Los Angeles County
Biographies
ROBERT LANKA
LANKA, ROBERT, Mining
Engineer, Los Angeles, California, was born in Chicago, Illinois. He is the son
of Joseph Lanka and Regina Lanka. He married Hattie B. Craig at Los
Angeles in June, 1905, and to them there have been born two children, Anges Lenore and Robert Craig Lanka.
Mr. Lanka, who is one of the successful mining engineers
of the West, is essentially a self-made man. He attended the grammar and high
schools of Chicago, Illinois, leaving the latter after one year’s attendance to
take up art at the Chicago Art Institute. At the end of a year, however, he
gave up his studies and went to work in the art department of a large
lithographing establishment. He continued in this line for several years, and
when he was about twenty years of age moved to the Northwest, locating in the
State of Oregon.
Determining upon mining as a career, he studied mine
engineering in the Oregon Agricultural College, from which he was graduated in
the class of 1900 with the degree of Bachelor of Science. For several years
prior to entering college Mr. Lanka had obtained practical experience in
the mining camps of Eastern Oregon and the Mother Lode country of California.
In this way, and with his art work, Mr. Lanka earned enough to pay his own way
through college. He worked in various capacities in the mining fields during
his vacation months, as assayer, millman, and mine
foreman, and during his study months he supported himself through his art
productions.
Upon leaving college Mr. Lanka practically abandoned his
art work for the mining business, and has continued in this latter profession,
working principally in Nevada and Old Mexico. In the former section
Mr. Lanka was unusually active and was one of the pioneers during the
early days of the strike in the Bullfrog district. He was among the earliest
arrivals in various other Nevada camps also, and had the distinction and
advantage of being the first Assayer to establish offices in Goldfield
following the great gold strike at that celebrated mining camp.
Since 1910 Mr. Lanka has been in close association as
Consulting Engineer with E. A. (“Bob”) Montgomery, of Los
Angeles, one of the solid men who made fame and fortune for themselves during
the boom days of Goldfield. Mr. Montgomery, who is a practical mining man
himself, has, since Mr. Lanka joined him, depended largely upon the
judgment of the latter in the examination of properties in the United States
and Mexico.
In recent years metal mining in Mexico and the
southwestern part of the United States has experienced an unprecedented
activity, and in the general development the expert engineers of the mining
business have led the way. Mr. Lanka, as a geologist and engineer of wide
experience, has been one of those men who have taken an active part in this
work, and through his reports on properties has had an influence in inducing
capital to invest in mining.
Mr. Lanka has been a mining operator on his own account,
being in possession of valuable properties in Old Mexico, and also serving as
Vice President of the Leon Grande Mining Company.
Mr. Lanka pays scant attention to politics, but earlier
in his life took a great interest in military affairs. At the outbreak of the
Spanish-American War he volunteered his services and was assigned to the Second
United States Volunteer Engineer Corps. He served in the capacity of
topographical draughtsman during the tenure of the war and was mustered out
after peace had been declared.
It was upon his return from the army that Mr. Lanka took
up the study of mine engineering seriously, graduating, as before stated,
within two years.
Mr. Lanka takes considerable interest in fraternal
affairs and is a prominent member of the Masons. He belongs to the Blue Lodge,
Goldfield (Nevada) Consistory, and Kerak Temple, of
the Mystic Shrine. He is also a member of the Sierra Madre Club of Los Angeles,
the leading social and business organization of mining men and men interested
in lines affiliated with mining, in the Southwest.
Mr. Lanka maintains his offices in Los Angeles, but has
his residence in Ocean Park, California, a seashore suburb of Los Angeles.
Transcribed by Marie Hassard
19 August 2011.
Source: Press Reference
Library, Western Edition Notables of the West, Vol. I, Page 735, International News Service,
New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Atlanta. 1913.
© 2011 Marie Hassard.
GOLDEN NUGGET'S LOS ANGELES BIOGRAPIES