Phelps Dodge Corporation was an American mining company founded in 1834 as an import-export firm by Anson Greene Phelps and his two sons-in-law William Earle Dodge, Sr. and Daniel James.[1] The latter two ran Phelps, James & Co., the part of the organization based in Liverpool, England. The import-export firm at first exported United States cotton from the Deep South to England and imported various metals to the US needed for industrialization. With the expansion of the Western frontier in North America, the corporation acquired mines and mining companies, including the Copper Queen Mine in Cochise County, Arizona and the Dawson, New Mexicocoal mines. It operated its own mines and acquired railroads to carry its products. By the late 19th century, it was known as a mining company.
in 1821, Anson G. Phelps started a partnership in New York City with Elisha Peck, a merchant who had been in trade in Berlin, Connecticut. Peck moved to Liverpool to run the British end of their business, an import-export company that shipped US-grown cotton from the Deep South to England, importing tin, iron, copper and other metals essential for industrial growth and development in the United States.[3] In 1834, Peck left the business and was replaced in Liverpool by Daniel James, who remained there until his death in 1876.[4] It was at this time that the concern of Phelps Dodge and Company was begun.
Between 1917 and 1919, Phelps Dodge was involved in a union busting Bisbee Deportation of 1300 miners working in the mines around Bisbee, Arizona. Using World War I as the premise to take action, Phelps Dodge, in collusion with the local sheriff, illegally kidnapped and deported striking mine workers.[citation needed]
Expansion
When Anson G. Phelps died, his sons-in-law purchased his portion of the company, but retained the name, and the import-export business. In 1880, the company invested in the Detroit Copper Company of Clifton, Arizona, at the time a very small copper camp in the eastern Arizona Territory. Phelps-Dodge interested Dr. James Douglas of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania to inspect the property and make recommendations. Dr. Douglas inspected the Detroit Copper Co of Morenci and also ventured south to the Warren District. On his advice, Phelps-Dodge began its own mining operations in the Warren District with the purchase of the Atlanta Copper Mine in 1882, neighboring the Copper Queen Mine. When both mines discovered the same ore body, instead of fighting over it, they merged in 1885, creating the Copper Queen Consolidated Mining Company. The Copper Queen Mine in Bisbee, Arizona Territory, became one of the most productive in the state of the early 20th century.
The company focused largely on providing copper wire and cables to industry, products that were in high demand as the Industrial Revolution took hold. As the company diversified, it began investing in new railroads, essential in the company's efforts to keep costs as low as possible, especially in Arizona Territory. It used its own lines to transport products to and from major railroads for its markets on the eastern/northeastern shores.
In 1895, the first contract was signed by Phelps Dodge and Company and the Nichols Copper Company (which was renamed from G. H. Nichols and Company in 1891) to have Phelps Dodge deliver a minimum of 1,000,000 pounds (450,000kg) of blister copper over three years.[5] This economically symbiotic relationship lasted until 1922, in which Phelps Dodge provided 90% of the blister copper Nichols Copper Company used to produce 100% pure copper.[5] During the 1920s, Phelps Dodge invested $3.5million in the Nichols Copper Company's plant modernization projects in exchange for stock in Nichols Copper Company.[5] This dramatically increased copper production of the plant.[5] In 1930, Dr. William Henry Nichols died; Phelps Dodge purchased the Laurel Hill plant that same year.[5]
During the late 19th century, in concert with its metal interests, Phelps Dodge Corporation became one of the largest producers of lumber and lumber products in the United States.
In Tombstone, Arizona during 1900 E. B. Gage, Frank Murphy, and William Staunton consolidated their various mining properties into a single entity, the Tombstone Consolidated Mines Company. They worked to drain mines that had filled with water, laid a rail spur into town, and revived mining. They experienced some success until the pumps failed in 1909. The new company filed for bankruptcy and the Phelps-Dodge Corporation acquired its claims.[6]
The Phelps Dodge Headquarters Building was built in 1896 and is located in 5 Copper Queen Plaza, Bisbee, Az. The building was the headquarters of the Phelps Dodge Mining Co. from 1896 to 1961. It now houses the Bisbee Mining & Historical Museum. It was the first museum in the southwest to be distinguished as a Smithsonian Affiliate Museum. The building was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on June 3, 1971, reference #71000109.
In 1908, with the Phelps Dodge owners no longer alive, the company was re-organized as a public company and the name changed to Phelps Dodge Corporation, a holding company for all of the various properties and operations. Dr. Douglas was its first president.
