James Douglas, Jr
James Stuart Douglas (1867-1949), popularly known as Rawhide Jimmy, was the son of
James S. Douglas, a Canadian who would become a successful
mining engineer and executive. Born in Quebec, Jimmy Douglas grew up
in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, where his father managed the Chemical
Copper Company. A willful young man, Douglas left home at 17 and
moved west to Manitoba, where he took up homesteading. Suffering
from asthma, he moved to Arizona Territory in the hope that the
drier climate might provide relief. After a year in Sulpher Springs
Valley, where he cultivated strawberries, he moved to Bisbee at his
father's request to work as an assayer for the Copper Queen Mine.
In 1892 Douglas moved to Prescott to work for the Commercial
Mining Company, an affiliate of the Phelps Dodge mining company.
Eight years later he was transferred to Sonora to manage the copper
mine and smelter at Pilares and Nacozari, and directed construction
of a railroad from Douglas to Nacozari. While at Pilares, he
acquired his nickname by using rawhide to protect the rollers on
mining equipment. He then moved to Cananea, Sonora, to manage the
copper operations there. His tenure was marked by riots and labor
problems, which were endemic to the Cananea mines.
In 1912,
Jimmy Douglas returned to central Arizona, where he took an option
on the United Verde Extension(UVX) property, a speculative venture
to find the downfaulted extension of the great United Verde orebody
at Jerome, Arizona. In 1914, with funds near exhaustion, an
exploration drift cut bonanza copper ore. The UVX became a
spectacularly profitable mine: during 1916 alone, the mine produced
$10 million worth of copper, silver and gold, of which $7.4 million
was profit. The UVX paid $55 million in dividends during its life
(1915-1938), and made Jimmy Douglas a very wealthy man. His Jerome
mansion is open to the public as
the Jerome State Historic Park.
Jimmy Douglas's son
Lewis W. Douglas (1894-1974) also
entered the mining business, and went on to a successful political
career as a Congressman (1927-33) and Ambassador to the United
Kingdom (1947-51). The copper-roofed cottage on the hillside
adjacent to the Douglas Mansion was built as a wedding present for
Lewis.
In 1939, Douglas retired to Canada, where he died in
1949.
Any contributions will be
gratefully accepted
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