Tonopah Mining Company Records (MS-00752)

The Tonopah Mining Company was incorporated on July 12, 1901 in Delaware by a group of Pennsylvania businessmen headed by J. H. Whiteman, who bought six claims covering 160 acres from Jim Butler, who had first discovered silver in Tonopah, Nevada in 1900. The company made more than $48 million between 1902 and 1948, and between 1901 and 1910 the company accounted for over sixty percent of the Tonopah's total production. The company maintained their mining operations office in Tonopah under the management of Charles Miller, but the business office was located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where the corporate records were maintained and the annual meetings held. Like many mining companies in Tonopah and Goldfield, the Tonopah Mining Company was controlled and managed by eastern financiers and industrialists.

In 1902, the company began extensive development, and formed several subsidiary companies formed. The company’s original narrow gauge railroad connecting to the Carson and Colorado Railroad was extended and made regular gauge to Goldfield in 1905; it was then known as the Tonopah and Goldfield Railroad. In 1906, the subsidiary Desert Power and Mill Company constructed a stamp silver mill in the neighboring town of Millers, Nevada, with its own steam-powered electric generator to process the company’s ore as well as the ore from other nearby mining companies. After 1910 when production in Tonopah began to wane, the company began exploration and development of metal mines in Colorado, Canada, and Nicaragua, most of which proved of limited success. Like many of the area’s mines, the company ceased development work during and in the immediate aftermath of World War I with only small returns through the 1920s. There was a brief recovery in the 1930s with the rise of gold and silver prices, but by World War II reduced tonnage, increased costs, and lower values of the ore, caused most of the Tonopah mines to close. In 1947, the Tonopah and Goldfield Railroad was abandoned. In 1956, the Tonopah Mining Company filed for bankruptcy and was dissolved.