of 4500 feet. There are said to be half a million tons of ore in sight that will average probably twenty per cent copper and a number of car-loads shipped in the early days of development averaged better than thirty per cent. The company is at present shipping an average of a hundred tons a day of about thirty per cent ore to Utah for treatment. The high road between Elko and the mine was used until recently and when storms made this impossible the route was changed, going by way of Mountain Home, Idaho. When and if the Owyhee canyon road is constructed next year, shipments will go to market again through Nevada territory.
300 TON MILL AUTHORIZED
A three hundred ton a day mill has been authorized, it is reported, and it is expected that it will be in operation by the latter part of June. S. F. Hunt was the discoverer of the mine and, backed by a group of Salt Lake men, he formed the Rio Tinto company. There was no ore in sight when he started work in 1919, not even a stain of copper, but he had faith in the formations present and continued until the shaft broke through the country rock into the enormous ore body in November, 1931. Hunt, who is a graduate mining engineer, had been connected with al number of prominent properties, before coming to Nevada, and for a long time was associated with Col. E. A. Wall, of Utah Copper fame, in Utah, and later with the Tybo mine near Tonopah, now owned by the Treadwell-Yukon.
HUNT MAKES GIFT
He has evidenced his gratitude to the state by presenting the University of Nevada with ten thousand shares of the stock, now worth around $60,000, together with several lesser gifts, and has retained enough of the stock to make him a wealthy man, his friends say. Mountain City is in the northwestern part of Elko county.
-Reno Evening Gazette, January 15, 1936
Here comes the mill!
ELKO, Feb. 22.—(Special)—The erection of a three hundred ton mill at the Rio Tinto copper mine of the Mountain City Copper Company, was announced by H. A. Geisendorfer, superintendent of mines for the International Smelting Company, Wednesday. He made the statement before members of the Elko Rotary club of this city.
600 TONS EVENTUALLY
He declared that work on the mill will begin in March and as soon as the first section is completed a second unit will be started, giving a capacity of six hundred tons daily. Supplies and materials and machinery for this mill will be shipped in as fast as possible, he said, and a great portion of these supplies will be shipped to Elko to be trucked to Mountain City, if the roads will allow it. Mr. Geisendorfer suggested that as soon as possible work should be started from this end to cut through the heavy snow drifts which still block the road to the camp. He declared that he could see no reason why the work could not be done and it would mean that the bulk of the traffic and heavy ore shipments would come out this way.
WILL EMPLOY 200 MEN
He announced that the company has erected twenty new houses for the increased force at the mine, during the winter months and there will be a total of two hundred men at work when spring opens.
-Reno Evening Gazette, February 22, 1936
In August of 1936, six men were killed in the mine. Henry A. Lang, in his student paper
Starting at The Bottom At Nevada's Rio Tinto, where he documents his employment here to get mining experience. describes the incident:
The miner that I had worked with on my last shift, Frank Greevy, offered to drive me to Elko, Nevada, and with a "so long, High-grader" in my ears, I left the Rio Tinto mine. I regretted leaving the boys that I had worked with, for they were all, without exception a fine lot. To one young fellow, about my own age, I gave my working clothes, for he needed them. Shortly afterwards I read with dismay of six accidental deaths at the Mountain City mine. The story is that out of curiosity, two new men descended into a gaseous winze. In a hurried attempt to rescue the two men, four other brave men, whom I knew and worked with, also met their inevitable fate. As one of the four was the receiver of my working clothes my shirt was probably on this boy's back. With all reverence I thanks God it was not my back that shirt was on that unfortunate day.
-Henry Lang, Starting at The Bottom At Nevada's Rio Tinto, 1936
PROBE IS MADE IN MINE DEATHS
Coroner Plans For Inquiry As Bodies Of Six Victims Are Claimed
ELKO (Nev.), Aug. 15. Bereaved relatives claimed their dead today as a coroner's Jury sought to fix the responsibility for the death of six men in a gas-filled shaft of a mine at Mountain City, a mushrooming northern Nevada copper camp. The last two bodies of six men who perished Thursday were recovered last night by a helmeted rescue crew that invaded the suffocating, unworked 600-foot level of the Mountain City Copper Company's mine. An inquest was called , for today.
