Chap. 1: Mines on the Rio Grande

[College on the Rio Grande: The Story of A Small School was written in 1989, New Mexico Tech's centennial year, by Paige W. Christiansen, emeritus professor of history at New Mexico Tech. It was published in a limited edition and is now out of print. Prof. Christiansen has given his permission for this web edition, to make Tech's history more widely available.

Please acknowledge him if you use material from this book. Please be aware that all references to "the present" in this book refer to 1989. Thank you.]

For 100 years a small college on the Rio Grande in Socorro, New Mexico, has added to the sum total of scientific and technological knowledge about the planet earth. Its graduates have entered industry and government and have aided in the search for the mineral products that have made the nation strong. First as the New Mexico School of Mines, and more recently as New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, the school has played a vital role in the development of New Mexico and the nation. This is the story of that small school.

The history of any school must be told in relation to the social milieu in which it was conceived. Education in the United States was always considered important, but it was not until the last three decades of the nineteenth century that it began to trickle down to the majority of the American people. It was during these decades following the Civil War that the great expansion of educational facilities in the United States occurred. The number of secondary schools in the country increased, and more and more Americans completed a high-school education. More colleges appeared, curricula expanded, and graduate schools developed. By the twentieth century, America was committed to the education of its youth.

The main thrust of the education movement was in the eastern part of the nation, and, because of a great emphasis of the frontier on practical achievement and survival, the West lagged behind. But as the nineteenth century waned, the West found itself emerging from a frontier life, and formal education began to become important. The day of the cattleman and free range gave way to the cattle breeder; reckless exploitation of the great forest reserves of the West gave way to tree farming; prospecting and small-claim mining gave way to the mining company and large-scale operations. The railroads and the telegraph completed the circulatory and nervous systems of the nation, and the West began to fill with people. The changes wrought meant increasing need for educational facilities. What kind of education? That would depend on the area.

Early in the twentieth century a short story appeared in the San Francisco Examiner. It simply stated that a group of prospectors had discovered a spring of gold-bearing water in Marin County, California, north of San Francisco. Their estimate was that they were getting ten dollars worth of gold per barrel of water. This obvious tongue-in-cheek report went unnoticed until, a few weeks later, a letter to the editor further explained the springs. The letter stated that the writer and his uncle had first discovered these springs during the gold rush of 1849. They had worked the springs until they considered them worked out, For them the water produced much higher yields, ten dollars worth of gold in a dipper full. The writer and his uncle continued their quest for the wealth of California, prospecting into the High Sierra. There they made the most fabulous discovery of all: gold-bearing winds! Their challenge, however, was how to extract the gold from the wind, a tough metallurgical problem. But they found a way. The gold could only be extracted during the heat of passion. The letter in the Examiner was signed, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain). Gold is where you find it.

Following the discovery of gold in California in 1849, the whole inter-mountain region of the West was subjected to a mining boom. This movement of miners reversed a process that had been under way since the first settler landed on the Atlantic Coast of North America. The mining boom, instead of being a westward movement, was an eastward, movement, spreading out from the discovery of gold in California. Between 1849 and 1890 this movement left its mark across the landscape of the West. One cannot take to the hills without seeing signs of the prospector's shovel or the miner's work. It is difficult to converse with the citizens of most parts of the mountain West without talking about mines of the past or mines of the future. The communities that grew around these "diggings" at first bustled with life, lust, and danger. Gradually they emerged from their primitive state to become centers of commerce, government, and mining, and to take on the semblance of civilized towns. If they did not, they died, and those that failed are now empty of people yet full of romance and legend. There was little need for schools in a ghost town, so it was in the areas of substantial development where education began to grow.

There was need in the West for advanced training in geology, mining techniques, and metallurgical processes, but the first mining school in the nation was created in the eastern section of the country. Columbia College in New York recognized the need for mining engineers and opened a School of Mines in 1864, graduating its first class in 1867. The Columbia School of Mines grew and developed into the modern Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science. From this first graduating class to 1894, the total number of graduates from all schools offering degrees in some aspect of mining (total of 16 schools) was 871, or an average of 33 a year. The first mining school in the west was Colorado School of Mines established at Golden in 1869. Later, schools devoted to mines and minerals would develop in California, Montana, South Dakota, and other mining centers.

During the years 1870 to 1880, conditions in New Mexico that previously hindered development of the mineral industries tended to improve. The bitterness following the Civil War waned quickly in New Mexico, and the territory was fortunate to be little affected by the dissentions and arguments between North and South during the period of national reconstruction. New Mexico proceeded to look to her own development in two important activities for which she was best suited -- stock raising and mining. That she prospered during the 1870s can be attributed to a number of factors.

