SLAG & The Golden Age of Lead-Silver Ore

Today, most Americans know mining and smelting for its remnants: ghost towns, crumbling smelting works, and a half million abandoned mines. Many tourists visit old mining towns in the West and leave thinking it is a yesteryear industry, but with modern homes, businesses, and gadgets flush with minerals, mining and smelting are more important than ever. Yet, few know how the industry’s origins were powered by Eastern money and how that influence shaped the American West.

SLAG takes a new look at this once highly visible industry, one that manufactured the core materials for America’s Industrial Revolution. It focuses on the history of lead-silver mining and smelting through the lens of professional mining engineer Anton Eilers from the Civil War, through its Wild West years, and into smelting’s Trust years. The story ends with the highly public showdown over control of American Smelting & Refining in the early 1920s—the second largest employer in America at the time—between Anton’s son Karl and the famous Guggenheim family. Readers of SLAG won’t look at the industry or the West the same again.