WALL, ENOS A.
The family returned to Utah in 1885 and Enos engaged in mining at Mercur and elsewhere. Wall first visited the Bingham Mining District in 1887 and immediately detected signs of copper. At once he stalked three claims, and by 1900 owned all or part of nineteen claims, covering an area of two hundred acres.
In his attempts to gain financial backing for development of these low-grade properties, he approached Joseph R. DeLamar. Sometime later DeLamar obtained an option on a portion of Wall's holdings and had tests made by Daniel C. Jackling, then a young metallurgical engineer. Many negotiations ensured during the next three years until the Utah Copper Company was incorporated in 1903.
It was Wall's copper properties that netted him his vast fortune, although that venture was probably the most unpleasant and frustrating in his fifty-year mining career. He eventually sold his holdings, receiving $2,700,000 on the New York market. In 1904, Wall purchased a two story adobe home at 411 East South Temple, which had been built in 1880 by Mormon Bishop James Sharp. He hired architect Richard Kletting to transform the home into a palatial dwelling resembling a Renaissance villa. He lived the remainder of his life there, and on 29 June 1920 died of cancer at the age of eighty-one. Following the death of Mrs. Wall three years later, the home was bought by the Jewish community to be used as a social center. The building is presently occupied by the LDS Business College.
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