Difficulty Was Encountered.
The other bodies were taken out early yesterday, but those of Albert Abel, 41, and Frank Tiexera, 44, of Mountain City, had to be packed up a series of ladders to a higher level instead of being lifted in the hoist. Arrangements were made today to ship the body of Lawrence Willis, 32, to his home in Emmett, Idaho. Relatives said they would take the body of June Barr, 45, of Mammoth, Ore.. to his old home near American Falls, Idaho, for interment. Mrs. Abel said her husband would be buried in California, and the parents of John Sheppard, 31. notified the authorities they would come from Wellington, Colo., to claim their son's body. William Burns, 48, with no known relatives, probably will be buried at Elko, and the relatives of Tiexera planned for a funeral at Tuscarora, Nev.
Five Killed In Rescue.
James 0. Elton, the president of the operating company, said gas had accumulated in the unused 600-foot level, apparently from open fissures, and that Willis had been overcome when he went down to inspect a pump. The others, he said, died when they attempted Willis' rescue. None of them used the masks they carried, he said. The coroner's verdict was expected late today.
-Sacramento Bee, August 15, 1936
There was an attempt to unionize, but it didn't begin well for the union.
ORGANIZER BEATEN BY RIO TINTO MINERS, HE REPORTS
ELKO. Nev., May 24.—(Special)- H. I. Mills. who attempted to organize the Rio Tinto miners in Mountain City yesterday, was beaten up twice, he told District Attorney Douglas A. Castle here today in seeking action against the men who assaulted him. According to Mills' story, he was accosted by the men on the streets of Mountain City and they told him to leave. Refusing to comply with their demands, he said he was "worked over." When he started for Elko in his car another machine drove in front of him and again he was beaten. Castle said efforts will be made to apprehend the men and place charges against them.
-Reno Evening Gazette, May 24, 1937
Isolation of Nevada's mining camps was sometimes a problem, but nothing the U.S. Army couldn't solve.
Army Bomber Saves Life Of Ailing Nevada Boy
An army bomber's mercy flight from Salt Lake City was credited Friday with saving the life of a boy who lay critically ill in the copper mining camp of Rio Tinto in semi-isolated northern Nevada. Victim of a streptococcic infection, 5-year-old son of H. S. Cragun, storekeeper for the Mountain City Copper company at Rio Tinto, was reported "much improved" late Friday after sulfanilamide was rushed by plane and automobile to his bedside. A call for the drug came from Dr. T. R. Seager of Rio Tinto at 6:30 a. m., in a telephone message to Clyde W. Bone, manager of the Prescription pharmacy at 351 South Main street. Fifteen minutes earlier a west-bound passenger airliner had left Salt Lake City, and the next means of transportation was a passenger bus, leaving at 1:30 p. m. Mr. Bone then contacted Lieutenant Colonel Earl H. De Ford of the Ninth bombardment squadron. A few minutes later a two-motored bomber, in charge of Lieutenants D. F. Sharp and S. M. H. Walker, was en route to Elko, Nev., with the small vial of sulfanilamide aboard. The plane arrived in Elko at 10:18 a. m., one hour and 22 minutes after its departure. In Elko the drug was transferred to Dr. Seager's waiting automobile, and an hour and a half later it was in Rio Tinto.
-Salt Lake Tribune, March 22, 1941
One wonders if it was miners or someone hired by the company . At any rate, the union prevailed.
RIO TINTO MINERS GO ON STRIKE TODAY
MOUNTAIN CITY, Nev., Nov. 3 (Special) —Employes of the Rio Tinto copper mine went out on strike here this morning after attempts to settle the differences be-tween union representatives and copper company representatives failed at a Salt Lake City conference. The miners are seeking a wage increase of seventy-five cents per day, a union check-off system and vacations with pay. The miners are members of the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers union of the CIO. The Rio Tinto company is a subsidiary of the Anaconda Copper Mining company. Federal conciliators have been present at the Utah conferences with Ralph H. Rasmussen, representing the union, and J. 0. Elton, general manager of the copper company.
-Reno Evening Gazette, November 3, 1941
Area roads were always an issue, and Nevada wanted to prevent ore being shipped through Idaho, which apparently had the foresight to improve it's roads into the area before Nevada did.
TO BEGIN HAULING ORE TO ELKO IN NEAR FUTURE
ELKO, Nev., May 26. — (Special) —Hauling of ore from Mountain City to Elko will be resumed as soon as the roads will hold the loads, Al Lofquist, superintendent of the mine, declared Saturday. Mr. Lofquist came over the road to Elko from Mountain City Friday and found it in excellent condition. I He is anxious to see the work commenced on the Owyhee canyon road and believes that upon its completion the road from here to the Rio Tinto mine can be kept open from Mountain City to Elko most of the year. Four hundred men are employed at the Rio Tinto at the present time, he says. The shaft is down to what is known as the seven hundred-foot level. Some trucks hauling ore at the present time are thirty-two feet long, he said, and he expressed doubt that they could be manipulated on the curves in the vicinity of Allegheny creek, near Mountain City, unless some of them were widened. Lofquist declared that Governor Clark of Idaho. Public Works Commissioner Ira Taylor and Highway Director Joe Stemmer were in Mountain City on the 19th and at that time they indicated that the Idaho road to Mountain City would be widened and oiled in the near future. He said the men are particularly interested in the business which has been generated in Mountain City as a boost to Idaho businessmen, who have profited as a result of the fact that the state pushed a serviceable road into the copper district at an early date. The difference in the mileage of the roads is in Nevada's favor at the present time and will be aided when the canyon road work is completed. However, Lofquist is of the opinion that the thing which is more important is the building of a road, which will accommodate the traffic and which can be kept open during the winter months. Members of the Elko chamber of commerce road committee are anxious to see the canyon road work completed this year. They expect to be able to meet with Robert Allen, state highway engineer, here Tuesday, to talk the matter over with him.
-Reno Evening Gazette, May 26, 1937
Well, we knew there wasn't an endless supply of copper here, didn't we? Eventually the ore ran out and Rio Tinto collapsed.
Mountain City Report Is Not Encouraging
Small Earnings Were Indicated For Past Year
The Mountain, City Copper co. at Rio Tinto, subsidiary of the International Smelting & Refining co., reports 1946 net income of $1305, including premiums, before depletion, as compared with net loss of $14,388 before depletion in 1945. The report states that mine reserves now amount to less than a year's operation at the present rate of exhaustion. Exploratory work is being continued in an attempt to develop additional commercial ore, although results during 1946 have been discouraging. Production and development were on a curtailed basis during the year as a result of the continuing manpower shortage."
-Reno Evening Gazette, April 12, 1947
Cave-ins, falls, and getting caught in machinery are not all miners had to worry about at Rio Tinto.
THREE TINTO MINE WORKERS ARE KIDNAPED
Desperado Escapes After Raiding Saloon
MOUNTAIN HOME, Idaho, Aug. 18, (UP)—Three young workers of the Rio Tinto mine in Mountain City, Nev., were kidnaped by a desperado who forced them to drive here at gunpoint, Elmore county Deputy Sheriff Chris Hendricks reported tonight. Hendricks said the kidnaping occurred after the gunman had burglarized the Rio Tinto club in Mountain City. He escaped with two revolvers and a rifle. The three men were identified by Hendricks as Earl Busby, Dale Inbody and Ken Turner, all of Mountain City, Nev. He said they were roused from their hunks by the as yet unidentified desperado who then forced them into Turner's car and made them drive at gun point to a point near here. Hendricks said that Bushy had been robbed of a $90 wristwatch. After forcing the three men out of the car, which belonged to Turner, eight miles west of here, the gunman could have proceeded in any of four directions. Hendricks, however, believed that the desperado had taken the highway either to Boise or Twin Falls, Idaho, the nearest large centers of population.
