Portrait of Meyer Guggenheim

People/magnate, financier

Meyer Guggenheim

Meyer Guggenheim (1828–1905), magnate, financier, from United States. Linked to silver.

The lucky break

Began as a travelling salesman, built a fortune importing Swiss embroidery, then moved into silver smelting. He bought a smelting plant in Denver and built a smelter at Pueblo, Colorado, in 1888.1,2,3,4

Legacy

His firm grew into the most important silver-smelting company in the world and in 1900 joined the American Smelting and Refining Company, keeping a controlling interest. He had eight sons, and several of them carried the business on.1,2,3,4

Story cards

Where next

People

FamilyDaniel GuggenheimFather of eight sons, several of whom took the smelting empire global.2FamilySimon GuggenheimThe father who put his sons to work in the smelters.2

Sources

  1. Guggenheim, Meyer Jewish Encyclopedia (1901-1906)
  2. Guggenheim family Encyclopedia.com (reprinting a publisher's reference work)
  3. Wikidata item Q124462
  4. File pages and licence metadata for portraits (via the Commons imageinfo/extmetadata API) Wikimedia Commons

Pictures on this page: Meyer Guggenheim.jpg, not recorded on the file page (Public domain); Daniel Guggenheim.jpg, Bain News Service, New York. (Public domain); Simon Guggenheim cph.3a02257.jpg, Unknown author (Public domain).

From the Prospector Trails mining history dataset: each fact links to the source it was checked against. Figures are as the source gives them, in the money of their day. Not investment advice.

Keep exploring

Stories with these minerals

Lessons from historyBooms and busts: what mining history shows1859-2025Lessons from historyLucky breaks: the finds that almost did not happen1623-2009History of miningSilver: the metal that made the first global economy1000-1850History of miningGold fever: the rushes that filled continents1848-1900

All mining storiesThe world runs on rockAll mineralsMining by country

Pictures: South Africa: a crowd of people gathered outside The Goldfields offices in Johannesburg. 1896., Unknown (Wellcome Collection) (Public Domain Mark 1.0); Falu gruva, Lundberg, Bengt A / Europeana (CC0 1.0); Potosi, Bolivia, NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Space Systems, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team (Public domain (NASA media, no copyright)); Gold prospectors constructing a long box with a filter for panning gold. Process print after H.M. Paget, 1899., Henry Marriott Paget (Public Domain Mark 1.0).