This is the eleventh article in a series on the Conkling Mining Co. v. Silver King Coalition Mines Co. lawsuit.
Fearing that he would not live long, Nicholas Treweek wrote the United States Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals a letter asking them to take some action in the Conkling case in October of 1915. The appellate court had been mulling over the suit for nearly two years. In reply to his letter, the court advised Treweek that one of the judges had been sick and that a decision would be rendered just as soon as all the judges were present. The ruling would come three months too late for the Colonel, who passed away on November 8, 1915.
The end came for Treweek at 9 o’clock in the morning at the Polyclinic Hospital in New York City where he had undergone an operation for throat trouble on October 10. The (honorary) Colonel had been away from Salt Lake City for more than a year, handling his mining operations from New York.
Credit: Courtesy of the New York Historical Society, George P. Hall & Son photograph collection, circa 1876-1914
Having been engaged in the mining business for nearly fifty years, Nicholas Treweek described himself as a self-taught mining engineer. “I have known the Park City district since I began mining for the Walker Brothers in the eastern part of the district in 1881,” he testified in District Court. “I have not received any technical education as an engineer, only from books that I have studied myself, and by experience. I have in the course of my mining operation picked up a practical knowledge of engineering.”
Colonel Treweek was a thirty-second degree Mason, a Shriner, a Knight Templar, and a charter member of the Salt Lake Elks lodge. He organized the Salt Lake Stock Exchange with R. C. Chambers in 1890, serving as its first vice president. Treweek was secretary of the Utah Waterworks Company created to furnish water to Salt Lake and other Utah cities. He was an owner of the Salt Lake, Nevada, California railroad and vice president of B. K. Bloch – an Ogden company whose stores bought and sold goods and merchandise in Utah Territory.
Active in politics, the Colonel was a delegate to the National League of Republican Clubs and was appointed by Utah territorial Governor Arthur Lloyd Thomas as Director of the Deseret Agricultural and Manufacturing society. Not without humor, among his numerous titles Nicholas was selected by the high exalted ruler of the “Order of Neptune” to be the Grand Keeper of the King’s whales.
A story in the Salt Lake Telegram captured the essence of the Colonel’s mining career, describing the Conkling Mining Company as Nicholas Treweek’s third attempt at opening up a bread winner in the Park City diggings. In each of the properties he previously promoted, the paper said, the ground had been opened in every direction; unfortunately, it was always someone else who came along to locate the rich ore deposits after the Colonel had transferred his efforts to some other mining proposition. The Conkling seemed to be followed by the same “hoodoo.”
Nicholas Treweek never made a fortune, leaving an estate valued at $7,000 consisting principally of mining stocks.
This story will be continued. The Park City Museum has more members-only hikes to old mine sites this month. Don’t miss out on these informative, social, and recreational hikes!