Denver, History of Colorado, BIOS: WESTON, William (published 1918)
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"History of Colorado", edited by Wilbur Fisk Stone, published by The S. J. 
Clarke Publishing Co. (1918)  Vol. II


p. 296, 298
photo p. 297


WILLIAM WESTON.

	William Weston, a mining engineer of high professional 
attainments and broad experience, making his home in Denver, is a 
native of England and a son of Henry Weston, who for thirty years was 
engaged in the private banking business in the borough of London, 
conducting his interests under the name of The Borough Bank. He also 
served as magistrate for the county of Surrey, England. In the latter 
part of his life, however, he lost the greater part of his wealth in 
unfortunate investments, so that William Weston when a youth of 
fourteen was forced to start out in the business world on his own 
account. 'Going to Toronto, Canada, he there resided for five years, 
and, entering the newspaper field, was for a part of the time assistant 
cashier of the Globe, while at different periods he was employed as 
proofreader, commercial editor and eventually became city editor of the 
Leader, also a Toronto daily. He afterward held a secret service 
government appointment in Canada for three years, but his love of 
outdoor life led him to resign that position and he spent the 
succeeding two years in shooting wild fowl, in fishing and trapping on 
the northern lakes of Canada, becoming well known as one of the crack 
shots of that country. He was also an artillery officer, commanding 
volunteers during the Fenian troubles in Canada, and for six months was 
in the regular school of artillery established by the English 
government for th» instruction of volunteer officers. He now holds a 
first class certificate as an instructor of artillery, signed by John 
R. Anderson, colonel in the Royal Artillery, who was at that time 
commandant of the school.