Of particular importance was the population increase in this vast territory during the decade 1870 to 1880. To explore for minerals, to exploit the land through agriculture, or to harvest the grama grasses through livestock, required people. By 1880, more than 100,000 citizens were on the frontier in New Mexico. People brought to the territory more capital, a greater labor force, more demands for federal aid against the hostile Indians, and increased business and banking activity. Evidence of civilized life crept deeper and deeper into the isolated desert regions and distant mountains of the frontier.

Stock raising rapidly expanded into New Mexico after 1870. The "day of the cattleman" in the history of the American West was a brief but dramatic period lasting from the end of the Civil War into the 1880s. The emergence of the range-cattle industry in New Mexico was an important part of that story and gave to the history of the cattle empire some of its most colorful people and epic tales. The first cattle company, incorporated in 1872 under the laws of the New Mexico Territory, was the Consolidated Land, Cattle Raising and Wool Growing Company. In 1870, an estimated 57,000 head of cattle were on New Mexico ranges; by 1880 that figure had grown to 348,000. This tremendous growth was related to rapidly developing markets all across the nation. Rapid growth of the range-cattle industry helped a general economic growth in the territory. Much of the capital lost during the Civil War was restored, with more money becoming available for mineral development, both real and speculative. Also, the increased value of cattle, and consequently land, gave cattlemen more power at both the territorial and national levels.

Improved communications within the territory and between New Mexico and the rest of the country aided growth and reduced the isolation that had plagued the region for so long. By 1870, telegraph communication was established between Denver and Santa Fe, linking New Mexico with the national telegraph system. Later in the decade, a military telegraph tied other areas in New Mexico into the system, and then continued on into Arizona and California.

Probably the most significant trend that began to evolve in the seventies was the first trickle of eastern and foreign capital into New Mexico. The amounts were small, but outside capital resulted in expansion of the stock raising and mining industries. An example of foreign capital was the purchase of the Maxwell Land Grant by a group of British investors. This grant, 1,700,000 acres of patented land in some of the richest and most beautiful country in New Mexico, included much of the mining area around Elizabethtown. The interests of the British company were later sold to a group of Dutch investors, who operated the Maxwell Land Grant Company until 1946. Most of the foreign capital was invested in mining, cattle ranches, and land speculation. Very few of these were profitable, but they did add capital investment needed in New Mexico.

The railroad came to New Mexico Territory late in the decade of the 1870s. The Santa Fe reached Trinidad, Colorado, in 1876; Otero Station, Colfax County, New Mexico, in February, 1879; Las Vegas, New Mexico, late in 1879; Albuquerque in 1880. While the building of rail facilities into the territory did not have a direct effect on mining and related activities during the 1870s, it stimulated considerable activity in preparation for the anticipated growth in all economic areas.

With increasing economic activity, a growing transportation network, and a quickening of mining activity, it was essential that the Indian question be solved. Demands of businessmen, railroaders, and miners rose to a clamor, and the federal government responded with a concerted effort to solve the question of the hostile Indian in New Mexico that had threatened life and property for nearly 300 years. And it was solved. Thousands of United States troops armed with repeating rifles and pistols, and aided by several hundred Indian scouts, penetrated the last strongholds of the Indians, and gradually broke down their resistance. Under the weight of steel and increasing numbers of American soldiers, the Apache warriors were doomed. Though civilization would swallow them, they made a spectacular defense of their lands and their way of life against both Spaniards and Americans. They were the masters of the desert and mountains, and only the gods of science and technology succeeded in overcoming them and their desert gods. The end came on September 3, 1886, when Geronimo and his small band surrendered to General Miles at Skeleton Canyon, in southern Arizona. With the end of the Indian menace, the mineralized districts in New Mexico were freely and safely open to prospector, miner, businessman, and freighter, another obstacle to mining expansion was removed. A mining boom came of age.

These years mark a period, perhaps the first since American occupation of New Mexico in 1846, when the combination of capital, labor, transportation and communication, and relative safety from Indian attack favored the expansion of mining and prospecting. Many of the older mines continued to operate. Some of the prospects uncovered during the previous decade blossomed into roaring camps; prospectors continued their lonely search. An important feature of the mineral industry in the 1870s was the variety of minerals that began to interest those involved. The search was not limited to gold, silver, and copper, as a number of other minerals became important.

