Samuel Newhouse

(1853-1930)

2011 Inductee from Mining's Past

Samuel Newhouse was born in New York City and grew up in Pennsylvania, where he studied law. In 1879, he moved to Colorado. In Leadville, he was in the freighting and hotel business. He acquired mining property at Ouray, sold later for several million dollars. He moved to Denver where he operated as a speculator and promoter, gaining contacts in the East and in Europe.

In 1896, Newhouse moved to Utah, where he and Thomas Weir, a respected mine operator from Leadville and Butte, acquired properties at Bingham Canyon. One, the Highland Boy, was promoted as a gold mine, but on the discovery of high grade copper, was sold to The Standard Oil Company in 1899 for twelve million-dollars.

In 1898, Newhouse and Weir purchased additional mining property at Bingham Canyon. Development proved a large tonnage of lower grade disseminated copper. This became the Boston Consolidated Copper Co. In 1905, a pilot plant was built for the Bingham Canyon ores, followed by the construction of a 3000 ton per day concentrator at Garfield, where water was abundant. Assisted by Louis Cates, Boston Consolidated became an early successful porphyry copper producer. It was the first porphyry copper to use steam shovels (1906), beating Jackling's Utah Copper by two months.  

Boston Consolidated's property occupied the top of the Bingham Canyon deposit, and it was vital the properties be consolidated, or Utah Copper would have had to mine underground. The late 1909 merger of Boston Consolidated into Utah Copper marked the end of Newhouse's mining ventures. He then turned his interests to real estate development, building Utah's first high rises, as well as the Flatiron building in New York City. He also donated land for the Salt Lake Stock Exchange.

It was Newhouse who gave publicity to Utah copper mining, enlisted the support of Eastern and British capital and was among the first to have a vision of successful open-pit mining. By 1903, he was known as "the father of copper mining in Utah", a title later eclipsed by Jackling after the merger of Utah Copper and Boston Consolidated.

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