Los Angeles County
Biographies
ALVA DE WITT MYERS
MYERS, ALVA DE WITT, Mining, Los Angeles, California, was born in La Grande, Iowa, July 18, 1872, the son of William Conrad Myers and Caroline Elizabeth (Waitman) Myers. Mr. Myers has been thrice married, his first wife having been Edna Roth, whom he married at Cripple Creek, Colorado, 1895. She was claimed by death July 19, 1896. About ten years later Mr. Myers married Martha Summers at San Diego, California, but temperamental differences parted them in April, 1909. On August 3, 1912, he married Hedrig Loblinski at Long Beach, Cal.
Mr. Myers, who is one of the most picturesque of the latter day Westerners, is a self-made man. His educational opportunities were limited to about three years in the public schools of his native town, and from the time he left school at the age of thirteen, against the wishes of his parents, he has carried the responsibility of this life upon his own shoulders.
In the latter part of 1884 Mr. Myers’ father moved to Kansas and became a ranch owner. The son worked with him for about a year and then, while less than fifteen years of age, left home to begin a business life. He first went to the Indian Territory and worked for several months at odd jobs, then went to St. Louis, where he joined the men who worked the lumber rafts on the Mississippi. In 1888 he pointed for the mining camps of Colorado.
He was still a boy, but readily obtained work in the mines and worked with pick and shovel in the various camps of Colorado, Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon. Upon the discovery of Cripple Creek he joined the rush there.
For the next four years Mr. Myers mined in and around Cripple Creek, but in 1896 moved to the Northwest and worked in Oregon and Washington until 1902, when Tonopah, Nevada, was discovered. He went there and remained in that region for about a year, but after having been at mining work for seventeen years found himself hardly better off in the world’s goods than on the day he entered Colorado. Accordingly, he and his partner bought an outfit and set off in search of new territory. The camp of Goldfield, Nevada, one of the world’s greatest gold centers and most picturesque mining camps, is the result of that trip, for Mr. Myers and his associates were the discoverers and builders of the town. From that time, May 24, 1903, when they first struck gold, Mr. Myers has been among the mining notables.
When Mr. Myers and his companion started out from Tonopah their chief assets were experience and determination and the subsequent success was due to these characteristics. During several months that they spent working a prospect in what is now known as the Gold Mountain district, Mr. Myers frequently conferred with his partner about trying Columbia Mountain, which, to his experienced eye, presented attractive mineral possibilities. Finally he went to the mountain, and after a hunt for water pitched camp and began to work. The result was the Combination Mine, which first rewarded its workers on the 24th day of May, 1903. In October, 1903, Mr. Myers named the camp and district Goldfield and as such it remains today.
The Combination Mine was followed by other big producers, including the Combination Fraction, Silver Peak and C. O. D. Mines. Next he found what has proved to be the greatest property in the Goldfield district and one of the greatest gold properties the world ever knew, the Mohawk Mine. Mr. Myers worked all of these properties and for the Mohawk alone received, when he sold his interest, $400,000. The Combination Mine, his first discovery, he sold the $75,000
Following the christening of the town as Goldfield, Mr. Myers was made chief executive or President of the district organization and in this capacity was called upon to act as referee in all cases of trouble over claims, etc. and through his fair handling of the questions involved, prevented much trouble and litigation.
Through Mr. Myer’s leadership commercial enterprises were launched and other channels of wealth opened. He was also one of the organizers of the Goldfield Chamber of Commerce.
In addition to his gold mining interests, Mr. Myers was a powerful factor in the copper development of Nevada. He was largely interested in the Ely Calumet, Rickard Ely, Ely Western and the United Ely, all located at Ely, Nevada.
Mr. Myers’ enthusiasm, generosity and confidence in his followers, however, brought disaster upon him when he was at the zenith of his success. In addition to giving away thousands of dollars in cash, he indorsed notes innumerable and guaranteed various claims and corporations with the result that in a few years his entire fortune was swept away.
In 1906 Mr. Myers had built a home in Long Beach, California, at a cost of more than $200,000, one of the show places of Southern California, and when the crash came in 1910 this mansion, a fund of useful knowledge and his determination were his only assets.
Mr. Myers immediately set to work to rebuild his fortune, choosing the famous Panamint mines, in California as his vehicle. These properties, which had produced $5,000,000 during a brief boom period in the seventies, had lain idle for more than thirty years. Before they were closed on account of litigation due to the Apex law, their owners, after paying $110 per ton freight costs on all the ore extracted, had realized a net profit of $3,000,000. Mr. Myers, who knew the history of the property, acquired title to it from all of the old claimants. Geological experts estimate that there is a vast amount of commercial ore in sight and Mr. Myers and associates have already begun the extraction of it. In addition to this, Mr. Myers controls four hundred acres of ore land in the great Ely copper camp.
Other valuable properties which Mr. Myers has acquired include the Silver Peak Camp Bird, at Silver Park, Nevada, and valuable placer claims in the Alamos district of Sonora and Chihuahua, Mexico.
Mr. Myers first went to Southern California in 1904, when he was known all over the United States as the founder of Goldfield. He foresaw Los Angeles as the mining center of the West and two years later he returned and built his magnificent home at Long Beach. This he has since sold to Jotham Bixby.
Mr. Myers was one of the organizers of the Sierra Madre Club of Los Angeles, now the leading engineers’ club of the West, and of the Los Angeles Chamber of Mines and Oil. He is a charter member of the Rocky Mountain Club, New York, and also belongs to Montezuma Club, Goldfield, the B. P. O. Elks and Odd Fellows.
Transcribed
by Joyce Rugeroni.
Source: Press
Reference Library, Western Edition Notables of the West, Vol. I, Page 757,
International News Service, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles,
Boston, Atlanta. 1913.
© 2011 Joyce
Rugeroni.
GOLDEN NUGGET'S LOS ANGELES
BIOGRAPIES