Desloge Lead Company

Desloge Consolidated Lead Company was a lead mining company in the Southeast Missouri Lead District that was operated by the Desloge family in the 19th and early 20th century. The Desloge lead operations in the "Old Lead Belt", in the eastern Ozark Mountains, helped Missouri become the world's premier lead mining area.

The businesses that would become the Desloge Consolidated Lead Company began around 1824, when Firmin Rene Desloge — founder of the Desloge Family in America — built a smelting furnace as an extension of his mercantile business in Potosi, Missouri.

His son, Firmin V. Desloge, expanded mining operations and moved management to Bonne Terre, Missouri. On June 5, 1874, a charter was granted to the Missouri Lead and Smelting Company, which was renamed the Desloge Lead Company on February 21, 1876. In 1876 and 1877, the company sank three shafts and built a new mill in Bonne Terre.

A fire in March 1886 destroyed the concentrating mill plant and damaged the rest of the surface plant. The following year, the company's remaining assets were sold to St. Joseph Lead Company, which made Firmin V. Desloge a trustee on its board, a post he would hold until his death. This merger helped the St. Joe company become the "greatest lead-mining and smelting company in the world.

After the fire, Desloge and his family took an option on a piece of land owned by the Bogy family which was called "Mine-a-Joe", and started another mining operation under the name Desloge Consolidated Lead Company. The new company cleared the land and built company houses for its workers just west of present-day Desloge, Missouri.

In 1893, the Desloges opened a new mine in St. Francois County, Missouri, just north of the St. Joe Lead Company property in Bonne Terre, on a tract of land originally granted to Jean Bte. Pratte and designated as U. S. Survey No. 3099. The mill and smelting plant could produce 500 tons of lead per day.

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