January 31, 2017; the abandoned Utah Ore Sampling Co. building rests in downtown Murray.
However, like a ghost in the distance, sitting on the edge of the Oquirrh Mountains stands Utah's last smelter at Garfield. It is the sole reminder that Utah once was home to one of the west's greatest mining booms. Where residential homes, hospitals, businesses and parks rest now, there once stood copper smelters, lead smelters, uranium mills, and the intermountain west's only true great steel mill, Geneva Steel. The many changes in the economy, environmental laws, and the fortunes of the mines once served here have brought most of these industries to extinction.
Of course, many of these industries were served by railroads. While I have explored the abandoned rights of way of both the Tooele Valley Railway and the Kennecott Railroads, there are countless other bits of interesting rail history that once connected to these great industries of yesteryear. Many of the rails which connected these industries remain active as part of UTA's commuter rail system. Some of these vanished industries still remain part of local "legend" memorialized in art or other local monuments.
This article will focus on Union Pacific's original Provo Subdivision and the lead/copper smelters in Murray and Midvale, with some further mention of the Tooele Smelter. I hope perhaps future articles could focus on Geneva Steel, the short lived uranium mill in South Salt Lake, and the abandoned DRGW route from Salt Lake to Ogden.
UTA Blue Line and the Abandoned Union Pacific Salt Lake-Provo Route
February 8, 2017; These views from the northern Murray TRAX station show the right of way of the UTA Blue Line. This busy stretch of UTA tracks also host Red Line and Green Line trains in certain segments. Originally this right of way was Union Pacific's mainline from Salt Lake City to Provo. The UP slowly began the process of abandoning it, first with a trackage rights agreement with the DRGW to allow UP to use their Provo-SLC route; and after the UP-SP merger a large part of the UP line was handed over to the newly formed Salt Lake Southern Railroad. The Salt Lake Southern was an interim operation, only running freight over the route until UTA could begin the conversion of the route into a light rail corridor. Several segments of the route, including the rails over the Point of the Mountain south of Draper; are rail banked and not in current use.
Built by the Utah Southern Railroad in the early 1870's, Union Pacific's original Provo Subdivision served trains between Salt Lake City and Provo until the 1990's. The line competed against the nearby Denver and Rio Grande Western route to the west. Unlike the DRGW route which went through the Jordan Narrows, the Union Pacific route climbed up grade to crest the Point of the Mountain which marks the separation between the Salt Lake and Utah Valleys. The grades made the Union Pacific route less efficient than the competing DRGW line. This route ended up becoming Union Pacific's vital access to Utah's core industries; including many of the smelters described later in this article.
August 2016. The most noticeable segment of abandoned Union Pacific track from the former Salt Lake to Provo mainline, rests in downtown Salt Lake City running along 400 West. This segment of street running mainline ran to the grand Union Pacific (former OSL and LASL) station in downtown Salt Lake. UTA's street running TRAX segments downtown connect into the original Union Pacific mainline at Paxton Avenue and 200 West further south from here.
As time went on, UP began making an effort to gain trackage rights over the DRGW's better route. The 1.14% grade in both directions on the UP line proved to be a growing hindrance as trains grew longer and heavier over the years, especially while trying to handle the heavy ore trains heading to the area smelters and Geneva Steel. UP began the process of retiring their original mainline in 1985 when they obtained rights to run over the DRGW route. The original line was limited to local trains. UP finally struck most of the route from their ownership by transferring it to UTA and the interim freight operator known as the Salt Lake City Southern Railroad. The rest of the line through downtown Salt Lake City to reach the Union Pacific Station, was finally struck as construction began on the Gateway Mall in preparation for the 2002 Olympics (Crossroads of the West, pg 68). The 1996 merger with the SP-DRGW, finally gave Union Pacific complete control over the coveted DRGW route from Salt Lake to Provo, and the former DRGW line is now operated as Union Pacific's modern Provo Subdivision.
Not far south from the Draper UTA station is this segment of rail banked track on Union Pacific's former Provo Subdivision. The Porter Rockwell trail follows the rail line here. UTA owns this track, and has it kept for future expansion projects. (Schon Norris photo)
Of course by the time the Olympics came to Utah, the original UP route was alive and well; at least between South Salt Lake and Sandy. UTA had converted the line into the backbone of its light rail system. UTA over the following years used the old UP right of way to expand further into Draper, with everything south rail banked for future use. The route hosts the UTA Blue Line in its entirety, along with segments of the Green Line, the Red Line; and interchange points with the S-Line and the Frontrunner. Without a doubt, the segments of the old UP that UTA is currently using, is the busiest rail line in Utah in terms of train frequency.