New Mexico lagged behind in developing educational facilities but in the 1880s flowered in her own right. The mining boom in New Mexico had to await the final settlement of the Indian question. The increasing numbers of people entering New Mexico from the east demanded action by the federal authorities against Indian incursions. Following the Civil War, there were sufficient troops and supplies available in the Southwest that the end of the Indian threat became inevitable. By 1880 most of the tribes had been brought under control, although there would be sporadic activity until the surrender of Geronimo in 1886. With the elimination of the Apache menace, Socorro County (which then included what is now Catron County) became a main center of political and economic life in New Mexico. This sudden growth was directly connected with mining. Prospectors roamed the hills sinking shafts in likely outcrops, exploring canyon walls, seeking that vein or ore body which would result in the frenzied cry of "Gold!" or "Silver!" Behind the prospector came the miner and the metallurgist, and towns sprang up in the lonely mountain canyons and became bustling and active communities. Western Socorro County produced the towns of Cooney and Mogollon, both mostly deserted today. Farther east, Kelly, near the Village of Magdalena, boomed and died. Socorro itself became renowned as a mining center. During the peak of the mining boom, the town of Socorro not only became the most populated and most important town in the county, but it was also the fourth largest town in New Mexico, with a population at its peak in 1884 of 4500 people. In addition to the mining in and around Socorro, the town became the leading smelter town in New Mexico. The Billings Smelter, one of three that were active, was the only custom smelter in the New Mexico territory. With its rapidly expanding population and economic growth, particularly in mining activity, the people of the Territory of New Mexico began to think in terms of future requirements. More people and a vastly more complex economic situation demanded educational facilities to give training in areas which, at least at this time, seemed basic to the long-range prospects of New Mexico. Mining was at the center of every consideration. Mining supplied most of the wealth that oiled the economic life of the territory. Mining required more and more technically trained people to supervise the extraction and processing of ores. The establishment of the School of Mines in Socorro in 1889 attested to the importance of the town as a mining center. Much credit can be given to Juan Jose Baca, territorial legislator from Socorro, for supporting the legislative act creating higher education in the territory, as well as for promoting Socorro as the site of one of the territorial schools. One of the leading merchants of Socorro and an important livestock producer, Baca was also involved in mining activities in the area. The New Mexico Territorial Legislature in February 1889 responded to demands from all parts of New Mexico, and from special interest groups, by passing a general education act creating three institutions of higher learning, all still in existence. The New Mexico School of Mines was located at Socorro, the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque, and the New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts at Las Cruces. Parts of the act pertinent to the School of Mines laid out a broad program:

"Sec. 3. There is also hereby created and established within and for the Territory of New Mexico an institution of learning to be known as the New Mexico School of Mines. Said institution is hereby located within the city of Socorro, in the county of Socorro, upon a tract of land of not less than twenty acres, suitable for the purposes of such institution, which shall be donated and conveyed by a good and sufficient deed to the Territory of New Mexico by the owners thereof, free of cost and expense to said Territory, which deed shall be executed within six months from the passage of this act, and no improvements or building, as hereinafter provided for, shall be made or erected upon such land until such deed is duly executed, and filed in the office of the Secretary of the Territory as hereinafter provided."

"Sec 28. The object of the School of Mines created, established, and located by this act, is to furnish facilities for the education of such persons as may desire to receive instruction in chemistry, metallurgy, mineralogy, geology, mining, milling, engineering, mathematics, mechanics, drawing, the fundamental laws of the United States and the rights and duties of citizenship, and such other courses of study, not including agriculture, as may be prescribed by the Board of Trustees."

But a legislative act does not make a school, and the New Mexico School of Mines had to wait upon a building program and a faculty before it could open its doors to eager young students. One of the leading forces in bringing the legislative statement to a successful conclusion was Colonel E. W. Eaton of Socorro, secretary-treasurer of the original Board of Trustees (changed to Board of Regents in 1913). The other board members were L. Bradford Prince, Governor of New Mexico; the Reverend Thomas Harwood of Socorro, founder of the Methodist mission movement in New Mexico, who served as president; Severo A. Baca of Socorro; Colonel William T. Thornton, of Santa Fe; and William G. Waring, of Silver City. In 1893, these men, working under the most difficult conditions, finally oversaw the completion of the first structure housing the New Mexico School of Mines.

Colonel Eaton played a number of important roles in Socorro County. He served as commander of Fort Craig during the battle of Valverde in February 1862. He also commanded Fort Garland in Colorado during the Civil War, and, following the Confederate defeat in New Mexico, he was sent to Fort Wingate, New Mexico, to deal with rebellious Navajos. He resigned his commission after the war and returned to his ranch in Socorro County where he remained until 1880. At that time, Colonel Eaton left his ranch, bought a mine, and began mining and smelting lead and silver ores in and around Socorro. In 1881 he founded the Socorro Committee of Safety, or "vigilantes," a group which dealt summarily with lawbreakers who were foolish enough to ply their trade in Socorro. In 1889 he was appointed to the Board of Trustees of the newly created School of Mines and was elected secretary-treasurer of that body.

