[California]: [Copper Mining]:

$400 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

VALENCIA COPPER MINING COMPANY. A very rare prospectus for the Valencia Copper Mining Company, operating in far northwestern California at the turn of the century. Although incorporated in Arizona Territory, the company's lands actually consisted of 558 acres along the New River in Trinity County, California. The promotional provides illustrations and text to describe the company's clearly unprecedented odds for success, with large deposits of uncommonly rich copper ore and a seemingly unending supply of wood, coal, and water for fueling the operation. Despite repeated assurances that "MINING STOCK IS A GOOD INVESTMENT" and declaring that "Wage earners investing from five, ten, or twenty-five dollars per month in the capital stock of the Valencia Copper Mining Company will, no doubt in the near future receive monthly dividends, in excess of their salaries," it seems more likely that investors were disappointed: by 1906, the Valencia Copper Mining Company had made it onto California's list of "Foreign Corporations whose right to do business has been forfeited…for failure to pay their corporation license tax." An early owner of this pamphlet has scratched out the name of the president of the Company printed on the titlepage, writing in by hand the name of "E.J. Davidson." An exceedingly scarce California mining piece – OCLC records only a single example, at the Bancroft Library, which also contains a folding map not present in this copy.

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.