The Society of Mining Engineers (SME) held their annual conference in Salt Lake City from February 22-25 this year. Although mostly technical, there is a growing Mining History group within SME organized by former SME president George Luxbacher.
This year there were two Mining History sessions with 12 presentations. The most notable was a paper on gilded age entrepreneur, Joseph De Lamar by Tim Arnold. De Lamar was born in Holland, went to sea as a young man, owned a marine salvage company in Vineyard Haven, MA before heading to Leadville in 1879. He made good money there, mostly as an investor before heading west to the Idaho silver district where he founded a town and made more money. He later was a successful investor in Cripple Creek, Nevada gold, Utah gold and copper, and Sudbury and Timmins, ON. His estate was over 20 million when he died in 1918.
There were well over 100 attendees at the main sessions.
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