The first problem the founders faced was the development of a facility to house the school. On August 12, 1889, twenty-two and one-fifth acres were deeded to the school for the sum of one dollar. The landowners from Socorro contributing were Juan Jose Baca, Esteban Baca, Severo A. Baca, Edwin Hubbard, Jacob Naumer, Robert Collins, and Antonio Abeyta y Montoya. The undeveloped land selected and deeded was on the western fringe of the city. With the land in hand, planning for a building could proceed. Colonel Eaton insisted that the building should be something of which Socorro and New Mexico could be proud. But construction was slow, plagued by delays of material and constant shortage of funds. The contract for the basement of the main building was let in October 1890 to Stephens and Faddis Company. The contract for the superstructure was awarded to Michele Berardinelli in May 1891. The building, when completed in 1893, was a showpiece in New Mexico and the Southwest. It was built of gray trachyte from Blue Canyon in the Socorro Mountains and trimmed with red Arizona sandstone. Master craftsmen from Old Mexico were brought in to do the stone work. The inside was finished with oiled hard pine. The basement rooms were floored with concrete. Because the metallurgical laboratory was equipped with 22 crucibles and other furnaces, it was finished with a fireproof material. There were qualitative and quantitative analytical laboratories and also facilities for a large museum and library. Other rooms included a balance room, spectroscopic laboratory, and lecture rooms. The building cost $43,940. It is interesting to note that the newest building on the campus, the Mineral Science and Engineering Center III, built nearly 100 years later, cost $6,800,000.

At first a well on the grounds furnished an abundance of pure water, but later the school used the same water source as the city of Socorro. The water supply was brought to the building by a five-inch iron pipe from thermal springs at the foot of the Socorro Mountains. The supply of water, according to the Socorro Chieftain in 1899, "is at all times adequate to supply the building, irrigate the trees, and keep the lawn in good condition." The grounds of the school consisted of 20 acres of level desert grassland within the irrigation district. The laboratory building was situated near the center of those lands. With the completion of the building, the formal work of the School of Mines could begin. A catalog was issued during the summer of 1893, and notice was given to the people of New Mexico through their local newspapers that instruction would begin on September 5. Two faculty members were hired: Floyd Davis, Ph.D., president of the college and professor of chemistry and metallurgy; and Theodore S. Delay, B.S., assistant in chemistry and metallurgy. On September 5, 1893, seven students arrived to begin their careers at the School of Mines.

To commemorate the formal opening of instruction, the city of Socorro sponsored a dedication at the County Courthouse. Music was furnished by the 12 piece Socorro Philharmonic Band. There were addresses by the Reverend Thomas Harwood, president of the Board of Trustees; Professor Hiram Hadley, president of the Agricultural College at Las Cruces; the Reverend I. Fernandez; and Dr. Floyd Davis, president of the School of Mines. Most of the people of Socorro were in attendance. Following the ceremonies at the courthouse, all concerned paraded to the new building a mile away where it was formally dedicated. It was a big day for Socorro.

Financial support for the school was handled by a special legislative act. The act provided for a one-fifth mil ad valorem property tax. The income from the levy produced about $4620 in 1899. Aside from tuition and assaying fees collected by the school, this was all the funding the school received. Fees from tuition and assaying raised the total revenue to about $5100 per year. In contrast, the budget for the institute in its 100th year was $46,541,000. The property tax, augmented by some later moderate increases in the tax rate, served as the main source of income for the school until New Mexico attained statehood in 1912. The first state legislature replaced the property tax with a regular annual appropriation.

In addition to the regular tax levy supporting the school in its early days, there were several special appropriations by the territorial legislature that were important to the founding of the school. One, made in 1891, provided $4000 for part of the laboratory equipment in the new building. A second appropriation, in 1893, for $31,420 enabled the school to complete the work of organization. The school was a reality. It had a beautiful building and a faculty, and it had a student body (very small). But still more was needed to make this a working educational facility. It needed a curriculum and an educational philosophy. In the first Annual Register (catalog) published in 1892, a basic course of study was laid out. It said, in part:

"The course of instruction at the New Mexico School of Mines will probably embrace the following studies, all of which are essential to the education of a mining engineer, in addition to the usual literary education which students who enter the School of Mines are presumed to have already accomplished. The studies are mentioned in the order in which they are taken up.

