Crossroads Commerce Park - No Trace of the Globe Smelter

 

Crossroads Commerce Park on the site of the
Globe Smelter. Photo ® Mary Lou Egan

Islands of fresh landscaping and parking lots surround new warehouses on the hill at 55th and Washington. There is no statue, no plaque, no historical marker to indicate that this site was once home to the American Smelting and Refining Company's [ASARCO] Globe Smelter. There is no mention of the men who worked 12 hours a day, six and seven days a week in crushing heat and toxic chemicals in order to separate gold, silver and lead from the ores that held them. There is no acknowledgment of the fact that, by 1900, the area’s three smelters, the Boston and Colorado, the Omaha and Grant, and the Globe, processed nearly two-fifths of the ore mined in Colorado. 1. 

Globe Smelter about 1900, William Henry Jackson,
Photo Denver Public Library

The Omaha and Grant, Globeville's largest smelter, closed during the bitter labor battle of 1903 and Globeville's first smelter, the Boston and Colorado, was gradually dismantled after a fire in September 1906. After 1906, ASARCO's Globe Plant was the only remaining smelter in the neighborhood.
The Globe Plant struggled. High-grade ores were harder to come by and newer technologies had been developed to treat low-grade ores at other plants. Demand for metals reached a high point during World War I and fell off dramatically afterward. In 1919, ASARCO decided to discontinue smelting at the Globe plant, “...closing down all stacks,” using the plant to recover valuable elements in ores shipped from other plants. 2. The work force of about 100 men extracted whatever was useful from the flue dust that arrived in covered railroad gondola cars, including cadmium, thallium, indium, copper and lead.

Cell house about 1926,
Photo used with written permission from Steve Stevens

During World War II, the Globe concentrated on recovering cadmium, a rust-proof element considered essential to the nation’s defense and used to coat airplanes, tanks and radio equipment. The company supplied nearly 60 percent of the nation’s cadmium, operating seven days a week.

An award from the National Safety Council in December 1960
for one million man hours worked without an accident or lost time from work.  left to right, Steve Stevens, Ralph Rickenbaugh, Jim Ryan, Margaret Philpot,
Max Coats, Lou Landers, Bill Miles
Photo used with written permission from Steve Stevens

The plant was considered a safe place to work, but the passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act [OSHA] of 1970 changed the criteria for measuring safety in the workplace and would hold companies accountable to different standards. The result was more than twenty years of health studies, regulation, environmental claims and landmark lawsuits. By 2003, ASARCO was facing claims in excess of $100 million to cleanup its sites throughout the country. An environmental trust fund was established, but the money would not cover all the remediation that needed to be done. The EPA prioritized restoration of residences, businesses, schools, parks, which had been completed by the time the trust fund was set up. Work on the Globe Plant itself had not.
On August 9, 2005, ASARCO filed for protection under Chapter 11 Bankruptcy and said it would then attempt to sell the property for “brownfield redevelopment,” a process in which a contaminated property is cleaned and developed for a nonpolluting use. In February 2008, the Colorado Legislature passed a measure that would allow a municipality to include unincorporated county land in an urban renewal project, but by the end of the year the economy was faltering and Brownfield Partners was unable to proceed with the acquisition. Gradually, collaboration, creative financing and federal loans allowed the project to move forward.
In May 2011, a public-private partnership was created that included both Denver and Adams Counties, the Denver Urban Renewal Authority (DURA), the State of Colorado and developer EFG Brownfield Partners (who later merged with EnviroFinance Group), and its subsidiary, Globeville I, LLC. Denver and Adams Counties funded the infrastructure, and in 2014, Denver developer Trammell Crow agreed to buy the smelter site from EnviroFinance Group and build the biggest industrial park in central metro Denver. Today, the $85 million Crossroads Commerce Park contains warehouse, distribution and light-manufacturing buildings encompassing 1 million square feet and could bring an estimated 800 to 1,500 jobs to the Globeville neighborhood. 3.
Perhaps Trammell Crow would consider some visual commemoration of the Globe Smelter site that would honor the contributions of the immigrant laborers who toiled there and settled the Globeville neighborhood.

1. Fell, James E., Ores to Metals, The Rocky Mountain Smelting Industry, University of Nebraska Press, 1979

2. “Smelter to Cut Force to 100 Men,” Denver Post, May 28, 1919
3.  Trammell Crow signs on to redevelop ASARCO site in Globeville, Denver Post, October 29, 2014 

Nathaniel P. Hill - Boston and Colorado Smelter

Most photos of Nathaniel P. Hill show the mature businessman, distinguished-looking U.S. Senator and publisher of the Denver Republican Newspaper. But it was the thirty-two-year old Hill who pioneered smelting methods and saved Colorado's fledgling mining industry.

A professor of chemistry at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, young Hill was already a rising star in scientific and business circles when he was contacted by mining men and investors in the Colorado territory to solve a problem with ores.

