Smith, Wilbur H.

Wilbur Harry Smith (1913-1988) was a division geologist for the Kennecott Copper Corporation from 1959 to 1978. He began his career as a geologist in his teenage years working for the International Smelting and Refining Plant in Tooele, Utah. This experience led to his job as sampler at Lark Mine for the U. S. Smelting, Refining and Mining Company, circa 1944, and then to mine exploration work at El Tisur Mines in Oaxaca, Mexico. Most of his years as geologist, however, were spent at Kennecott studying the Oquirrh Mountains west of Salt Lake City, plotting underground and surface geologic maps, and visiting and photographing old smelters.

Wilbur H. Smith was born to Howard Milburn and Jessie Ethel Smith on April 29, 1913, in Tooele, Utah. His father was chief clerk at Anaconda's International Smelter at Tooele. This instilled in Smith a lifelong interest in mines, smelters, railroads, history, and photography. His love of photography would one day lead him to photograph the north end of the Oquirrh Mountains from the open cockpit of an airplane during the 1930s, and to document the demolition of Bingham during the 1960s. These materials were later compiled into a scrapbook entitled The Death and Burial of Bingham. He took photographs of the machine house in the old Tooele smelter from every conceivable angle, and also documented, through photography, the geology of several mines and mining districts, such as Bingham and Tooele, Utah.

During the 1930s Smith worked at the International Smelting and Refining Plant in Tooele. One colleague mentions that there were days of standing on a wooden platform in special big wooden shoes, sprayed by a water hose, re-bricking the floor inside a still-hot sulfurous reverberatory furnace, and of shoveling the black chalcocite dust that was rich Mountain City smelting ore. Smith also attended the University of Utah during the 1930s, putting himself through school with money earned in the mill at Anaconda's Walker Mine in California. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in geology on June 4, 1935. He studied petrology for another two years but did not have enough money to complete a graduate degree.

During World War II Smith found employment as sampler in the High Ore mine at Butte, Montana. After the war he worked as a geologist for thirteen years in the U.S. Smelting, Refining and Mining Company's mines at Lark, Utah. His employment at Lark was interrupted in 1957 with a proposal from the Republic Steel Corporation to do exploration work at El Tisur Mines in Oaxaca, Mexico. He worked a year or so in Mexico and then returned to his native Tooele. His love for Tooele's mining activities, railroad, and smelter are manifest through the countless photographs he took, and in the papers and books he collected on these subjects.

In 1959 Smith was hired as junior geologist for Kennecott Copper Corporation's Bingham geology department. His geological knowledge of the Bingham district was invaluable, enabling him to map the underground structures of the Kennecott mine as well as write a history of the district (which was never completed). Many of his articles on the Bingham district, such as More Jobs For Geology Spur Better Mapping Methods at Bingham Canyon, were published in magazines and guidebooks and are present in the collection. Between 1961 and 1969 Smith was promoted to geologist, then senior geologist, and finally division geologist. During this time he was involved in organizations such as the Utah Geological Society, the Geological Society of America, the Society of Economic Geologists, and the Society of Professional Geologists. He was also a member of the Tooele Museum Board and was involved in a local discussion group of geology professionals and university professors.

Smith retired from Kennecott in 1978 after nineteen years of service. Even after his retirement, however, Smith continued to research the structural geological history of the Oquirrh mountain range and take photographs of smelters and mining areas as a hobby. This was cut short with the advancement of diabetes which confined him to his Holladay apartment, and later to the Tooele County Hospital, where he died in 1988.

From the guide to the Wilbur H. Smith papers, 1853-1988, (J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah)