Career
As a boy he started his career working in the family business, Phelps, Dodge & Company, a mercantile establishment founded by his grandfather Phelps and his uncle, William Earle Dodge, in the 1830s. The company began importing and trading in metal and eventually became a mining business.
In 1861, he became a partner and also a member of the firm of Phelps, James & Company in Liverpool. In 1879, he organized Phelps, Stokes & Company, a bank.
Phelps became involved in the mining interests of Phelps Dodge Corporation in the American West. In 1874 the Nevada legislature, after a bitter debate, approved a bond project to extend a railroad line to Austin, Nevada (the state senator sponsoring the bill was secretary for a mining company that needed the rail line). The legislature authorized Lander County to grant a $200,000 bond for the project, but the authorization would expire after five years. It wasn't until after Stokes came to Austin that the project got started 4 ½ years later. Stokes brought in General James H. Ledlie, a former Union officer in the Civil War, to direct the project, and crews went to work desperately, only to bring the line within 2 miles (3.2 km) of the Austin town limits with less than a day left before the deadline. An emergency meeting of the Austin Town Board extended the town limits by 2 miles (3.2 km), allowing the last rails to be laid just minutes before the deadline. The 92 miles (148 km) line from Battle Mountain to Austin became the Nevada Central Railroad.
On Feb 25th, 1880 Phelps was appointed a Director of the Nevada Central Railroad.
In 1897, when Stokes still had a financial interest in several of the local mines, he built "Stokes Castle", a three-story stone tower just outside of Austin. The building was only occupied for a month, then fell into disrepair.
Read more about this topic: Anson Phelps Stokes
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