Canyon Corporation Records

In 1934 Canyon Corporation was created to revive a mine in Maitland, SD that had been vacant since the supply of brown oxidized ore had been exhausted in 1909. Canyon Corp. was fully funded by several private investors from New York and Colorado, with the head offices in New York City and mint in Denver. Company stock was never available to the public. The company proposed to process the still plentiful blue ore and by 1935 had completed the construction of a new mill and employed over seventy men. The mine was called both the Maitland Silver and Gold Mine and the Maitland Mine.

Luther B. Eames, a Black Hills local, was named general manager of the site in 1935, a position he held until the mine's closure in 1942. Eames was also elected to the role of company vice president after 1938.

While the mine was profitable, the company was besieged by legal troubles. The two most notable court battles both occurred in 1940. In a lawsuit brought by two former employees, the company was found to have fired the men for taking part in union activity. Firing workers for union activity broke both state and federal laws. Maitland Silver and Gold Mine employees had voted against unionization by a very slim margin in 1939.

The second and more costly lawsuit was brought against the company by the regional attorney for the Department of Labor, Donald M. Murtha. Murtha claimed the company was not adhering to 1939 Fair Labor Standards requiring employees be paid time and a half when working over 44 hours a week. Canyon Corp. was ordered to pay ninety-six employees over $12,000 in back pay.

The courtroom battles, as well as Canyon Corp.'s purchase of mining properties in other states, led to rumors that the Maitland Mine would close in 1941. Eames sought to quell these rumors by placing notices in the local newspapers advising the public that the company was growing and diversifying but had no intention of closing the mine.

This diversification saved the company but not the Maitland Mine when the War Production Board ordered the closure of all the nation's gold mines in 1942. Order L-208 freed up workers for mining metals necessary to the war effort. Canyon Corp.'s purchase of tungsten property in Idaho proved advantageous, and several employees from Maitland were moved to Idaho to begin the mining process there.

Canyon Corp. was not granted a six-month extension for mining like the nearby Bald Mountain and Homestake mines, and the company ceased operations on December 5, 1942. Within ten days the mine's underground equipment had been removed and Canyon Corp. began to focus on their Idaho and Alaska properties, asserting that unwatering the Maitland Mine at the end of the war would not be profitable and thus unlikely.

Homestake Mining Company gained ownership of the land which the mine sat on in 1943 and obtained the records in this collection at that time.