South of Draper, the freight heritage of the route is still visible. The single track line has sat quiet for years. Trains no longer run across the Point of the Mountain. Maybe someday the rail banked line will return to service, and UTA trains will climb the mountain just like the UP once did.
Understanding the relationship of the DRGW and UP routes through the Salt Lake Valley is critical to understanding the industries which grew around them. In the places where the two lines came the closest to each other, was the industrial heart of the state; where rock was melted down to release the valuable metals trapped within.
Utah's Lead Smelters and Mills, Murray and Midvale
The ASARCO copper smelting operation at Garfield, Utah; as seen in this 1910-era panorama, while separate from the ASARCO lead smelter in Murray bore many similarities. The ASARCO copper smelter would pass hands eventually to Kennecott, and in the 1990's Kennecott replaced what was left of the original operation with a new modernized flash furnace method of smelting. The photo is from the Library of Congress.
When miners first came to Utah, it was not the state's now famous copper supply they were after; but the silver and lead ores which were so abundant both near Park City, and across the length of the Oquirrh Mountains. Colonel Patrick Connor, a military leader dispatched to lead troops in Utah during the Civil War; sought to tap into the area's mineral wealth both for his own financial gain and to upset the traditionally agrarian views of the area's Mormon colonists. One of his first claims was a lead-silver mine near Stockton, Utah; in 1864 known as the Honerine Mine (Mining, Smelting, and Railroading in Tooele County; pg. 1). Another early claim of Colonel Connor's was the 1863 discovery of gold and silver ores in Bingham Canyon (current site of the Kennecott/Rio Tinto Copper Mine).
An idea of the composition of these lead-silver ores can be found from a production output from the Calumet Mine near Stockton, which during operation produced 2,000 tons of of ore with a 0.05% gold output, a 9.57% silver output, 3.0% zinc content, and 13.5% lead output. The Galena King Mine from the same district allegedly in its first ore car shipment had produced 40 ozs of silver and a staggering 50% lead concentration in the ore. To capitalize on these ores, crude smelters were built in the mining districts with unique names such as the "Carson and Bozzo," the "Monheim and Johnson," and the "Jack Smelter." However far from the railroads, these smelters were crude and basic set ups. (Mining, Smelting, and Railroading; pg. 15).
The construction of the First Transcontinental Railroad in 1869 brought with it the opportunity to ship ore from these mines to smelters and mills; then off to refineries and markets back east. Colonel Connor remained invested in many Utah mining and railroad projects long after his deployment in Utah was over, garnering the reputation as the founder of the state's mining industry.
As the railroads crept south from the Transcontinental line and ever closer to the state's mining districts, new opportunities arrived for the area. Coke, coal, and flux material could be shipped to fuel the fires of larger and grander smelters. Ore from area mines could come to these new mega smelters, while bullion could be shipped of to far off places to market (for example lead bullion from the International Smelter in Tooele would travel to a lead refinery near Chicago). With this, several smelter districts formed along the Wasatch front which would by the early 20th century be consolidated to three geographic areas; Garfield the site of ASARCO's copper smelter and the modern day site of the Kennecott Smelter (the last remnant of Utah's smelting history); the International Smelter in Tooele which handled both lead and copper, and the gargantuan smelters in the central Salt Lake Valley including ASARCO's Murray lead smelter, which sat like a (smokey, dirty, and polluting) crown jewel in Utah's bustling mining districts. Near the ASARCO smelter in Murray was the Midvale smelter of United States Smelting and Refining Company (to be refereed to as U.S. Smelting for the remainder of this article). These smelters competed among each other, and against similar businesses in places such as McGill, Nevada; or Kellog, Idaho. Now the Kennecott Smelter stands alone in the vast intermountain west, its nearest competitors in Arizona; its modern flash furnaces a far cry from the coke and coal fires of the historic Rocky Mountain smelters.
Of these operations, the central Murray smelter, and the surrounding smelters and industries in Midvale, were probably the most famous in their time. The twin smokestacks of the Murray smelter stood for decades long after its closure until being finally toppled in 2000. The smelter is still remembered fondly in the area in public art and area monuments.
