The Magnificent Portland
Mine
A Story of Great Wealth,
Great Men and Broken Dreams
The beginning of 1896 saw the Portland's fortunes much improved. The apex lawsuits had generally been settled, ore production had reached $2.9 million, $900,000 in dividends had been paid and about 4 1/2 miles of tunneling had been done. Had the Portland story ended there, it would have been a happy one.
Part of human nature is to never be entirely satisfied with one's situation, even when times are good. The insightful and detailed book "The Portland," by Brian Levine and Joe Vanderwalker, says it best:
"During the first two years, the entire board [of directors] concentrated on preserving and building the company. Once the company gained stability and its productivity was assured, the directors had time to expend their excess energy on each other."
Jimmy Burns and Jimmy Doyle were getting on each other's nerves. Burns was now the president of the company, so it was natural for him to receive most of the attention. Doyle resented it. It irked Burns that Doyle seemed to be constantly short of money. It also irritated Burns that Frank Peck was courting his sister. Peck was growing increasingly critical of Burns' management of the mine. Stratton was upset because he felt the board did not care enough about the miners. The miners were peeved because they felt they were not sharing in the Portland's new prosperity. John Harnan was just flat bored with all of it. On and on it went. Tensions were mounting.
An early picture of the Portland and its crew
in 1894. In spite of the appearance
of the primitive workings, the Portland was already a major producer.
On January 4, 1896, the Anna Lee shaft collapsed, killing eight men. Burns, Harnan and Stratton wanted to close the mine and exhume the bodies. Doyle, Peck and others thought it was an unnecessary waste of time and money. The men were already buried in the mine. Nothing more could be done for them.
Burns, acting as president, ordered the mine closed, and the bodies exhumed and properly buried. This act, kind and thoughtful as it was, cost the Portland three weeks of production time and $122,000, a small fortune in those days. Doyle and Peck were not pleased. In Doyle's eyes, Burns had mismanaged funds and usurped the board's authority. The fact that new, undiscovered ore veins were uncovered during the operation did not placate Doyle. The Portland had to skip its March dividend which deprived Doyle of much needed cash.
The Anna Lee disaster was the last fork in the road for Burns and Doyle. As the two former best friends began to go their separate ways, their animosity toward each other grew. At one point, Doyle insinuated that Burns was negligent and responsible for the Anna Lee cave in. That cut Burns to the bone. He threw a tantrum and resigned as president of the Portland. Stratton, Peck and Harnan talked him out of it.
The Anna Lee shaft at the 700 foot level.
Burns absorbed himself in the Portland and the pomp and circumstance that he reveled in as its president. Doyle found new respect when he became the mayor of Victor, eventually serving three terms. Happy as they might be in their new lives, their resentment of one another never ceased.
Stratton was genuinely fond of both men. He appealed to them to put aside their differences. He reminded them of their early days spent on Battle Mountain in the numbing cold. He pleaded with them to remember the nights they spent sneaking out heavy sacks of ore on their backs. He tried to make them remember the many legal triumphs they had won. In spite of Stratton's best efforts, there would be no reconciliation.
Stratton visiting with the men on an inspection
tour of the Portland.
Doyle landed the first really serious blow. He could not stop harping about how Burns was "mismanaging" the ever more successful Portland. He went to court in Iowa, where the Portland was incorporated, and sued over mismanagement and the withholding of $700,000 from the stockholders. Burns struck back in a Colorado court, charging that Doyle's Iowa suit was filed in an improper jurisdiction. The Colorado court issued an injunction against Doyle's suit, but he proceeded anyway and won. Upon his return to Colorado, he was thrown in jail on a contempt of court charge. One can only imagine how Doyle's hatred of Burns festered as he sat in the El Paso County jail for the next seven months.
Doyle was still mayor of Victor and went right on conducting the city's business from jail. He even won reelection while incarcerated. When 12 nitroglycerine charges were found outside the jail, Doyle accused Burns of conspiring to kill him. Because the men refused to talk, the courts had to untangle the legal mess. The Iowa court set aside its verdict and Doyle was set free to a hero's welcome in August 1899.
But even after all that had happened, the feud was not over. Doyle found a new way to lash out at Burns. He sold his Portland shares to Irving Howbert, a prominent Colorado Springs businessman, whom Burns disliked. Doyle may or may not have known it at the time, but selling out to Howbert would prove to be a body blow to Burns.
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