Benton County pegged for mining boom

At the turn of the century, Pettis County was thought to be a great source of coal and Benton County was believed to be a valuable source of lead and zinc. Periodically, enterprising men would try to convince capitalists to invest money in developing the mineral resources of the area into mines that would yield great amounts of ore and great amounts of money for the investors.

Mining fever occurred so often that Elizabeth Dugan, the outspoken editor of Rosa Pearle’s Paper, wrote of Sedalia’s pretensions to mineral wealth, “Whenever Sedalia gets hard up for a boom, she solemnly declares that Sedalia is underlaid with coal and all she needs is capital to be able to furnish coal for the world.”

An article printed in the Jan. 11, 1901, edition of the Sedalia Democrat provides an example of the exaggerated reports of Sedalia’s coming prosperity linked not to coal in Pettis County, but to lead and zinc in Benton County.

The article reports the investment of W. R. McCormick, of Chicago, in the mines in Benton County. McCormick, a major investor in a copper mine in Organ, N. M,, sold his interests there for $70,000 (approximately $1.7 million in current dollars) in order to invest in the lead and zinc mines near Raymond, a boomtown in Benton County that had once been known as Hanberry Station. McCormick intended to move to Sedalia and persuade other eastern capitalists to invest in the Benton County mines and in a smelter that would be built in Sedalia.

The Democrat pronounced McCormick’s investment “one of the most gigantic spring booms the city of Sedalia and the towns in Benton County mineral district have experienced in years.”

A Democrat reporter interviewed George Raymond, owner of the mines in Benton County, for information about the proposed investment.
Raymond, who had worked as a miner throughout his adult life, had lived and worked in Leadville and Denver, Colo., and, according to Benton County historian Kenneth Bird, owned the American Lead and Zinc Co. He claimed that the ore at Raymond “is of similar formation of pockets and deposits as is found in Colorado.”

Raymond also confirmed that the Benton County mineral deposits were comparable to the “Joplin mineral field,” noting that the Benton County possessed a greater quantity of ore than did Jasper County, and that the grade of Benton county ore was “much higher.”

he miners at Joplin made a profit from rock containing so little ore that Raymond said he “could really see (that it had) no value.”
Most of the rock coming from the Joplin mines contained about three per cent ore, which the operators there considered a “paying business,” while four percent ore was considered a “bonanza.” The rock coming from the Benton County mines, Raymond insisted, contained from 15 to 70 per cent ore, and was certain to make great profits for the investors. Raymond also pointed out the “promising deposits” only three miles from the shaft of the existing mine.

McCormick’s investment allowed Raymond to purchase a 100-ton mill, that would be put into operation within two months. Raymond predicted that the Benton County mines could yield 100 tons of ore per day, worth thousands of dollars. More precisely, Raymond anticipated that within 30 days after the new mill began operation, $8,000 worth of ore would be mined each month, for a total of $96,000 per year.

The mines at Raymond had, since George Raymond moved to the area in 1899 and renamed the town for himself, been very profitable, with deposits of led and zinc so rich that the miners “have been throwing away five per cent ore.”

The village of Raymond, with a population of 100 miners, had grown since 1900 from having only one store building to having 15 buildings, in addition to three restaurants and lodging houses being built in 1901. Mr. Raymond predicted a “big increase” in the number of miners in the spring of 1901.

The expansion of the mines at Raymond was supposed to enhance Sedalia’s prosperity. Representatives of potential investors from the east had visited Sedalia in anticipation of building the smelter in the spring. Sedalia had been chosen as the site of the smelter because ore could be transported from the mines on the Sedalia, Warsaw, and Southern Railroad, and coal was regularly brought to Sedalia on the Missouri Pacific Railroad. The smelter would employ several Sedalians, who would in turn spend money in the city’s stores and with the city’s professional concerns.

In addition to the proposed smelter, Sedalia was to profit as Sedalia businessmen extended their businesses into Benton County.
Raymond reported the rumor that an unnamed Sedalia firm had “a man in the field” investigating the possibility of building a “big store to contain groceries and mining supplies.”

Rosa Pearle’s predictions seemed to be accurate. Despite the hype given to the Raymond mines, they did not provide the vast prosperity the Democrat guaranteed. Next week’s column details the history of the Raymond mines before and after McCormick’s investment.