biography
| name: |
Clark, William Andrews
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1839–1925)
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| biography:
| Mining operator and US senator, born in Fayette Co, Pennsylvania, USA. The family moved to Iowa in the 1850s and he began to teach school in Missouri, until the Civil War drove him to Colorado to mine gold quartz. By 1863 he was in Montana panning for gold, which he used as capital to open a store in Virginia City. In 1867 he got the mail concession between Missoula, MT and Walla Walla, WA through which he became wealthy. He bought three mining claims in Butte, MT (1872), studied mining at Columbia University for one year, and returned to form the Colorado and Montana Smelting Co and the Butte Reduction Works. In addition to buying more mines around Butte, he bought the United Verde Mine and its smelter in Arizona. His business interests were vast and included railroads, newspapers, timber, and a sugar refinery in Los Angeles, and he also established the first water and electrical systems in Missoula and Butte. After much political drama around the forming of the state constitution and selection of its capital, he was elected to the US Senate (Democrat, Montana, 1901–7), where he opposed President Theodore Roosevelt's conservation policies. |
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