	Mr. Weston's residence in the United States dates from 1870, 
when, attracted by an advertisement of the land department of the 
Kansas-Pacific Railroad and the promises of sport on the frontier, he 
came to the west and secured a position with the railroad. After 
spending a time in the land department he was transferred to the 
passenger department and rapid advancement in recognition of his worth 
and efficiency brought him to the position of general traveling agent 
of the line. One of his most effective methods of advertising Colorado 
in the east was a large circular shield, with the stuffed head of a 
bison handsomely mounted in the center, with lettering around the 
outside of the shield, calling attention to Colorado's natural 
resources and advantages. At that time there were millions of bisons 
upon the plains of the state, and Mr. Weston secured the services of a 
London taxidermist, who spent his entire time in mounting these heads, 
and seventy-six of them were put up in prominent places in eastern 
cities, Mr. Weston also wrote his first book, A Guide to the Kansas-
Pacific Railway, a work of two hundred and eight pages, ten thousand 
copies of which were published and sold. In 1875 the railroad company 
sent him to London, his native city, as general European agent. While 
there, however, he learned from one of his old-time friends, who had 
been on a sporting trip at Del Norte, of the marvelous gold and silver 
ores in the San Juan region, and in October, 1876, Mr. Weston resigned 
his appointment and obtained admission to the Royal School of Mines, of 
London. For six months he attended lectures at the museum and for three 
months was in the metallurgical laboratory, assaying ores of gold, 
silver and lead, and from Dr. Percy, the celebrated metallurgist, he 
received his certificate as assayer. In February, 1877, he left London 
and a month later reached Del Norte, from which point he started tor 
the Sneffels district, one hundred and twenty miles distant, carrying 
his assay outfit on burros across the main range by way of Stony Pass, 
Silverton, Red Mountain and on into the Imogene basin. There he formed 
a partnership with a fellow countryman, George Barber, and they staked 
six claims, Mr. Weston selling his mule, saddle and bridle to furnish 
them supplies for their first winter's work. During the succeeding four 
years the two men lived in a cabin at an altitude of eleven thousand, 
two hundred feet and single-handed drove tunnels over a hundred feet in 
length on each of their claims, a total of eight hundred and fifty feet 
of solid rock work, and they did their own blacksmithing and cooking. 
Mr. Weston also built a small drum muffle furnace in his cabin and 
tested his own ores as well as those of his neighbors, and at the same 
time he was a constant contributor to the Engineering and Mining 
Journal of New York, of which he remained its special correspondent for 
years. There were no mountain roads in those days and in winter no 
trails, but he was an expert on snowshoes and made weekly trips to 
Ouray through the severest winters, thus keeping up the contact with 
the outside world. In February, 1881, he was appointed state 
commissioner of mines by Governor Frederick W. Pitkin, and when the 
senate refused to pass the bill for an appropriation to pay the 
commissioners, which bill had already passed the house, the latter 
retaliated by repealing the law creating the office. In the same year 
Mr. Weston sold his claims for fifty thousand dollars to a New York 
company and with the capital thus secured he then made investment in 
all of the enterprises and prospects which have been the basic elements 
in the development and prosperity of Ouray. He was one of three who put 
in an electric light plant there, was the largest subscriber to the 
building of the Beaumont Hotel and was instrumental in securing the 
investment of large sums of foreign capital in the Ouray district. It 
was Mr. Weston who sold in London the Guston mine, which brought the 
Red Mountain district into prominence and led to the purchase of large 
interests near Ouray and elsewhere in Colorado by British capitalists. 
In 1882 he wrote a pamphlet on the San Juan mines, which was widely 
circulated and extensively quoted in almost all writings subsequent to 
that date concerning the San Juan district. Through all the intervening 
years Mr. Weston has remained a regular contributor to the daily and 
scientific press of the state. Going back to the sale of his group of 
mines in Imogene basin, they were sold to one Orrin Skinner of Quincy, 
Illinois, a son-in-law of Hon. O. M. Browning, secretary of the 
interior under President Lincoln; and he organized the Allied Mines 
Company in which the chief owners were gentlemen of national reputation 
as business men and financiers. The directors were General Thomas 
Ewing, of Ohio; Hon. Preston Plumb, United States senator from Kansas; 
Hon. O. M. Browning, of Quincy, Illinois; B. F. Ham, of Ham Brothers, 
bankers, New York; and Joseph Ripley, Harvey M. Munsell, and Major 
Thomas Wentworth, all of New York city. They were also the largest 
stockholders with H. W. Blair and Hon. H. W. Cragin, of New Hampshire, 
C. N. Vilas, of New York, and Luther M. Merrill, of Boston. These 
gentlemen lost a twenty-five million dollar mine by allowing it to be 
sold for taxes. Orrin Skinner had made a stock deal out of it and in 
less than two years the company was wrecked. Fourteen years afterward 
Thomas Walsh, who was conducting a pyritic smelter at Silverton, 
Colorado, commissioned one of his men to sample the old Allied dumps to 
see if they contained values sufficient that it would pay him to 
transport them to his mill as he needed the silica in the ores as a 
flux. The samples from the Gertrude and from the Una dumps proved very 
promising and one of them ran eight ounces of gold to the ton. This 
substantiated the claim of Mr. Weston who had, in a letter to the 
Engineering and Mining Journal, predicted that these would prove to be 
the "Big Bonanza" of that region. This showing led to a closer 
investigation and Walsh found in one of the Allied abandoned tunnels on 
the Gertrude a half inch streak of black ore, a telluride of gold, an 
unknown value to prospectors and miners of that day. Mr. Walsh quietly 
bought the whole group under tax title, renamed the Gertrude and the 
Una the Camp Bird which in the subsequent twenty-three years has 
produced gold to the value of twenty-five million dollars, and to this 
day is one of the world's greatest gold mines. It is owned mainly in 
London, England, by the same people who own that other wonderful gold 
mine, the Santa Gertrudis, of Pachuca, Mexico. both being under the 
management of William J. Cox, of Denver.

	In 1895, Mr. Weston went to Cripple Creek to buy ore for D. H. 
Moffat's bimetallic mill at Cyanide, near Florence, of which Philip 
Argall was manager, and a year later Mr. Weston resigned to take up his 
profession of consulting engineer. He was consulting engineer for the 
great Gold Coin mine then owned by the Woods Brothers. Later he acted 
in the same capacity for the Lillie mine owned in London, England.

