Clark operation. Although he may have been something of a loner, his feelings toward family members were deep and affectionate, generously inducting his brothers into his enterprises as soon as they were of age. Joseph worked in the mining operations, and Ross in banking.
There was never any doubt, however, about which Clark was the boss. Their bank, for example, was not called Clark Brothers Bank.
Nor was it W.A. and J. Ross Clark Bank.
The name was W. A. Clark & Brother, Bankers.
ENLIGHTENING THE WORLD
T HE STREETS OF B UTTE were unpaved and muddy when W.A. brought his banking business there in 1872. The town’s gold rush days had passed. Even if underground veins of silver and copper could be found, it would be hard to make them profitable. The town was four hundred miles from the nearest railroad.
In that depressed environment, W.A. saw the right time for an investment. In 1872, the banker bought four old mining claims of uncertain value. They were called the Original, the Colusa, the Gambetta, and the Mountain Chief. To develop his investments, W.A. didn’t go at the opportunity the same way most men would. He had two obvious options: He could bear all the risk himself, starting immediately to drill into the Butte hill—he knew something about geology and mining, but he was not by nature a gambler. Or he could wait for others to develop mines nearby, letting them chew up their capital and reap the rewards. But W.A. was not much for waiting.
So he created a third option: Recognizing that his single volume of Hitchcock’s
Elements of Geology
was not a sufficient education, he went back to college. Although thirty-three years old and married with two children, the banker took his family east in the winter of 1872–73 to New York, where he studied practical assaying and mineralogy at the School of Mines at Columbia College (now Columbia University). It’s hard to imagine that any student ever got a better return on his investment of a single year’s tuition.
W.A. learned how to field-test metal-bearing quartz with a blowpipe. He learned how to roast and smelt and refine the ore to remove the precious metals. His ore samples from his four claims in Butte tested out to be promising, particularly in copper. Ore that yielded 5 percent copper would have been rich enough to be worth mining, but the Butte samples were testing closer to 50 percent.
• • •
Copper was about to become the essential conductor of modern life. In 1858, the warships HMS
Agamemnon
and USS
Niagara
had laid the first transatlantic telegraph cable. In 1876, Bell would patent his telephone. By 1879, Edison would create the first commercially practical incandescent lightbulb. And in 1882, Eduard Rubin of Switzerland would invent the full metal jacket bullet, increasing the distance one could stand from a man while killing him.
All of these advances in communication, everyday life, and warfare would depend on W. A. Clark’s copper.
Back in Butte in 1873, W.A. began to explore the Colusa and Gambetta claims, shipping the copper ore by wagon to the nearest point on the Union Pacific at Corinne, Utah Territory. Transportation costs ate up most of the mining profits, so Clark built a smelter to use heat and chemicals to extract the copper locally, increasing his profits considerably. When the Utah & Northern Railway arrived in 1881, connecting Butte to the Union Pacific and valuable markets in the East and West, he was there to meet the first train.
W.A. had an advantage over other entrepreneurs. As a shrewd banker, he had the opportunity to see which mining properties were profitable and which were undercapitalized. And if loans weren’t paid, he could foreclose. Although W.A. was not the one who discovered silver in Butte, he found a way into the business. In 1874, a man named Bill Farlin struck silver, and with a loan from Clark’s First National Bank of Deer Lodge, he built a stamp mill to process the quartz.When Farlin got
There was never any doubt, however, about which Clark was the boss. Their bank, for example, was not called Clark Brothers Bank.
Nor was it W.A. and J. Ross Clark Bank.
The name was W. A. Clark & Brother, Bankers.
ENLIGHTENING THE WORLD
T HE STREETS OF B UTTE were unpaved and muddy when W.A. brought his banking business there in 1872. The town’s gold rush days had passed. Even if underground veins of silver and copper could be found, it would be hard to make them profitable. The town was four hundred miles from the nearest railroad.
In that depressed environment, W.A. saw the right time for an investment. In 1872, the banker bought four old mining claims of uncertain value. They were called the Original, the Colusa, the Gambetta, and the Mountain Chief. To develop his investments, W.A. didn’t go at the opportunity the same way most men would. He had two obvious options: He could bear all the risk himself, starting immediately to drill into the Butte hill—he knew something about geology and mining, but he was not by nature a gambler. Or he could wait for others to develop mines nearby, letting them chew up their capital and reap the rewards. But W.A. was not much for waiting.
So he created a third option: Recognizing that his single volume of Hitchcock’s
Elements of Geology
was not a sufficient education, he went back to college. Although thirty-three years old and married with two children, the banker took his family east in the winter of 1872–73 to New York, where he studied practical assaying and mineralogy at the School of Mines at Columbia College (now Columbia University). It’s hard to imagine that any student ever got a better return on his investment of a single year’s tuition.
W.A. learned how to field-test metal-bearing quartz with a blowpipe. He learned how to roast and smelt and refine the ore to remove the precious metals. His ore samples from his four claims in Butte tested out to be promising, particularly in copper. Ore that yielded 5 percent copper would have been rich enough to be worth mining, but the Butte samples were testing closer to 50 percent.
• • •
Copper was about to become the essential conductor of modern life. In 1858, the warships HMS
Agamemnon
and USS
Niagara
had laid the first transatlantic telegraph cable. In 1876, Bell would patent his telephone. By 1879, Edison would create the first commercially practical incandescent lightbulb. And in 1882, Eduard Rubin of Switzerland would invent the full metal jacket bullet, increasing the distance one could stand from a man while killing him.
All of these advances in communication, everyday life, and warfare would depend on W. A. Clark’s copper.
Back in Butte in 1873, W.A. began to explore the Colusa and Gambetta claims, shipping the copper ore by wagon to the nearest point on the Union Pacific at Corinne, Utah Territory. Transportation costs ate up most of the mining profits, so Clark built a smelter to use heat and chemicals to extract the copper locally, increasing his profits considerably. When the Utah & Northern Railway arrived in 1881, connecting Butte to the Union Pacific and valuable markets in the East and West, he was there to meet the first train.
W.A. had an advantage over other entrepreneurs. As a shrewd banker, he had the opportunity to see which mining properties were profitable and which were undercapitalized. And if loans weren’t paid, he could foreclose. Although W.A. was not the one who discovered silver in Butte, he found a way into the business. In 1874, a man named Bill Farlin struck silver, and with a loan from Clark’s First National Bank of Deer Lodge, he built a stamp mill to process the quartz.When Farlin got
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