Lenhart J.H. Grothe
(April 15th 1935-January 7, 2006)
On January 7th, 2006, Lenhart J.H. (Len) Grothe, aged 70, died peacefully in Kodiak, Alaska, surrounded by friends and family members. Len was a major contributor to the development of Alaska’s critical minerals at a time when overall mineral development in Alaska had been in decline.
Early YEars and Education
Grothe was born April 15th, 1935 in New York City, the eldest of three children born to German immigrants Alexander and Carola Grothe. Prior to his arrival in Alaska, Grothe attended Montana School of Mines in Butte (now Montana Technological University) and worked underground in one of Anaconda Copper Mining Company’s there while attending that school. Upon traveling to Alaska In 1955, Grothe fell in love with the ‘Last Frontier’ and enrolled in the School of Mines at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. He listed his home as Orlando, Florida, where his parents had retired.
Lenhart Grothe established Northern Exploration and Equipment Company while still a student at the University of Alaska, a business platform from which he conducted work for a number of years later in his life. He graduated at the top of his class with a Bachelors of Science (BS) degree in Mining Engineering in 1957.
Grothe’s Career Mining Critical Minerals
After graduation, Grothe got a job as an underground miner at the Red Devil mercury (antimony) mine in Southwest Alaska. Mercury mining in Alaska began during the late stages of the Alaska Yukon Gold Rush period and continued intermittently until 1986. In 1942, the U.S. Government declared mercury a strategic mineral, which caused a flurry of activity in Alaska’s Kuskokwim Mineral Belt. The Red Devil mine was Alaska’s chief mercury producer among a dozen active properties. Byproduct antimony, also classified as a critical mineral at the time, was also produced as a byproduct with the primary product mercury at Red Devil, especially in later years, and while Grothe worked there in the late 1950s and also between 1969 and 1971.
Surface plant of the Red Devil mercury-antimony mine as it existed in 1959, when Grothe worked as an underground miner
Credit: Tom Bundtzen files
AMHF Inductee Donald J. Grybeck, a former University of Alaska instructor and long-time member of the Alaska Branch of the U.S. Geological Survey, was a close friend of Grothe first as a fellow student at the UAF School of Mines and later as a fellow miner at Red Devil mine. They became life-long friends. Grybeck and Grothe shared a small cabin behind the main Red Devil mine workings for nearly a year. AMHF inductee Robert Lyman was managing the mine when Grothe was there, while Gordon Herreid served as the mine’s geologist. Herreid would later become the first economic geologist hired by the newly formed Alaska Department of Natural Resources, Division of Mines and Minerals—now the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys. Roger Markel, who would eventually become the head of the U.S. Bureau of Mines (in 1978), managed the Red Devil mine prior to Bob Lyman’s turn at the helm. Grybeck recalled:
“Len was a really good underground miner”
While working at Red Devil, Grothe became interested in an abandoned tin mine on the Seward Peninsula. From 1951-1956, the United States Tin Corporation (USTC) unprofitably operated a relatively high-grade underground tin mine at Lost River, about 40 miles west-northwest of Teller. The project was plagued with technical problems, including inadequate water for processing and very poor tin recovery in the mill. When USTC defaulted in 1956, they left the Defense Minerals Exploration Administration or DMEA, a federal agency charged with supervising critical mineral development nationally, with many unpaid bills. Subsequently, the DMEA attempted to auction off the USTC property without much success. In 1960, Len Grothe submitted a bid and acquired the Lost River property ‘sight unseen’ for $21,777 USD through an auction held by the General Services Administration.
Grothe’s colleague and friend, Don Grybeck, had actually seen the Lost River tin mine before Grothe had acquired it while working as a field assistant for famed USGS economic geologist C.L. Pete Sainsbury and was intrigued with the geology of the tin-polymetallic deposit. Hence Don and Len traveled together with Pete Sainsbury to Lost River to inspect Grothe’s new mine acquisition. The group encountered massive snowbanks, the result of the snow drifting over mine equipment and buildings. Just emerging from the snowbanks were Caterpillar diesel generators, mill equipment, and many cases of dynamite.
United States Tin Corporation tin mine, western Seward Peninsula, winter of 1956, mirroring conditions that Grothe encountered during his 1960 inspection of the property.
Credit: Tom Bundtzen files
Grothe managed to sell off much of the mine equipment at Lost River, which more than paid for his bid price. Afterwards, Grothe initiated a long career of placer mining for tin on the Seward Peninsula and created Lost River Mining Company (Lost River) with partner Tom Pearson. Lost River initiated production of placer tin at Cassiterite Creek near the Lost River lode tin-polymetallic mine. Pearson would later succumb to a fatal aircraft accident on the western Seward Peninsula, leaving Len as sole owner of the firm.
In 1964, Grothe and Pearson leased the Lost River lode tin property to the United States Steel Corporation, which conducted exploration drilling on the property for several seasons. In 1972, Grothe and Pearson sold all of their interest and mining claims associated with the Lost River lode tin-polymetallic lode deposit to Watts Griffis and McQuat Inc. (WGM) of Anchorage, which immediately began an aggressive exploration and development program designed to bring the tin-tungsten-silver-fluorite deposit into production.
Lost River began systematically testing placer tin resources in the Western Seward Peninsula region, including Tuttle and Pinochle Creeks on the flanks of Ear Mountain; and Buck Creek and streams near Potato Mountain. Eventually Grothe developed a long-lived placer tin mine on Cape Creek, a stream on the east side of Cape Mountain, in the western-most part of the Seward Peninsula adjacent to Bering Strait. Cape Creek was the source of more than 75 percent historical production of placer tin on the Seward Peninsula.
