Asmus Boysen and His Dam Problems

Free Preview (pp 23-24 of the manuscript) Book ID 438524 On March 22, Boysen made a tremendous splash in Wyoming, when he incorporated the Asmus Boysen Mining Company, with authorized capitalization of $25 million and headquarters in Thermopolis. The Cheyenne Tribune gushed that this was “the biggest company that has ever been formed in this state,” adding that the $1,250 in filing fees would “pay considerable clerk hire” for the secretary of state. Although this company later conducted the exploratory work to permit Boysen to select his land, its first work was outside the eastern reservation boundary, in the Copper Mountain play. The Copper Mountain play extended east from the Wind River reservation for a distance of ten or twelve miles, and in this district there were signs of the metal on the ground for everyone to see. Many prospectors had different ideas where the “Mother Lode” might be located, so that the Copper Mountain mining district claimed newspaper headlines for a number of years and produced some ore, before finally dying. Nis Peter Boysen, Asmus Boysen’s younger brother (he was 28), who came to the U. S. two years before, arrived in Thermopolis at the end of March, 1905, to supervise his brother’s prospecting on Copper Mountain, and later over on the reservation. Asmus kept his brother on a short leash, and beyond giving out his title as secretary of the Asmus Boysen Mining Company, he said little to the newspapers about the company and its plans. However, this total news blackout was partially lifted two weeks later, when the Boysen company announced that it had purchased a diamond drill, which was then on its way from Casper to Copper Mountain. The newspaper also printed a letter Asmus Boysen wrote from his Chicago office: “Through these lines I wish to call your attention to the special act of congress which passed the house on March 2, 1905, whereby I exchange my 178,000-acre coal land lease which I held with the Shoshone and Arapahoe Indians, in Wyoming, for 640 acres of mineral lands, containing copper of immense value. “Write for my booklet giving the full history of my valuable concessions and of the ASMUS BOYSEN MINING COMPANY, incorporated in the state of Wyoming. “Bear in mind—this is one of the greatest opportunities ever offered to the most skeptical investor. Write at once.” No copies of Boysen’s booklet have been found. The following week, Peter Reisgaard, who was accompanied by his lawyer, one “Louis Koch” of Omaha, took an option on four claims on Copper Mountain owned by the Basin Mining Company, posting a $150,000 bond, and depositing $10,000 as a guaranty. Reisgaard did not use Boysen’s name, but in fact he was a Danish immigrant from Audubon County, Iowa, and Boysen undoubtedly supplied the wherewithal to post the bond and make the required deposit. According to the newspaper account, Reisgaard, who was described as a “practical mine operator” from Alma, Colorado, was on his way back to Colorado to make arrangements for exploring the option he had obtained when he met “an agent of the Boysen company,” who purchased the option from him. N. P. Boysen, the official Boysen spokesman in Thermopolis, was at first extremely close-mouthed, but on Sunday morning he finally told the editor that the “head office” had acquired Reisgaard’s option, paying that gentleman a $10,000 bonus for his trouble, and giving him a position with the Boysen company. The option transaction was real enough, but the rest of the newspaper account was fiction. Reisgaard was in fact Boysen’s real estate manager in Audubon, according to the Audubon Journal, and the identification of the attorney with him as “Louis Koch” was in fact a transparent disguise for Asmus Boysen’s cousin, Louis Koch Boysen, then 27, who later became involved in his own Wyoming mining speculation, using his real name. Still, there were skeptics in Wyoming, who believed that talk of Boysen’s “valuable concessions” was really puffery to sell stock in his company, and that the major objective of his mining company was to prospect on the reservation in preparation for selection of the preference section of land. Even that prospecting opportunity had its doubters, for Douglas editor Bill Barlow (Merris C. Barrow) groused that the reservation had already been “as thoroughly prospected as Chicago’s lake front,” making any undiscovered copper or coal highly unlikely. Later, in an item written and widely reprinted around the state before Boysen made his selection, Bill Barlow opined that Boysen’s tract would be worth “possibly $10 an acre [the price Boysen paid] and probably very much less.” Although most readers then and for some years to come would have laughed at this harsh prediction, after more than one fortune was expended in pursuit of hoped-for value from Boysen’s preference tract, Bill Barlow proved to be not far from the mark.