Los Angeles County

Biographies

 

 

 

WILLIAM PEYTON DUNHAM

 

 

     DUNHAM, WILLIAM PEYTON, Mining, Los Angeles, California, was born November 8, 1862 on a farm in Van Buren County, Iowa.  His father was William Pugh Dunham, born in Ohio, and his mother Catherine Elizabeth (Murphy) Dunham, born in Indiana, most of the ancestors coming from Virginia and New Jersey.

     He was married on December 24, 1887, in Chicago, to Susan Vermillion Whiteford, who was born in Junction City, Kansas, the daughter of John Xavier Whiteford, born in Three Rivers, Canada, and Aramenta L. (Wills) Whiteford, born in West Virginia.  The couple have two children: James Whiteford, born in Chicago in 1893, now associated with his father in his many mining enterprises, and Virginia Susan Dunham, born in Los Angeles, California, in 1899, attending the Westlake School for Girls, in Los Angeles.

     Mr. Dunham received his early education in the public schools of Leavenworth, Kansas, and in the high school at that place.

     His first occupation was as clerk in the wholesale hardware house of J. F. Richards & Co.  The concern was then doing business at Leavenworth, but later removed to Kansas City, Missouri, where it is now doing business as the Richards & Conover Hardware Company.  Mr. Dunham remained in their employ until about 1884, when he left to embark in the hardware business for himself at Belleville, Kansas, and did a fairly prosperous business for about seven years.

     In January, 1892, he sold out to engage in mining.  He was then thirty years of age.  He first went to Creede, Colorado.  Remaining there only a short time, he entered the Cripple Creek district, where between the years 1897 and 1902 he engineered the sale of a number of the largest properties in that district.

     During that time he became interested in Arizona and in Old Mexico, and is now the president and principal owner of the Arizona Hercules Copper Company, whose holdings at Ray, Arizona, adjoin those of the Ray Consolidated Copper Company, the last sale of which he engineered at the time it was taken over by the present owners.  

     The Arizona Hercules Copper Company is a property of enormous value, having developed bodies of valuable ore of great magnitude.

     Mr. Dunham is also the president and principal stockholder of the Ray Development Company, and practically owns the town and the water system, which has just completed a five-mile fourteen-inch pipe line, with the first unit of 350,000 gallons of a 1,000,000-gallon reservoir.

     He is now completing in the town a three-story stone hotel that will have one hundred rooms and will be one of the finest buildings in the new State of Arizona.  He is also constructing many new dwellings and buildings.

     Mr. Dunham is the chief owner in various vast mining enterprises in Old Mexico, among which are the Cuyutlan gold mine, the California gold mine, the Belmont silver-lead properties at Santa Eulalia, the Fortuna and El Oro gold mines, and he is a large stockholder in the Consuelo Mining, Milling and Power Company and the Chihuahua Esperanza gold mining property in the camp of Dolores.

     He is also vice president and the second largest stockholder of the Pinos Altos Mines Company, in the State of Chihuahua, the holdings of which company comprise about 40,000 acres of valuable mineral territory.

     Mr. Dunham is also president of the Medallion Oil Company, and is the largest individual stockholder.  This company is at present drilling an enormous territory in the Kettleman Hills, south of Coalinga.

     Among the clubs of which he is a member are the California Club and the Sierra Madre Clubs, both of Los Angeles; the Alta Club, of Salt Lake City, Utah; the El Paso Club, of Colorado Springs, Colorado; the Rocky Mountain Club, of New York City, New York; the Arizona Club, of Phoenix, Arizona, and the Foreign Club, of Chihuahua, Mexico.

     Mr. Dunham is distinctly a self-made man, and is the leader of all enterprises in which he becomes interested.

     He maintains offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco, California, and at Ray, Arizona.

 

 

Transcribed by Bill Simpkins.

Source: Press Reference Library, Western Edition Notables of the West, Vol. I,  Page 839, International News Service, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Atlanta.  1913.

© 2011 Bill Simpkins.

 

 

 

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