Map of Seward Peninsula showing locations of selected tin deposits described in text.
From Lorraine et al (1958)
Lost River operated the only primary tin mine in the United States intermittently between the mid-1960s and 1990. During most of this time, Grothe spent approximately 6-7 months a year mining tin on the Seward Peninsula while wintering in Kodiak, Alaska. Grothe’s most productive years were from 1976 to 1989, when tin prices were relatively high, buoyed up by the price controls administered by the International Tin Council headquartered in London and in Malaysia. Total past production of tin by Lost River at Cape Creek was estimated by U.S. Geological Survey geologist Bruce Reed to be 1,676 tons. As derived from Alaska State records, during 1989, 2,072,000 million pounds (939,859 kg) of tin concentrate was produced from both stream and strandline (beach) placer deposits at the mouth of Cape Creek. Concentrates were sold both domestically and internationally, including New Jersey, Texas, London, and Singapore. After exhaustion of reserves on their mining claims, Lost River Mining Company was unable to acquire additional reserves in the Cape Creek area or secure leases on other tin-bearing placer ground in Alaska; thus Grothe’s tin mining career ended in 1990.
Washing plant - Len Grothe tin placer mine, circa early 1980s.
Credit: Travis Hudson
The compiler of this biographic sketch (Bundtzen) visited the Cape Creek placer tin mine in 1988, after inspecting the Bima gold dredge in Nome for the Alaska Department of Natural Resources geological survey division. At Cape Creek, he encountered a sophisticated placer recovery plant equipped with two sets of jigs and a well-designed, water quality treatment facility. It was a clean operation, with placer tailings annually reclaimed and 100 percent water recycling system with virtually no water effluent released. In 1988, about twenty (20) employees worked for Grothe at the Cape Creek placer tin mine, which featured selective recovery of coarse-grained cassiterite nuggets. Grothe’s employees came from many areas of Alaska, including local villages such as Wales, Shishmaref, Teller, and Nome.
Crew of Lost River Mining Company operation at Cape Creek, Western Seward Peninsula during 1988. Grothe is third from right.
Credit: Tom Bundtzen files
Len Grothe’s Personnel Life and Legacy
In 1960, Len Grothe moved to Kodiak, Alaska, and his first son, Lenhart Junior, was born there in 1964. He married Jeanne Moore in the early 1970s and his second child, daughter Lynden Carola, was born in 1979.
In January, 2006, a memorial service honoring Grothe was held at Kodiak Assembly of God Church with a wake held at Kodiak Senior Center. At his memorial service, Lenhart Grothe (Senior) was described by a family member:
“Len was a kind, humble and generous man who took great pleasure in his family, friends, and business endeavors. He was known for his great sense of humor, a twinkle in his eye, and a sly smile. He was well known as a talented businessman here in Kodiak who enjoyed sharing his wisdom with others.”
At his wake, Don Grybeck commented:
“Len was a good miner and hard worker and displayed imagination and daring in the mining business at a time when mining in Alaska was in the duldrums.”
Len Grothe himself offered the following advice many times to young people:
“It doesn’t matter what you do, just do what you do and do it well. Nothing is more valuable than your reputation as an honest person”.
Lenhart J.H. Grothe was preceded in death by his younger brother Gilbert. At the time of his passing, he was survived by his wife Jeanne; son Lenhart Grothe Jr., daughter Lynden Carola; grandchildren Garrett and Cameron; daughter-in-law Deborah; brother and sister-in-law Wallace and Beverly, many nieces and nephews, and close friends and business associates.
In 2007, the University of Alaska-Fairbanks Alumni Association created the Lenhart J.H. Grothe Resources Award to be given posthumously to a UAF alumnus who made significant contributions in the forestry, fishing, mining, or agricultural fields. Grothe was the first recipient of the award.
Written by Thomas K. Bundtzen; Reviewed by Travis Hudson
References used in this writeup.
Bundtzen T.K., Swainbank, R.C., Deagen, J.R., and Moore, J.L., 1990, Alaska’s Mineral Industry, 1989: Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys Special Report 44, pages 33-34.
Hudson, T.L., and Reed, B.L., 1997, Tin Deposits in Alaska, in, Goldfarb R.J., and Miller, L.D., editors, Mineral Deposits of Alaska, Economic Geology Publishing Company Economic Geology Monograph 9, pages 450-465.
Jasper, M.W., 1961, Cinnabar Province, Kuskokwim Region, in, Willias, J.A., Division of Mines and Minerals Report for the Year 1961: pages 65-79.
Lorain, S.H., Wells, R.R., Mihelich, Miro, Mulligan, J.J., Thorne, R.L., and Herdlick, J.A., 1958, Lode-Tin Mining at Lost River, Seward Peninsula, Alaska: U.S. Bureau of Mines Information Circular 7871, 76 pages.
Staff, 2017, Lenhart J.H. Grothe Resources Award: University of Alaska Fairbanks Alumni Association Scholarship Listing, two pages. Uaf-alumni@alaska.edu
Stevens, Carolyn, editor, In Memoriam to Lehnart Grothe: The Alaska Miner—The Journal of the Alaska Miners Association, pages 8, 10.
Webber, B.S, 1943, Red Devil Mine, Sleetmute Area, Southwestern Alaska: U.S. Bureau of Mines Restricted War Minerals Report 147, 21 pages.
Williams, J.A., 1960, Division of Mines and Minerals Report for the Year 1961: 86 pages.
Williams, J.A., 1965, Division of Mines and Minerals Report for the Year 1961: 97 pages.