January 31, 2017 The abandoned Utah Ore Sampling Co. building rests dramatically south of the IHC Murray hospitals, sandwiched in-between the former DRGW and UP mainlines. In its prime; this building received car loads of galena ore to be tested and analyzed before being sent to the nearby ASARCO lead smelter. This building is one of the last standing remnants of Utah's lead-silver-zinc mining past.
While the Murray smelter itself is gone, one remnant of its past remains standing alone; almost forgotten. As busy commuters pass by in both car and train; this lone building stands like a monument to the past. The Utah Ore Sampling Co. building was home to labs which could analyze ore coming in from railroad cars to determine their composition. The company owned similar structures in both the Park City mining district and the Tintic mining district at Silver City; for similar purposes. The Murray location was located in a strategic position, sandwiched between both the Union Pacific and Denver and Rio Grande Western railroad lines. The ASARCO lead smelter was only a short distance from the sampling building. It is likely that after the contents of an ore car were analyzed, they were shipped straight to the ore bins of the ASARCO smelter. Union Pacific had built a large yard in the area to store in-bound and out-bound ore cars known as the Pallus Yard.
A written description of the work done at sampling mills describes the work of the similar functions at the sample mill at the International Smelter. Seeing that ASARCO, U.S. Smelting, and International all dealt in lead smelting; it is reasonable that the functions of the Tooele sampler were similar to the Murray sampler: "The ore was conveyed to the mill by conveyor belts from the large receiving bins, crushed, mixed, and a representative portion automatically separated as a sample lot. This sample was further reduced in size and fineness in the pulping department. The resulting sample of a few ounces was sent to the laboratory for analysis. A corresponding small sample was also sent to the shipper, and still another sample was sent to a commercial assayer, called an 'umpire.' The 'umpire's' analysis was compared with the smelter's answers to insure a fair analysis. To further insure this 'fairness' each shipper had a representative to oversee the entire sampling process from ore car to final pulp. (Mining, Smelting, and Railroading in Tooele County; pg. 74)." Sampling work was critical both for preparing ore to be smelted, but also to prevent any swindles in the process, especially while dealing with valuable metals such as silver or gold.
A written description of the work done at sampling mills describes the work of the similar functions at the sample mill at the International Smelter. Seeing that ASARCO, U.S. Smelting, and International all dealt in lead smelting; it is reasonable that the functions of the Tooele sampler were similar to the Murray sampler: "The ore was conveyed to the mill by conveyor belts from the large receiving bins, crushed, mixed, and a representative portion automatically separated as a sample lot. This sample was further reduced in size and fineness in the pulping department. The resulting sample of a few ounces was sent to the laboratory for analysis. A corresponding small sample was also sent to the shipper, and still another sample was sent to a commercial assayer, called an 'umpire.' The 'umpire's' analysis was compared with the smelter's answers to insure a fair analysis. To further insure this 'fairness' each shipper had a representative to oversee the entire sampling process from ore car to final pulp. (Mining, Smelting, and Railroading in Tooele County; pg. 74)." Sampling work was critical both for preparing ore to be smelted, but also to prevent any swindles in the process, especially while dealing with valuable metals such as silver or gold.
Pallas Yard was once used by the Union Pacific to store ore cars before being shipped into the Utah Ore Sampler or the ASARCO smelter. Now it is part of UTA's light rail network, and holds UTA's deadline of obsolete and retired UTDC Light Rail Vehicles (LRVs.)
Time has not been kind to the Utah Ore Sampling Co. building. After the Murray Smelter shut down in the late 1940's following the post-war bust of the mining industry; the sampler shut down with it. Despite the no-trespassing signs, many people have jumped the fences and have covered the building in graffiti. As mentioned above, the former Union Pacific mainline is now part of UTA's TRAX system and Pallus Yard is no longer full of ore cars, but dead LRV units; awaiting their final disposition. Those who have been lucky to legally enter the Utah Ore Sampling Co. building with its caretaker, have seen the eclectic collection of antiques stored within the building.
However, there is a feeling of impending doom when talking about the Utah Ore Sampling Co. building. Over sixty years have passed since it was shut down, and the elements have done untold damage to the structure. As of early 2016, the site was listed for sale by Caldwell Banker. Current signage at the site as of 2017, suggests UTA is somehow in control over the property, as any excavations in the area are dictated by the UTA Department of Safety and Environmental Protection. If UTA or some other party is the current owner is unknown at this point. However it seems unlikely that any future plans for the site will involve the preservation of the long abandoned building. Despite that, freight crews still refer to one of the nearby sidings they use to work the area as the "Murray Sampler," so the legacy of the Utah Ore Sampling Co. will continue in one way or another for many years to come.