-Nevada State Journal, August 20, 1947
We knew it had to happen.
Mountain City Mine Closing Is Announced
Efforts Fail To Locate New Bodies of Ore
Mountain City Copper co. workings at Rio Tinto, in northern Nevada, are being closed down immediately, it was announced at Salt Lake City today by Frank A. Wardlaw, president of the company. Cessation of operations was voted by the board of directors of the company. Mr. Wardlaw said the board voted the action "because exhaustive efforts to find new ore bodies have been unsuccessful and further operations cannot be carried on at a profit." Sixty men employed at the once-rich workings will be released. "A stockholders' meeting will be held soon to discuss disposition of the mine property and equipment," the president said. He added that extension of the federal premium plan would not have enabled the Mountain City mine to continue in operation.
-Reno Evening Gazette, September 4, 1947
Now comes the sale of equipment and removal of buildings.
$97,000 Offer Is Refused by Mountain City
SALT LAKE CITY, April 5. (AP) Tom Lyon, vice president of the Mountain City Copper Mines at Rio Tinto, Nev., turned down today an offer of $97,000 for the company's property in northern Nevada. The bid was made by the Cates Equipment co. of Salt Lake City at a public auction conducted by Lyon in the offices of the International Smelting and Refining co., Mountain City's majority stockholder. Cates entered the first bid, $50,000, then topped all other offers until the $97,000 level was reached. There were no further bids, and Lyon said he would not accept that one. He did not indicate what would be an acceptable offer. The company offered to sell its entire holdings, including mines, claims, a 450-ton flotation mill and buildings.
-Reno Evening Gazette, April 5, 1948
Mine Closeout SALE
Four 8-unit apartment houses, three rooms each unit, complete with plumbing and electrical wiring. Priced at $2300, less than $100 per room. Units can readily be moved. See this excellent money maker and other commercial type bldgs, mining and office I equipment located 85 miles north of Elko at the Mountain City Copper Co. property, Rio Tinto, Nevada. Or write for further details to
Cate Equipment Co. MOUNTAIN CITY, NEV.
-Reno Evening Gazette, June 25, 1948
FOR SALE... "AS IS WHERE IS"...
4- 8 Unit Apartments
3 - 4 Unit Apartments
8 - Various sized buildings
Mine cars, muckers, assorted mining equipment, electrical supplies and equipment
Tel. Riot Tinto 1
Write or come and see us
CATE EQUIPMENT COMPANY
Sales Representative for
Mountain City Copper Company
Rio Tinto, Nevada
-Reno Evening Gazette, July 21, 1948
But wait! I think I see a little bit of copper left in those tailings!
Mountain City Rio Tinto copper mine worked again
ELKO — The Rio Tinto copper mine near Mountain City, one of the richest of its kind in the nation's history, is being worked again. The joint effort to recover additional copper from the mine is being made by Cliff's Copper Company, a subsidiary of Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company and E. I. Dupont de Nemours and Co. The announcement came from H. Stuart Harrison, president of the iron company. Dupont will provide personnel to participate in the chemical processing activities and Cliff's will manage the operation as its part in the venture. The report says that the mine has 50 million pounds of copper which can be recovered. The production is expected to reach 400,000 pounds of copper per month at the end of 1972. It has taken since February to get the joint venture going.
-Reno Evening Gazette, December 9, 1970
Easy to get to, and lots of standing buildings. Impressive school. Lots of trash inside the buildings, and I would imagine some of the "stuff" there is from when they came back and tried to work the copper tailings again in the 1970's. They are remediating the area, as the Rio Tinto mining operations made quite a mess.