Horace Willis Higgs photograph collection, 1920-2002

Horace Willis “Will” Higgs (1918-2011) was born on March 27, 1918 in Salt Lake City, Utah, to Horace H. and Myrtle Perkins Higgs. His father worked for Kennecott Copper Corporation in the 1920s, and Will grew up in Bingham Canyon until the Great Depression impacted the copper industry and the family moved to Bountiful, Utah. Will Higgs attended the University of Utah, receiving an MA in Metallurgical Engineering. While at the university, Higgs met and married Leah Baxter in September 1940; together the couple had two children.

Will Higgs spent his career in mining. In the 1940s, he worked for the American Smelting and Refining Corporation in Helena, Montana. In 1950, Higgs began working for Cerro de Pasco Corporation, an American mining company whose mines were located in Peru. Higgs and his family lived in La Oroya, Peru, for 17 years. Higgs started at Cerro de Pasco as a metallurgic engineer, was promoted to manager of operations, and in 1967, became Executive Vice President of the Company; at this point, Will and Leah moved to Greenwich, Connecticut. In 1975, Peru expropriated the mines from Cerro de Pasco Corporation, and Higgs went to work on a coal mine in Pennsylvania before moving to Australia in 1976 to work for the Clutha Coal Mining Company. Will Higgs retired in 1981, and he and Leah moved to Auburn, California. Leah Higgs died in 2005. Will Higgs died on January 28, 2011. (Source: "Obituary: Horace Willis Higgs," Gold Country Media Newspapers, Feb. 4, 2011.)