Michael Hodder and Q. David Bowers
The Old Jordan Mine
In 1877, after he had paid the final installment and had acquired ownership of the Nez Perces Chief and No-ron-Don't mines, Liberty added several smaller, adjacent claims to his properties and renamed the venture the Old Telegraph Mine. At the same time, he acquired the Old Jordan Mine, Utah's first silver mine, and formed a company he named the Jordan Mining and Smelting Company, to own and operate the two groups.
The Old Jordan, operated by General Connor's Jordan Silver Mining Company, was sold in 1870 to three owners, who erected a smelter at the site to process the lead and silver ores located there. Three years later the mine was sold again. The new owners built a wooden flume 12 miles long to bring water to the smelt-er, at a cost of $120,000, but no sooner was the flume in place than silver was demonetized by the Coinage Act of 1873, and the profitability of mining silver disappeared. The owners struggled on until 1875, when they sold out to the Galena Silver Mining Company, which took over operations and built a large, five-stack smelter on the Jordan River. In 1877 Liberty's Jordan Mining and Smelting Company purchased the property. Unlike his predecessors, who had concentrated their efforts on finding and refining the silver content of the galena ore, Liberty focused his efforts on the more plentiful, if less valuable, lead ore in the galena bodies. This change can certainly be ascribed to Liberty's study of metallurgy and his practical experience in the silver fields. Passage of the Bland-Allison Act in 1878 boosted silver prices, making silver mining very profitable once again, and Liberty's mines began producing silver ore with renewed effort.
The minesite housing developed for the Old Jordan Mine was located in the left fork of Bingham Canyon and was reached by a narrow, winding dirt road that climbed steeply up to the camp. A livery stable at the foot of the track provided animals for transportation. At the mine site were located an office building for the superintendent and his staff, a cottage for the owner, staff housing, a clubhouse for the miners as well as barracks housing for them, a one-room schoolhouse for the employees' children (this was run by one teacher), and an assay office. The cookhouse was operated by a Chinese employee.
A three-mile long horse-drawn tramway carried ore from the mine to the railhead. Empty ore cars were drawn by horses up the tramway to the mine site, where they were loaded. After loading, the horses were turned loose to make their way back to the railhead; the loaded cars were set rolling down the steep, narrow gauge track, with a brakeman at the end of the string of cars, who kept their downhill speed under control. When Albert Holden took control of the mine this primitive system was replaced by an aerial tramway of ore buckets suspended on wires, the whole contraption supported by wooden towers at 100-foot intervals. The ore received at the railhead was carried by train to Holden's smelter complex at Midvale where the ores were separated and concentrated for shipment to refineries elsewhere.
Liberty maintained a solidly built Victorian-style home in Salt Lake City, on the southeast corner of South Temple and East Fifth Streets. South Temple Street later became Salt Lake City's "millionaire's row:' where the wealthy and fashionable lived. He lived there, while he was not at his mine sites, from 1879 until he left Utah in 1885. On leaving, he sold the house to John Dooly, architect of the famous "Dooly Block" in Salt Lake City, where Liberty's son Albert later maintained his own offices. Much of Liberty's time was spent at the mine head in Bingham Canyon where he personally oversaw operations.
In 1879 Liberty sold the Jordan Mining and Smelting Company to the Jordan Mining and Milling Company, but the change was only one of name as he controlled the new company throughownership of its stock. The change served to protect him from possible future claims against his interests resulting from the suit he had just settled. He also realized a profit from the paper sale. For the next 10 years Liberty's workers in mines extracted the gold, silver, and lead ores found in the Jordan claims.
Passage of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act in 1890 was a boon to the western silver interests who had lobbied for its enactment, since it committed the secretary of the Treasury to purchase 4.5 million ounces of silver monthly at the prevailing market price. Liberty responded by consolidating all his interests, to streamline production and hold costs down as much as possible. Despite the profitability of silver, however, the Old Jordan was primarily a lead producer. Production figures for this early period of Utah's mining history were not preserved, so we do not know exactly how much ore was smelted in Liberty's active days. By 1895-1896 Liberty had sold his mining interests to his son. Liberty had made his fortune by then and Albert had yet to make his. There was an unfavorable economic climate partly as a result of the depression following the repeal of the Sherman Act and the ensuing Panic of 1893. Liberty believed if anyone could profit from the mines, despite the poor economic conditions, his son could. Liberty told a friend in 1894 that the Old Jordan was losing $15,000 each month, which suggests the degree to which the Panic affected Utah's mining industry. But, as the friend had come asking for an increase to the operating budget of another of Liberty's ventures, the Plain Dealer newspaper, we can assume that the figure may have been inflated. In any event, profitability soon returned to the mines, if indeed it was ever absent.
We do have figures for a few years, taken from The Economic Geology of the Bingham Mining District (United States Geological Service, 1905). While these totals apply to years following the transfer of ownership to his son, and have been evaluated using 1900 market values, they at least suggest the size and profitability of Liberty's mining ventures. For example, in 1896 the Jordan Mining and Milling Company shipped 6,000 tons of lead, at the 1900 market price of 4.4 cents per pound worth $528,000. Production the following year jumped nearly sevenfold, with 39,000 tons of lead shipped worth $3,432,000 in 1900 prices. These figures are only for the lead ore extracted and smelted. Operating costs are unknown, so total profitability cannot be determined. Albert Holden told the author of the above referenced study that between 1899 and 1900 total shipments of all types of ores from the Old Jordan amounted to $12 million. In the same communication he noted that the Old Telegraph, which had been reacquired in 1899, shipped a total of $16 million worth of ores in the same period. More accurate figures for the Holden mining empire are available from 1899 to 1913, following the consolidation of all the mining interests under Albert's holding company. The figures suggest, however, that Liberty's Old Telegraph and Old Jordan mines were far from lackluster operations. Albert Holden estimated in 1900 that his father's properties had produced a total of $16 million worth of ores during Liberty's tenure, 1876-1895.
The Deseret News of March 1, 1879 reported that Liberty Holden made the first telephone call in the Territory of Utah, from his Salt Lake City home to Fort Douglas. The paper called the telephone "Bell's talking instrument: and noted that the quality of the transmission was "astonishing:' saying that the ticking of a watch sounded as loud as the ticking of a large clock Liberty's and the army's telephones were the first in Utah.