JOHN E. PELTON

Los Angeles County

Biographies

JOHN E. PELTON

PELTON, JOHN E., Capitalist, Mining Interests; Pasadena, Cal., and Nevada, was born in the town of Delta, Fulton County, Ohio, July 4, 1857, the son of Benjamin H. and Mary Pelton. He married Kate Anderson, February 28, 1881, at Denver, Colorado. There are four children, Leonora G., Edna D., George S., the oldest son, and Herbert E. Pelton.

Mr. Pelton went to the public schools of Delta and to the Hamilton (Ohio) High School until he was sixteen. In 1873 he went to Colorado.

His career from that time has been full of vicissitudes, with the romantic climax which characterized so many in the great West. Like most of the wealth-seeking young men who went West, he became a miner. For a young man of his years he showed wonderful enterprise and determination to succeed, and began at once to lease and contract, instead of being satisfied with the pick and shovel work of the wage-earning miner. The leases he secured proved to be good ones, and before he was twenty he became an owner and operator.

His field of operations in Colorado extended from Denver and the great gold and silver fields in its immediate vicinity to those of the San Juan and Gunnison district in the southern and southwestern part of the State. Frequently he returned to the ground in one mine what he had taken from another, and many times the elusive gold vein pinched out before him just as he thought it was about to yield fortune. But, generally speaking, he did well. When a brilliant prospect failed to materialize, he worked at modest profit some known body of ore. He became an expert on the gold and silver ores of the district and ranked with the engineers in the field.

Like most miners in Colorado, he was heavily interested in silver properties. This was while Colorado was the greatest of the silver States, producing more than $30,000,000 annually in that metal, and while the money of the United States was on a silver as well as gold basis. When silver was demonetized in 1893, Mr. Pelton was in possession of a number of good silver properties, in the Idaho Springs, the Creede, and the Aspen districts, where are found the largest deposits of silver ores in the world. All these became worse than worthless. And like most Colorado miners, he changed his search for silver to a search for gold, and did a great deal toward the development of a number of the great gold camps of that State.

After the silver panic, during the McKinley administration, he for a time turned his attention to other pursuits. He moved to Montrose in the famous Uncompaghre Valley, Colorado, and bought a herd of cattle, and went into the cattle business on a considerable scale. This was in the wildest and most rugged country in America, where cattle roam not on the flat and easy prairie, but must be followed among the canyons and the crags and in the forests next the snow line 12,000 feet above the sea level. He also went into fruit growing, as it was at that time that the discovery was made that the valleys of Western Colorado were among the best apple and peach-growing sections of America. In the small Uncompahgre community he made himself well known politically.

It was in these days when efforts were being made to interest the United States Government in the work of reclamation that Mr. Pelton, through sheer love of adventure and a comprehensive knowledge of the inestimable benefits which would accrue by reason of a tunnel through the Gunnison Canyon, organized a small crew of men, built a float called the City of Montrose, which afterward figured largely in the history of that eventful period, and undertook to traverse the canyon, a feat no man had attempted before.

This trip, which Mr. Pelton expected would take but a few days, took two weeks, and was only accomplished after overcoming almost insurmountable obstacles. The feat of traversing this mountain canyon served, however, to convince Mr. Pelton that the tunnel project was feasible and he immediately undertook, with his customary energy, to set the wheels in motion. It was largely through Mr. Pelton’s tireless efforts that the Government was induced to take up the work of digging the Gunnison Tunnel, which enterprise has since been completed, diverting one of the greatest rivers of the West through a mountain range into another valley. He was rewarded for his large public-spirit and political activity by President McKinley, who appointed him Receiver of Public Moneys for the United States at Montrose.

The Goldfield excitement had largely subsided and had gone through the period of wild catting and stock jobbing when Mr. Pelton saw his opportunity in Nevada, and left Colorado in 1907, moving to Goldfield.

It is from this date that the most interesting part of Mr. Pelton’s history begins. With the capital he had, he began securing promising properties. He did well, but made no startling profits until he met a well known prospector in the National district who wished to sell a location which did not seem to indicate more than did a hundred others in the neighborhood. He wanted $20,000 for the prospect. Mr. Pelton saw with his experienced eyes that the expenditure of this sum would be likely to prove a good investment and he made the initial payment at once.

Within two weeks from that time an almost solid body of gold ore was uncovered on an adjoining claim with the result that the man who sold Mr. Pelton the National mine and those who were associated with him took steps to get the property back.

It was now that all of Mr. Pelton’s resourcefulness and business sagacity were called into play and for the next few months an absorbing business drama was played with the entire West as the stage and a number of well known mining men as the leading characters. Mr. Pelton finally triumphed, and he found himself in possession of what has since proved to be one of the bonanza mines of Nevada.

Up to 1913, over five million dollars in gold has been taken from this mine and it is still a heavy producer, promising to so continue indefinitely. It has made this modest, unassuming Westerner one of the bonanza kings of the country, as the mine is held at an enormous valuation aside from what it has already yielded.

Mr. Pelton moved from Nevada to Pasadena in January, 1911, purchasing one of the beautiful homes in the city by the foothills. Here in this congenial atmosphere of beauty and refinement he and his family are living quietly.

Transcribed 7-6-08 Marilyn R. Pankey.

Source: Press Reference Library, Western Edition Notables of the West, Vol. I, Page 103, International News Service, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Atlanta. 1913.

GOLDEN NUGGET'S LOS ANGELES BIOGRAPIES

GOLDEN NUGGET INDEX