Gold had been discovered in Colorado in the fall of 1858, and fortune seekers rushed to the territory the following spring, finding "free gold" - nuggets and flakes - in their sluice boxes. But most of Colorado's valuable minerals were not "free" but bound up in complex ores. Without a method to economically separate minerals from the sulfides and bromides that trapped them, mining was fruitless. By 1864, the territory faced a crisis as prospectors and investors withdrew their money, mines closed, camps were deserted and settlements evaporated.

Hill arrived in Central City in 1864, intrigued by the challenge, but also attracted to the West as the place to make a name for himself. Hill observed first hand the problems of separating gold and silver from complex sulfide ores and methodically investigated various European smelting technologies, settling on a process developed in Swansea, Wales. With four other investors, Hill organized the Boston and Colorado Smelting Company in Black Hawk and by 1868 the smelter was in operation. 

For ten years, the Boston and Colorado was the only smelting operation in the Rockies to attain both technical and financial success, with production growing from $271,000 in 1868 to $2,260,000 in 1878. By 1878, the company needed to expand and relocated to an area of high ground between west 44th and 48th Avenues and Delaware to Fox Streets, taking advantage of the nearby Colorado Central and Denver Pacific Railroads. The Boston and Colorado built a company town known as Argo, and many people referred to the smelter as the Argo Smelter. (in Greek mythology, Argo is the name of a ship whose captain, Jason, hopes to find the golden fleece and claim his inheritance). The success of the plant prompted the construction of two smelters nearby: the Omaha and Grant in 1882 and the Globe Smelter in 1889.

Hill’s achievements led to a political career: he was elected mayor of Black Hawk in 1871, then Colorado‘s Republican Senator from 1879 to 1885, serving on the Committee on Mines and Mining and advocating for free coinage of silver. After his term ended, Hill purchased the Denver Republican newspaper to promote Republican causes. 

Hill's business success is well known, but his relations with his employees differed from that of his competitors. During the national recession of 1893, both the Grant and Globe Smelters closed, laid of workers and waited for economic conditions to improve. When those plants reopened, new hires were forced to take a 10 to 15 percent reduction in pay, leading to resentment, unrest and strikes. During the same period, Hill reduced his own salary, but not that of his employees saying that he could stand the loss better than they could.* (Because the Boston and Colorado processed ores containing gold, the plant was able to operate without layoffs). Hill's employees never joined the Mill and Smeltermen's Union.

Hill died in Denver on May 22, 1900 and is buried at Fairmount Cemetery. 

*“Did Not Cut Wages at Argo Smelter in 1893 and Said He Could Stand Loss Better Than Men.” Denver Times, June 13, 1899

Senator Nathaniel P. Hill, photo Matthew Brady

Boston and Colorado Smelter at Argo, photo Denver Public Library

Hill residence at 14th and Welton,
built in 1884. photo Denver Public Library

 

Denver's First Labor Day Celebration Held at Argo Park

During the 1880s, Denver was booming. The arrival of the railroads attracted manufacturing, meat packing, food processing and small businesses. That growth spurt would include the Boston and Colorado, the Omaha and Grant and the Holdenville Smelters, brickyards, Denver Rock Drill and several meat packers offering jobs to both immigrants and American-born workers. Clusters of workers settled near their jobs in rural-sounding tracts like Garden Place, Greenwood Addition, Tacoma heights, and Cranberry Place. (Globeville would not be incorporated until 1891).
Industries focused on productivity, with workers toiling 12 hours a day, six, sometimes seven days a week, in gritty factories with few safety regulations, little fresh air, sanitary facilities or breaks. Women found employment in sugar factories, cigar making, commercial laundries or as domestic servants, while children could be found in factories, mines and agriculture. Injuries and deaths were common and left families very much alone and often destitute. The only holidays were Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving and Sundays, and employees were not paid if they took the time off.

Workers responded by banding together, campaigning for shorter hours, more pay, better working conditions and recognition of their right to organize. New York City was home to the first Labor Day celebration on September 5, 1882, a peaceful event organized by the Central Labor Union (CLU) promoting the notion of a 10 hour work day. By 1885, “Labor Parades” were being staged in a number of industrial cities across the U.S., and municipal ordinances recognizing the holiday emboldened workers to take part. The first statewide Labor Day law was passed by the Oregon legislature on February 21, 1887. Colorado followed suit, with the measure being put before the voters, passed by the Colorado Legislature and signed into law by pro-labor Governor Alva Adams on March 15, 1887.

The city's first Labor Day celebration was held Monday, September 5th, 1887 with Denver's labor unions deciding to hold picnics and concerts, rather than a parade, in Argo Park.

The Rocky Mountain News from September 6, 1887 described the festive celebration, reporting that around 2000 people attended, listening to a band play at the pavilion and speeches by Governor Adams and various labor leaders. 

The inaugural holiday was a celebration of a day off, as well as the contributions of workers. It would be many years, and hard-fought battles before labor won the many rights we take for granted today.

Workers pose in front of the Boston and Colorado Smelter at Argo

Photo Colorado Historical Society

Map of the area in 1887, before the appearance of the Globe Smelter 

and before Globeville is incorporated