Labor relations
The company became notorious for its anti-union tactics, primarily for the 1917 Bisbee Deportation. The company worked with a local group of private citizens and the county sheriff to deputize about 2,000 members of a posse. Given names of Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) members and other miners, they arrested nearly 1,300 striking miners at gunpoint in an early morning raid at Bisbee, Lowell and Warren. Portraying those affiliated with the IWW as bent on war-related sabotage, the company ordered them expelled from the jurisdiction, deporting them to Hermanas, New Mexico. Company officials and Sheriff Harry C. Wheeler seized telegraph and telephone lines to keep news of this from getting out.[7][8]
The Phelps Dodge copper mine at Morenci, Arizona was the site of a violent strike from 1983 to 1986, culminating in one of the largest union decertifications in American labor history.[9]
Subdivisions
In South America, the company had several very large copper mining operations in Peru. In the Congo of Africa, Phelps Dodge Corporation was the majority owner and operator of the Tenke Fungurume project, generally considered to be the world's largest undeveloped copper/cobalt project.[citation needed]
A subsidiary of Phelps Dodge Corporation, Climax Molybdenum, is the largest primary producer of molybdenum in the world. At the Henderson mine west of Empire, Colorado, Climax Molybdenum has produced more than 160 million tons of ore and 770million pounds of molybdenum since the mine opened in 1976. Climax Molybdenum also owns the Climax molybdenum mine, north of Leadville, Colorado.
In 1906, Phelps-Dodge acquired the Dawson Fuel Company of Dawson, New Mexico to mine coal for its copper smelting operations. Major accidents include the explosion at the Dawson Stag Canyon No. 2 mine which resulted in 264 deaths, and is one of the deadliest coal mining accidents in U.S. history.
The company employed more than 13,500 people worldwide.
Expansion and acquisition
On Sunday, November 19, 2006, Freeport-McMoRan announced that it planned to acquire Phelps Dodge for $25.9billion in cash and stock to create the world's largest publicly traded copper mining company. Stockholders for both companies voted on the proposal March 14, 2007. On Monday, March 19, 2007, Phelps Dodge Corporation was acquired by Freeport-McMoRan (NYSE: FCX), creating the world's largest publicly traded copper company, with 25,000 employees at acquisition.
By June 1998, Reynaldo Delgado had worked for the Phelps Dodge smelting plant in Hurley, New Mexico, for two years. The plant had recently incurred a 10-day shut-down, and, on June 30, 1998, the crew Mr. Delgado was assigned to was short-handed. When the crew encountered an emergency situation known as a "runaway," Mr. Delgado's supervisors ordered him to enter – alone – a tunnel to remove a ladle that was overflowing with molten slag. Mr. Delgado was not qualified to perform this task and had never done so under runaway conditions, facts which he repeatedly told his supervisors. Following several instances of protesting and requesting help, which were refused by his supervisors, Mr. Delgado was sent to perform this task. There was an explosion inside the tunnel, and he subsequently emerged from the tunnel fully engulfed in flames and collapsed at the scene. He suffered third degree burns over his entire body and later died at an Arizona hospital.[12]
↑ Cleland, Robert Glass (1952). A History of Phelps Dodge. New York: Alfred A Knofp. p.12.
↑ Whitten, David O.; Whitten, Bessie Emrick; and Sisaye, Seleshi. The Birth of Big Business in the United States, 1860–1914: Commercial, Extractive, and Industrial Enterprise. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2005. ISBN0-313-32395-X
↑ Byrkit, James. "The Bisbee Deportation." In American Labor in the Southwest. James C. Foster, ed. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1982. ISBN0-8165-0741-4
↑ Goldfield, David. "Suppressing Dissent." In The American Journey. David Goldfield, ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, Inc, 2011. ISBN0-205-24591-9
↑ Rosenblum, Jonathan D. Copper Crucible: How the Arizona Miners' Strike of 1983 Recast Labor-Management Relations in America. Ithaca, N.Y.: ILR Press, 1995.
Bisbee is a city in and the county seat of Cochise County in southeastern Arizona, United States. It is 92 miles (148 km) southeast of Tucson and 11 miles (18 km) north of the Mexican border. According to the 2020 census, the population of the town was 4,923, down from 5,575 in the 2010 census.
Morenci is a census-designated place (CDP) and company town in Greenlee County, Arizona, United States, and was founded by the Detroit Copper Mining Company of Arizona. The population was 2,000 at the 2000 census and 1,489 at the 2010 census. The biggest employer in Morenci and the owner of the town is Freeport-McMoRan, the owner of the Morenci Mine, the largest copper mining operation in North America, and one of the largest copper mines in the world. The town was a site of the Arizona Copper Mine Strike of 1983. The large open-pit mine is north of the town.
Freeport-McMoRan Inc., often called Freeport, is an American mining company based in the Freeport-McMoRan Center, in Phoenix, Arizona. The company is the world's largest producer of molybdenum, a major copper producer and operates the world's largest gold mine, the Grasberg mine in Papua, Indonesia.
James Walter Douglas was a British North America born mining engineer and businessman who introduced a number of metallurgical innovations in copper mining and amassed a fortune through the copper mining industry of Bisbee, Arizona Territory and Sonora before and after the turn of the 20th century.
The 1983 Arizona copper mine strike began as a labour dispute between the Phelps Dodge Corporation and a group of union copper miners and mill workers, led by the United Steelworkers. The subsequent strike lasted nearly three years and resulted in the replacement of most of the striking workers and decertification of the unions. It is regarded as an important event in the history of the United States labor movement.