1. Mathematics, including Higher Algebra, Analytical Geometry, Plane and Spherical Trigonometry.
2. Mechanical and Topographical Drawing
3. General Chemistry
4. Physics
5. Mineralogy, Crystallography, Lithology, and Petrology
6. The Differential and Integral Calculus
7. Mechanics, including properties of materials, etc.
8. Surveying, Civil Engineering and Mine Surveying
9. Qualitative Chemical Analysis
10. Blowpiping, Qualitative and Quantitative
11. Stratigraphical Geology and Paleontology
12. Petrography
13. Quantitative Chemical Analysis
14. Technical Chemistry, General Technology and Assaying
15. Metallurgy, Ore Dressing, and Technical Beneficiation of Mineral Products
16. Graphic Statics and Designing
17. Mining Architecture
18. Mechanical and Electrical Engineering
19. Hydraulic Engineering, Sanitary Engineering including the study of drainage, irrigation, etc.
20. Topographical and Geodetic Surveying
21. Physical and Economic Geology
22. Practical Mining

This was an ambitious program for a new school in a primitive frontier town. Highly specialized, yes, but this was a specialized situation. New Mexico was a mining area in need of people trained in mining techniques. It was a practical education, vocational in nature, and a special philosophy of education emerged. Again, let the first Annual Register speak:

"The first point to be considered is, what are the proper functions of a School of Mines, and how can these functions be most successfully exercised, considering the locality of the School, and the needs of the people of New Mexico? Unlike those schools and colleges where the training of the young is necessarily founded upon traditional courses of study, a school of mines combines technical education and handicraft with those methods of the higher university training which adapt the student to habits of original research, enabling him to discover new truths in science. . . . The exigencies of modern progress in the arts demand that technical institutions of learning shall keep up with the times, and this is especially true in regard to schools professing to turn out mining engineers, thoroughly equipped to take immediate charge of important practical enterprises or to advise as to investments in new and untried fields. The advances which are now being made daily in the practice of mining and metallurgy, and in allied industries, are so rapid that the methods described in textbooks written for the use of students of mining often become obsolete by the time the books are published. On this account it is desirable that the study of technical treatises in a Mining School should be supplemented by much fieldwork, inspection of industrial works in operation, and examination of raw material and of products in the laboratories. The location of the School of Mines at Socorro offers admirable facilities for such training. . . ."

Mining in New Mexico and the entire Far West was dramatically affected by the national political arguments over silver and its role in the national monetary system. Those advocating "hard," or stable, money sought a strong gold standard and a retreat from silver money, which resulted in the decline of silver prices. Those wanting "soft," or inflationary monetary policy, advocated free coinage of silver at a fixed ratio of 16 of silver to one of gold. Between 1876 and 1890, federal policy was such that limited coinage kept silver prices fairly high, at least high enough to make silver mining in the West profitable. In 1890 the Sherman Silver Purchase Act increased the national demand for silver and forced silver prices upward. But the hard money advocates in the federal congress won the day in 1893, and they were able to repeal the Sherman, Act. Their action, prompted by a financial crisis across the country, was taken in hopes of stabilizing currency. Instead, the impact on mining in general and silver mining in particular was disastrous throughout the American West. In most areas, large-scale silver mining came to an end.

While the first year of instruction was in 1893, facilities were lacking for a true college offering. Laboratory space and equipment were inadequate, the staff was too small, and there was not enough money available to organize the institution for full-scale operation. And, of course, there was the problem of too few students. The result was failure, or apparent failure. No instruction was given in 1894. The people who had influenced the founding of the school continued their efforts, however, and the Territorial Legislature appropriated enough money to complete the organization of the school. The academic year 1895-1896 opened auspiciously with complete curricula offered in mine engineering, chemistry, and metallurgy. Since that time the school has maintained itself without interruption. Well, almost.

In 1895, in order to make sure that adequate preparation for college entrance was available at the local level, the Territorial Legislature required all college institutions in the territory to initiate preparatory departments. Few communities in New Mexico at this time had adequate educational facilities to prepare students for college. The Preparatory Department was responsible for giving interested students sufficient instruction in areas of English, literature, language, and the arts at the high school level. Once students had adequate high school preparation, they could continue in the college courses. From 1895 until the first Socorro high school was built in 1913, the Preparatory Department, or Academy, at the School of Mines served the community as its high school. A majority of the student population of the School of Mines during these years attended the Preparatory Department. Only a minority were regular college students.

Thus was an institution of higher learning born: a plot of ground, a new building with all the most modern equipment, a faculty, students, a curriculum, a steady and reliable income (however inadequate), and broad educational philosophy. The New Mexico School of Mines began a long and exciting history which included points of high activity and achievement and points of lethargy and near-desperation.