Career
Immersing himself in learning the civil engineering practicum, with application in mining operations, young Arthur Foote became an exemplar of the motto "Go West, young man"; he aspired to making his career and fortune in the 'new' West.
In 1873, he landed in San Francisco, seeking work. In quick succession he worked on the Sutro Tunnel site in Virginia City, Nevada—where he assisted with installing the first industrial air compressor in a tunnel or mine in the US West; then on the Eldorado Canal of the American River, which supplied water to new hydraulic mines near Placerville, California. And, in 1874, working for the Southern Pacific Railroad, he assisted the chief engineer building the Tehachapi Loop, the celebrated climbing railway spiral—and now a popular railfan site and National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark.
In 1876, while posted at the New Almaden Quicksilver Mine in Santa Clara County, California, young Foote returned East to marry and to bring his bride, Mary Hallock Foote, back to California. Soon he moved his family to Deadwood, South Dakota, where he helped supervise the Homestake Mine; then to Leadville, Colorado, during the Colorado Silver Boom. There he served as a (litigation) mining expert for the Iron Silver Mining Company. Later he supervised the Adelaide Mine and other small mines near Leadville.
Abandoning the high altitudes for health reasons, Foote journeyed to Morelia in Michoacán, Mexico, to prospect a retired silver mine; then to Wood River Valley in south-central Idaho—locale of today's Sun Valley ski resort—to open the Wolftone Mine prospect. Later, he formed a partnership venture and bought water rights on the Boise River where he designed the Boise River irrigation project, then developed it for ten years before it eventually failed for lack of capital. (Ultimately it was completed by the federal government, i.e., the US Bureau of Reclamation, as the Arrowrock Dam project, then the largest arid-lands irrigation scheme in the United States.) After Boise, Foote served as a hydrologist for the newly created US Geological Survey, leading field surveys that documented the hydrology and hydraulics of reaches of the Snake River and Snake River Plain and valley. He returned briefly to Mexico to engineer roads in Baja California for an onyx mine; then 'made home' again to California to manage the Fremont Mine in Amador City, located just east of Sacramento.
Read more about this topic: Arthur De Wint Foote
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