William Boyce Thompson

William Boyce Thompson, (May 13, 1869 – June 27, 1930), was an American mining engineer, financier, prominent in the Republican party, philanthropist, and founder of Newmont Mining. Thompson was one of the significant early twentieth century mine operators that discovered and exploited vast copper deposits that revolutionized Western American mining, and reaped for themselves tremendous fortunes.

Born in Virginia City, Montana, and raised in Butte, he was schooled in the rough mining towns of southwest Montana - but also at Phillips Exeter Academy and the Columbia School of Mines. During the 1890s he joined his father, William, one-time mayor of Butte, in Montana mining and lumber ventures, before moving East to become a mine promoter and stock broker. His first success, the Shannon Copper Company, where he opened mines, built a smelter, and a railroad between them, is now part of the vast Morenci, Arizona open pit, largest in the United States. Joining the brokerage firm of Hayden, Stone & Co. during the early 1900s he expanded his promotions: to Ely, Nevada where he helped organize the Nevada Consolidated which eventually became a part of the multinational Kennecott Copper Company (Guggenheims), of which he was a director; Mason Valley where he opened old copper mines and built his smelter town which was named Thompson, Nevada after him (now a ghost town); and most fortuitously in the 1910s opened the Magma mine at Superior, Arizona which became a major copper producer; and the promotion of the incredibly rich Inspiration Copper Company at Miami, Arizona during the 1910s (absorbed by the "Anaconda crowd' in 1912, but with Thompson retaining a 15% share); all made him fabulously wealthy. He had built a large fortune developing low grade, large scale porphyry copper deposits at the same time he got lucky with his high grade Magma mine, which proved a phenomenal bonanza. He retired from the New York stock exchange in 1915, and later created his own holding company, Newmont Mining Corporation, to which he transferred his many mining interests. By the time of his death, Newmont Mining was a major factor in world copper production. Today, Newmont is the largest gold producer in the United States but continues the legacy of Thompson to explore and bring into production new ore deposits.

Thompson's promotions and financial holdings were scattered from Canada to Peru. They included Indian Motorcycle Co. He financed lead, zinc and coal mines, street railways, handled the sensational Midvale Steel financing during the War when the stock rose from 290 to 500. He promoted the great Nipissing silver deposit at Cobalt, Canada for the Guggenheims and reaped a quick million dollars return. He refinanced American Woolen Co. and Tobacco Products Co., launched Cuba Cane Sugar Co., got control of Pierce Arrow Motor Car Co., organized Submarine Boat Corp. and the Wright-Martin Aeroplane Co. He was a director of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. By the 1920s he was a director of Sinclair Oil and promoter of Gulf Sulphur, but all these were diversions from his main interest in mining copper.

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