	He made two trips to Europe and secured capital for the purchase 
and development of the St. Patrick mine, an extension of the Gold Coin 
mine, the buyers being J. and P. Coats, the great thread manufacturers 
of Paisley, Scotland; also for the Good Will tunnel which he on his 
return drove a half mile into Gold Hill, Cripple Creek, making one of 
the best records for tunneling in that day, which was eleven feet a day 
for five months, eight by nine in size, all in granite, using two 
shifts a day. In 1903, Mr. Weston was sent for by the late David H. 
Moffat to take the position of mining and exploring engineer in charge 
of the industrial development of the Denver, North Western & Pacific 
Railway (Moffat Road). What Mr. Weston did in that position is briefly 
told by Mr. Moffat, the road's president, in the following words, being 
a copy of a letter written by Mr. Moffat:

	"To whom it may concern:

	"In accepting the resignation of Mr. Weston, mining and railway 
industrial engineer, I wish to state that he has been at the head of 
the Industrial and Mineral Departments of the Denver, Northwestern and 
Pacific Railway Company for the past seven years, during which period 
he did all exploring and making reports to me on coal, metalliferous 
ores, agricultural, pastural and other resources of our operated and 
projected line between Denver and Salt Lake, besides getting up all 
maps and literature on these subjects. His work has always been of the 
highest class technical and otherwise and satisfactory to me in every 
way. He is a tireless worker, of the strictest loyalty and integrity 
and has my best wishes for his future welfare.

                                         "D. H. Moffat."

	During that time and for twenty years previous, Mr. Weston was 
confidential advisory engineer to Mr. Moffat, on mining and railway 
matters.

	Mr. Weston is now engaged on what he hopes to be the magnum opus 
of his life, the securing of an outlet to the north, by connecting the 
great Yampa coal fields of Colorado, with the Union Pacific Railroad, 
for the estimated thirty nine billion tons of high grade coal in the 
twelve hundred square miles of that region will be available by the 
construction of about eighty miles of railroad from Encampment, 
Wyoming, the present terminus of a railroad that connects with the 
Union Pacific main line at Walcott, Wyoming. Such an extension would 
carry the line through the center of the anthracite and bituminous 
field to a connection with the Moffat road in Colorado. Mr. Weston, 
after being discouraged or turned down by the head of every department 
of the administration, finally was able to reach President Wilson who 
gave Mr. Weston his personal assurance that the project should receive 
full investigation,-which is now being done.

	The people of the western states want that coal for industrial 
purposes as well as for their comfort.

	In April, 1883, in St. Mark's church at St. Heller, on the Island 
of Jersey. England, Mr. Weston was united in marriage to Miss Emily 
Eliza Stirling, youngest daughter of Thomas Stirling Begbie, Esq., a 
ship builder and ship owner of London. Mr. Weston returned with his 
bride to the new world and they resided in Ouray until 1888, when they 
removed to Denver, which constituted a more advantageous field in which 
Mr. Weston could follow his profession of mining engineering. Mr. and 
Mrs. Weston have a son and a daughter. The son, Guy S. Weston, is a 
mining and mechanical engineer with more than sixteen years of actual 
experience; the daughter. Adele, is the wife of Sydney Van Nostrand 
Este, manager of the bond house of Sweet, Causey, Foster & Company, of 
Denver.

	A contemporary writer has said of Mr. Weston: "He has been an 
ardent sportsman all his life and is well known as a fine horseman, a 
dead shot and a scientific fly fisherman. Commencing April 10, 1875, he 
wrote a long series of articles to the English Field, over the nom de 
plume of 'Will of the West,' the series being' entitled Field Sports of 
Kansas and Colorado. These articles treated of grouse and quail 
shooting, bison hunting, antelope hunting on horseback with greyhounds, 
coursing, etc. In December, 1877, he began another series to the same 
paper, entitled Silver San Juan, which treated principally of duck 
shooting and fly fishing, and these articles induced hundreds of 
British sportsmen to visit Colorado."