Discovery of Lead

Discovery of Lead. . , Chunks of lead ore were discovered in 1849 on land belonging to John C. Cox, the first settler in present-day Joplin. A year or two later, one of Cox's slaves found a chunk of galena, or lead ore, while digging for fishing worms on a hillside near Joplin Creek. Cox had the minerals smelted into lead and a shaft dug on the spot of the discovery. He organized some lead mining and smelting, but the activity came to a halt near the beginning of the Civil War. , During the spring of 1870, J. Morris Young, superintendent of the Granby Mining and Smelting Company at Oronogo, offered a jackpot of $500 to the miner or company of miners who could mine the most lead from any one shaft during a four-month period. Elliot Moffet and John Sergeant won the prize. They used their winnings to lease a 10-acre tract of land from John C. Cox. In August 1870, the two miners pitched a tent along the Joplin Creek valley. Moffet and Sergeant began burrowing downward looking for mineral riches. They diligently dug into the earth's surface one shovel at a time, but their hopes and dreams were quickly evaporating in the hot August sun. Desperate, and now with zero operating funds, they decided to give it another try. Moffet and Sergeant took some blasting powder on credit and gave the earth one last jolt. After the dirt and rocks settled, the explosion revealed the tip of a substantial vein of lead. Not known to them at the time, their stubborn persistence proved to be the defining moment in Joplin history., In a couple of months, the Moffet and Sergeant discovery shaft reportedly yielded an astounding $60,000 payout. The two successful miners erected the first smelter near their mine. Word traveled fast as this extraordinary sum of money awoke miners, causing a tent city of laborers to emerge along Joplin Creek. , Moffet and Sergeant arrived during the summer of 1870 searching for that "lucky strike." Their defining last blast was a life-changing moment for them, and from their actions the primitive upstart mining camp would quickly emerge into the community known as Joplin, Missouri. With a starting population of 4,000 people, Joplin was incorporated into the state of Missouri on March 23, 1873. Dramatically, in less than three years after the Moffet and Sergeant strike, the former mining tent community had been solidified into an official municipality.