Archives West Finding Aid

Robert Livermore was a mining engineer and vice president of North American Mines, Inc. and of Calumet and Hecla Copper Company. He graduated from Harvard in 1900 and from M.I.T. in 1903. Before graduation he undertook a brief stint as a cowboy near Culbertson, Montana. In 1902 he worked as an unpaid assistant at the San Fernando Mine in Durango, Mexico, a property in which his father was interested. After graduation, he engaged in mining and mining exploration in Colorado and Nevada. A little later he directed a mining company in Ontario and was involved in a steamship business. He served during World War I as a captain in the U.S. Army Engineer Corps.

In 1924, Livermore returned to Colorado to try to save the struggling Smuggler Union Mine near Telluride, which had previously been under the management of Bulkeley Wells, who was the husband of Livermore’s sister, Grace Livermore Wells. The mine required too much new capital investment to be made profitable again, however, and it was finally closed in 1928. In that same year, Livermore formed a partnership with W. Spencer Hutchinson and founded North American Mines Incorporated to investigate and invest in mining properties. The corporation was particularly interested in Baja California, Nevada, and Tucson. In the 1930s, Livermore investigated properties in the Yukon and in British Columbia.

Livermore married Gwendolen Young of Colorado Springs, Colorado. The couple had one son and two daughters. In 1947 they retired to Boxford, Massachusetts. Robert Livermore died in Boston in 1959.