Noah Armstrong: Silver Baron

Noah Armstrong, one of the characters in my book, laid his foundation for breeding expensive horses by first becoming a mining success. He and his wife were raising three children on their Minnesota farm when hearing news reports of gold seekers by the thousands rushing to California, to the Pacific Northwest, and the Rocky Mountains to make a quick fortune. At age 40, Noah felt a sense of urgency to join the West’s roaring mining frontier. I wonder how understanding his wife was when he told her he wanted to exchange his established life as a farmer for adventure in prospecting.

I found little information about his first ten years as a prospector, except that he made occasional trips back home. Then, the summer of 1872, prospectors in the Pioneer Mountains, Idaho Territory, discovered a valuable lode of silver. When Noah learned of the discovery, he moved the crew prospecting for him to Lion Mountain where the crews struck multiple high-grade silver lodes. Noah must have been thrilled with these valuable discoveries even though silver was less lucrative than gold and far more difficult to extract. Now he faced the perplexing proposition of mining silver, which required a sophisticated and labor-intensive mining endeavor. 

For that he’d need piles of money. Multitudes of men would have to be hired to tunnel into the earth to mine the silver. Mills and smelters would have to be constructed to separate the silver from its protective rock before it could be refined. 

In search of a partner with money, Noah traveled to Virginia City where he convinced Charles L. Dahler, a banker, to finance construction of a forty-ton capacity smelter at Trapper Creek, completed in 1877. The camp of Glendale that grew around the smelting works thrived under Noah’s thumb. He owned the bank, co-owned the town’s two stores and was postmaster. At his assay office, the order was to assay his minerals before anyone else’s. 

Noah had also formed The Hecla Consolidated Mining Company with several investors. Appointed as superintendent and with large amounts of money at his disposal, he purchased all Lion Mountain properties not already under company ownership. He updated and expanded existing infrastructure at multiple properties. Ambitious improvements included snow sheds and a narrow-gauge rail tramway to access the mines existing almost as high as the clouds. The tramway alone cost $96,000. Hecla Company stockholders were jittery. When they received smaller dividends than expected, they fired Noah as superintendent in late 1878. Under his management, the Hecla Company mines had released more than $1 million ounces of silver annually as well as thousands of tons of lead and copper.

Noah’s massive silver mining enterprise had made him a fortune. Having piles of his own money to spend, he began laying the groundwork for a new pursuit.