However, there is a feeling of impending doom when talking about the Utah Ore Sampling Co. building. Over sixty years have passed since it was shut down, and the elements have done untold damage to the structure. As of early 2016, the site was listed for sale by Caldwell Banker. Current signage at the site as of 2017, suggests UTA is somehow in control over the property, as any excavations in the area are dictated by the UTA Department of Safety and Environmental Protection. If UTA or some other party is the current owner is unknown at this point. However it seems unlikely that any future plans for the site will involve the preservation of the long abandoned building. Despite that, freight crews still refer to one of the nearby sidings they use to work the area as the "Murray Sampler," so the legacy of the Utah Ore Sampling Co. will continue in one way or another for many years to come.
January 31, 2017 Another re-purposed piece of railroad right of way now owned by UTA is this segment of track in Midvale, Utah. It was originally built to connect the Union Pacific to the Denver and Rio Grande's Midvale Yard; which had access to the U.S. Smelting, Refining and Mining lead smelter which was located near the DRGW yard. The lead ore mill at Midvale remained in operation until 1971 when it closed down in conjunction with the closure of the International Smelter in Tooele.
Of course other elements of the smelter legacy in the central Salt Lake Valley remain in healthy use. The Union Pacific had constructed a bypass line from their mainline to cross over into the Midvale Yard the DRGW ran near the U.S. Smelting site. UTA currently uses this as a vital access point into the South Jordan repair facility, and for commuter trains on the Red Line. The U.S. Smelting operation lasted longer than its competitor ASARCO Murray smelter did. 1958 saw the U.S. Smelting close its smelter operations in Midvale, to focus exclusively on the ore mill there. The concentrated ore would be shipped over the DRGW/WP or the Union Pacific to Tooele for smelting, and then shipped back to the U.S. Smelting's own Grasseli, Indiana refinery (Mining, Smelting, and Railroading in Tooele County; pg. 76)
Not only was this connection from the UP to the DRGW vital for access to the U.S. Smelting operation, but it connected into DRGW's branchlines to both the Bingham Canyon mines, and the line to the ASARCO (later Kennecott) copper smelter in Garfield. This line still can see freight use, as Utah Railway power slips through here under the cover of night after commuter operations go quiet for the day, to access the freight shippers on UTA's TRAX right of way.
Although the ASARCO Lead Smelter in Murray closed in 1949, its twin smokestacks dominated the skyline of the central Salt Lake Valley until their demolition in 2000. After the site was cleaned up, it was chosen for the site of the IHC Murray Hospital. The massive hospital dominates the skyline, but perhaps not quite in the same dramatic fashion the smelter once had.
ASARCO and the other Murray/Midvale area smelters, however, had to contend with something few other smelters in the early 1900's had to deal with, environmental lawsuits. Murray became the center of one of the first environmental legal battles in the Western U.S. as farmers sued the smelters due to crop damages the pollution was causing. The larger smelters such as ASARCO and U.S. Smelting had the funds to settle with the farmers, and add measures to prevent pollution. Among those processes used to filter pollution was the bag house, a room full of fabric sheets which caught particles before leaving the smokestacks (as seen in Part 2 of the documentary film linked in the sources below). Although bag houses helped protect the surrounding air, the employees who had to work inside them faced a dangerous environment of coal ash, dust, and trace amounts of lead and arsenic. The smaller area smelters affected by the lawsuit though such as the Highland Boy, were forced to close due to the environmental litigation. Many of the shut down smelters had to consolidate their forces with either ASARCO or U.S. Smelting; while others pooled together to form the International Smelter in Tooele to replace the closed smelters.
This empty field was once home to the Highland Boy Smelter. Serving the ores coming from the Highland Boy mine in Bingham Canyon, the Highland Boy Smelter was forced to close due to a lawsuit. Area farmers filed suit against the multitude of smelters in the central Salt Lake Valley. While ASARCO and U.S. Smelting were able to avoid litigation and remain open; many of the smaller smelter companies were closed permanently due to the lawsuit. This is considered one of the first great historic environmental lawsuits in US history. The operators of the Highland Boy joined with other area smelter owners to open the new International Smelter in Tooele, far away from the busy smelting hub in the central Salt Lake Valley.
Although the Highland Boy Smelter has been shut down for over a hundred years, the street which surrounds the site still bears tribute to the former smelter with the name Bullion Street, bullion being a term for refined metals before being formed into their final product form.
As I have mentioned, I have written about my visits to the International Smelter site in Tooele on this blog before. However in consideration with the history of the lead smelting in Murray and Midvale, it is hard to not mention a little bit more about the history of the Tooele smelter. After the closure of the ASARCO Murray smelter and the U.S. Smelting Midvale smelter, International was the last lead smelter in the State of Utah.
International started off incidentally in the copper business. The Highland Boy mine and other Bingham Canyon properties such as the Utah Delaware Mining Co. were in need of a new smelter after their original sites were shut down to increased environmental regulation. The remote Tooele site, far away from the growing Salt Lake Valley and located on a bench where headwinds would dump pollution into a vacant canyon, was chosen to replace the lost smelter capacity in the Salt Lake Valley. The decision to add a lead smelter to the site happened shortly after completion of the copper smelter. This was a fortuitous decision, as the lead operation would last over a quarter of a century longer than the copper smelter. Like the other smelters mentioned here, the International was reliant on its connection to the railroad for survival. The Tooele Valley Railway was built as a shortline to connect to the Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad (later Union Pacific). A few years after that, the Western Pacific (at the time an interchange partner with the Rio Grande) built a branch to reach the Tooele Valley Railway. The railroad shipping dynamic of the Tooele smelter was not far different from that of the Salt Lake Valley ones, as the Union Pacific and Western Pacific (in proxy for the Rio Grande) competed for a share in the market.
August 4, 1971 This slide taken in Tooele, Utah shows the Tooele Valley's EMD SW1200 #100 on the interchange track with the Western Pacific Railroad. At this point in time the International Smelter was in a contract with the U.S. Smelting Midvale Lead Mill to receive galena concentrate to process into lead and zinc. However the 1970 Chilean presidential election on the other end of the globe, had started a chain of events which would result in the end of lead smelting in the state of Utah. The Chilean government now controlled by a socialist majority, had nationalized Anaconda Copper's mines in the country. With a sudden loss of revenue and resources, Anaconda announced the closure of its International Smelter in Tooele, in an effort to cut its losses. With the imminent closure of the Tooele smelter, the Midvale mill shut down towards the end of 1971, and the Tooele smelter finished production in January 28, 1972. (Photographer unknown, author's collection)
International's final years, though, were tumultuous at best. While the post war bust in the metal industry had killed the ASARCO lead smelter completely, International saw its copper operations shut down and along with it the valuable Elton Tunnel which had accessed the Highland Boy and Apex mines in Bingham Canyon. After another decade of competing with the U.S. Smelting in Midvale for dominance in the custom lead-zinc smelting market, the two eventually joined forces as Tooele smelted ores milled in Midvale. Age began to take a toll on the smelter, and compared to the other properties in Anaconda's portfolio, International was growing antiquated. The final death blow to the operations at International though was due to a socialist government in Chile seizing Anaconda's profitable copper mines in the country. With a smaller profit margin, Anaconda saw the Tooele operation as a money bleeding prospect, and it was scheduled to shut down in 1972.
With the International Smelter scheduled for demolition, the Historic American Engineering Record was dispatched to photograph, record, and chart the historic structures. Being the last lead smelter in Utah, the closure of the International Smelter was truly the end of the era. T. Allan Comp described the work of the HAER team as follows: "Tooele was an important representative of a now-vanishing type of industrial plant, and as such, it deserves the thorough attention of industrial archaeologists and others. The HAER team included four architectural students, a student metallurgist, two student engineers, and one historian. They were fortunate enough to have access to the drawing files and business records of the smelter, and the drawings prepared by the team represent a compilation of those drawings." (Mining, Smelting, and Railroading; pg 111)
One of the most interesting events to happen after the International Smelter shut down was written down by Claude F. Atkin, one of the site's final security guards. "I recall that the only crew working at the plant was a day shift... I had heard rumors of what this apparently secret crew was doing, so one night while making my regular rounds I noticed some barricades around the old Reverbatory Furnace. Lots of picks, shovels, chisels, hacksaws and wheelbarrows were covered by a large tarp. There were no lights anywhere, so I didn't say anything." Claude's curiosity lead him to investigate the actions of this demolition crew at the old furnace. "I contacted the grapevine and did a little investigating myself. I tried to put the pieces together as well as I could. Usually, the Reverb furnace was never allowed to cool during plant operations... All ores were roasted or calcined, then dumped into the Reverb furnace which was "trapped" into slag pots and sent to the slag dump. All remaining metals such as copper, gold, silver, cadmium, etc., would melt and sink into the brick as the terrific heat would force it lower and lower..."
