Diane Wolfgram Papers

Diane Wolfgram earned her B.S. degree in geological engineering, with honors, from South Dakota School of Mines & Technology in 1962 and her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in geology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1974 and 1977, respectively. Her doctoral dissertation, “Wall Rock Alteration and the Localization of Gold in the Homestake Mine, Lead, South Dakota,” is credited with adding twenty years to the life of the Homestake Mine, the largest private employer in South Dakota at that time.

Diane was employed as a petroleum engineer by Shell Oil Company from June 1962 to June 1963, when she entered active duty as a 2nd Lieutenant in the United States Army. She was promoted to 1st Lieutenant a year later and to the rank of Captain in July 1966. Diane served two non-consecutive tours of duty in the Republic of Vietnam and was awarded two Bronze Star Medals for Meritorious Service and the Air Medal and Army Commendation Medal for Meritorious Achievement in that combat theater. After resigning her commission in December 1969, she was employed by engineering consulting firms in the San Francisco Bay Area before embarking on graduate studies at Berkeley in January 1971.

Diane joined Anaconda Copper Mining Company’s Butte Operations as a mine geologist in 1978, where she was involved in the Deep Butte Exploration Drilling Program. She was transferred to the Stillwater Platinum Group Metal Underground Exploration Project in 1980, and a year later was placed in charge of all geologic aspects of the project. When responsibility for the project was transferred to Anaconda’s mine development group, Diane was reassigned to Anaconda’s corporate office in Denver, where she and a group of former Stillwater exploration geologists conceived and organized a unique and successful Precious Metals Exploration Task Force. In late 1985, Diane left the Anaconda Company (which was dissolved by Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) 6 months later) to form her own consulting firm in partnership with another former Stillwater exploration project geologist. In the ensuing seven years, Diane and her partner worked, for the most part, under contract to Stillwater Mining Company, but also conducted gold exploration in northern Nevada.

Diane joined the faculty of Montana Tech as an assistant professor of geological engineering in January 1992 and was promoted to the rank of associate professor in 1994. In 1996, she was appointed to the position of Head of the Department of Geological Engineering and promoted to full professor with tenure in 1999. Her teaching duties included courses focused on the formation and identification of minerals and rocks, the characterization and formation of geologic structures, the practice of mining geology, geologic field mapping, and the geological engineering senior design course. Diane was appointed to the position of Head of the Department of Mining Engineering, currently with Geological Engineering, in 2006 and remained in both until 2009. She retired and became Professor Emeritus in 2019.

Diane is the co-author of two publications and six abstracts, all related to platinum group mineralization in the J-M Reef of the Stillwater Complex, and one Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology open-file map of the Elkhorn Mountains volcanics north of the Golden Sunlight Mine. She is also the author of 15 unpublished documents and the co-author of five more in the Anaconda Geological Document Collection that is available to the public at the Western History Center of the University of Wyoming in Laramie. Other documents remain in the private sector because they pertain to mining properties that Anaconda sold to other interests.

Diane is licensed as a professional geologist in California and as a professional engineer (mining and mineral processing) in Montana. She is a Fellow of the Society of Economic Geologists, a senior member of the Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration, a senior member of the Geological Society of America, and the founding governor of Link 178 of the Order of the Engineer at Montana Tech. (Information is taken from https://mus.edu/board/meetings/2019/May2019/AdminBudget/183-1501-R0519.pdf)