The Bisbee Deportation was the illegal kidnapping and deportation of about 1,300 striking mine workers, their supporters, and citizen bystanders by 2,000 members of a deputized posse, who arrested them beginning on July 12, 1917, in Bisbee, Arizona. The action was orchestrated by Phelps Dodge, the major mining company in the area, which provided lists of workers and others who were to be arrested to the Cochise County sheriff, Harry C. Wheeler. Those arrested were taken to a local baseball park before being loaded onto cattle cars and deported 200 miles (320 km) to Tres Hermanas in New Mexico. The 16-hour journey was through desert without food and with little water. Once unloaded, the deportees, most without money or transportation, were warned against returning to Bisbee. The US government soon brought in members of the US Army to assist with relocating the deportees to Columbus, New Mexico.
Louis S. Cates was an American mining engineer and businessman. He was president of Phelps Dodge from 1930 to 1947.
Louis Davidson Ricketts was an American economic geologist, metallurgist, mining engineer and banker who pioneered development of copper mines in the U.S. state of Arizona and the Mexican state of Sonora.
Daniel Willis James was the son of an American merchant who with his cousin, William Earl Dodge Jr., transformed Phelps, Dodge & Co. from a predominantly mercantile business into one of the largest copper producers in the world.
In Arizona, copper mining has been a major industry since the 19th century. In 2007, Arizona was the leading copper-producing state in the country, producing 750 thousand metric tons of copper, valued at $5.54 billion. Arizona's copper production was 60% of the total for the United States. Copper mining also produces gold and silver as byproducts. Byproduct molybdenum from copper mining makes Arizona the nation's second-largest producer of that metal. Although copper mineralization was found by the earliest Spanish explorers of Arizona, the territory was remote, and copper could seldom be profitably mined and shipped. Early Spanish, Mexican, and American prospectors searched for gold and silver, and ignored copper. It was not until the completion of the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1876 that copper became broadly economic to mine and ship to market.
The Copper Queen Mine was a copper mine in Cochise County, Arizona, United States. Its development led to the growth of the surrounding town of Bisbee in the 1880s. Its orebody ran 23% copper, an extraordinarily high grade. It was acquired by Phelps Dodge in 1885.
Tenke Fungurume Mining SA (TFM) is one of the largest copper and cobalt producers in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Construction on the site began in the latter part of 2006, and in 2009, TFM produced its first copper. The mine has since become a vital source of income for local communities and the country by way of royalties and taxes, as well as the largest employer in the region.
The New Cornelia mine is a currently inactive open-pit copper mine in Pima County, Arizona, United States. It was the only productive mine in the Ajo mining district, and is located just outside the town of Ajo, which was built as a company town to serve the New Cornelia mines. The roughly circular pit is one and a half miles across at its widest point, and 1,100 feet deep at the center. Although not generally regarded as a 'dam', the New Cornelia Mine Tailings is often cited as the largest dam structure in the United States with a volume of 7.4 billion cubic feet.
The El Paso and Southwestern Railroad began in 1888 as the Arizona and South Eastern Railroad, a short line serving copper mines in southern Arizona. Over the next few decades, it grew into a 1200-mile system that stretched from Tucumcari, New Mexico, southward to El Paso, Texas, and westward to Tucson, Arizona, with several branch lines, including one to Nacozari, Mexico. The railroad was bought by the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1924 and fully merged into its parent company in 1955. The EP&SW was a major link in the transcontinental route of the Golden State Limited.
William Earl Dodge Jr. was an American businessman, activist, and philanthropist. For many years, he was one of two controlling partners in the Phelps Dodge Corporation, one of the largest copper mining corporations in the United States.
The Detroit Copper Mining Company was an American copper mining and smelting operation based in Morenci, Arizona. Incorporated in July 1872, it existed as an independent company until 1897, when a controlling interest in the company was purchased by the predecessor of the Phelps Dodge Corporation. It continued to exist as a subsidiary of Phelps Dodge & Co until 1917, when all Phelps Dodge operations in the area were consolidated into the new Phelps Dodge Corporation, Morenci Branch.
The Morenci Mine is a large copper mine located near Morenci, Arizona, United States. Morenci represents one of the largest copper reserves in the United States and in the world, having estimated reserves of 3.2 billion tonnes (3.5×109 short tons) of ore grading 0.16% copper. It is located in Greenlee County, just outside the company town of Morenci and the town of Clifton. Freeport-McMoRan is the principal owner and, since 2016, Sumitomo Group has owned a 28% interest in the mine.
The Sierrita Mine is a large copper mine located in the Sierrita Mountains of Arizona, in southwestern United States. The mine is located in southern Pima County, southwest of Tucson and west of Green Valley-Sahuarita.
Molybdenum mining in the United States produced 65,500 metric tons of molybdenum in 2014, worth US$1.8 billion. The US was the world's second-largest molybdenum producer, after China, and provided 25% of the world's supply of molybdenum.
Cyprus Amax Minerals was a major US-based mining company formed in 1993 through the merger of AMAX with the Cyprus Minerals Company. It was one of the world's largest producers of Molybdenum and Lithium and a leading producer of copper and coal. It also produced iron ore and gold. It was acquired by the Phelps Dodge Corporation in 1999.
References
Cleland, Robert Glass (1952). A history of Phelps Dodge, 1834–1950. New York: Knopf.
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