"I suppose the same situation has occurred many times in the past, and was common knowledge concerning the abandonment of all old smelters... Apparently the company was digging up the earth directly under the furnace. It was hot work for the men. But there was gold down there... A hole wider than the furnace was entirely mined to about 50 feet in depth, and everything was shipped to the refinery. The hole was later filled in. I don't think the laborers actually knew what they were doing, and the security was tight... Years later, I talked with people who should know... we figured that a large part of that 10% unaccounted loss the company was crying about for decades has been recovered and accounted for. I even heard the figures were up in the several millions of dollars. (Mining, Smelting, and Railroading in Tooele County; pg. 97)
It seems that even after retirement these old smelters had plenty of mineral wealth to give back to their owners.
This HAER diagram of the lead smelter process at International is similar to the methods used at many of the other smelters mentioned in this post. Both ASARCO in Murray and International in Tooele incorporated what was then considered advanced pollution control and monitoring techniques, to avoid suffering the same fate which had closed so many other smelters in the area. When International finally shut down in 1972, it caused the closure of many small mines in the area. One such mine closure which affected the DRGW's Marysvale Branch was recorded as such, "By January 1971, when SD7 5304 treaded lightly along the Sevier River near Belknap with four empties, traffic south of Richfield had dwindled to a single customer: a one-person lead mining operation in Marysvale. The miner toiled throughout the week to fill a small cut of GS gons with his old dump truck. Each Friday, a turn out of Salina brought in empties, leaving with loads bound for Anaconda's smelter in Tooele. When the outdated smelter closed in 1972, the miner's small profit evaporated... The mining ended, and rail service south of Richfield essentially vanished in 1973. (Crossroads of the West, quote from Keith Ardinger; pg. 86)
By the time the International shut down, it was seen as the end of an era for Utah mining history. Copper was still being mined in Bingham Canyon, and the former ASARCO copper smelter in Garfield was being operated by the growing Kennecott corporation, which had spread its influence to places as far off as Ely and McGill, Nevada and Arizona. However lead and silver mining had vanished. The mines of General Connor in Stockton, Utah were vacant. Park City saw its mining heritage vanish, to be slowly replaced by ski resorts which would someday bring it into national fame with both the 2002 Olympics and the Sundance Film Festival. Countless small one man mines across Utah, Nevada, and surrounding states closed in reaction to the loss of Utah's last lead smelter.
October 24, 2016 As the International Smelter was scrapped; one of its former components ended up getting recycled at the Trolley Square mall. This bridge was built from the salvaged remains of an ore conveyor bridge which transferred material between processes at the Tooele Smelter. The early 20th century industrial architecture style of this bridge matches the style of Trolley Square which is built inside the former Utah Light and Traction trolley repair shops. Countless Salt Lake City drivers who travel on 600 South, pass underneath this bridge daily.
ConclusionUtah's industrial strength has changed over the many years since a golden spike was first driven at Promontory Summit and Colonel Connor first opened his mine. The legacy these projects have left us is either that of cultural touchstones and monuments or the infrastructure which once moved mountains, but now conveys travelers through their busy morning commute. While more changes are guaranteed to come, we can observe what is left of the lost giants of rail and fire and admire them while we still have the chance.
Sources:
Due to the rather history dense nature of this article, I have had to use several sources. Of course Don Strack's Utah Rails.net website has been particularly useful in compiling information on a variety of subjects related to the history of these smelters, mills, and railroads.
Smelter History Index on Utah Rails.Net
Union Pacific History on Utah Rails.Net
Another spectacular source which focused exclusively on the Murray ASARCO Smelter is a video that is available on YouTube via the Preservation Utah channel. Links to the full series are included here:
Giants On the Skyline Part 1
Giants On the Skyline Part 2
Giants On the Skyline Part 3
The Library of Congress has been another great source, particularly the HAER records they hold on historic smelting activities:
HAER International Smelter
Other sources:
Bingham Canyon History
Crossroads of the West (Kooistra, Belmont, Gayer, et. al.)
...and of course one of my favorite reference books on the subject;
Mining, Smelting, and Railroading in Tooele County (Various authors).
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