Louis S. Cates was responsible for the development of many great porphyry copper ore bodies, particularly the massive Morenci deposit.
In 1930, Louis Cates became President of Phelps Dodge Corporation and, for the first time in 100 years, the company entrusted its leadership to a stranger without previous Phelps Dodge background. The choice was wisely made. A graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cates was born in 1881, the very year that Phelps Dodge evolved from a mercantile firm and entered into the copper mining field.
When he moved to Bingham, Utah and joined Boston Consolidated, later serving as manager, he formed a lifelong friendship with the President of Utah Copper Company, Daniel Jackling, the great crusader for development of massive orebodies using open pit methods. When Boston Consolidated merged with Utah Copper, Cates was put to the task of developing another large copper porphyry. The Ray, Arizona mine became Cates’ “baby,” where he evolved such a successful method of block caving, that in the 9 years he was there, the mine produced over $15 million in profits.
Cates returned to Bingham as Jackling’s right-hand man and took over as manager of what was then the largest open pit mine in the world. Later when he took over the presidency of Phelps Dodge, succeeding Walter Douglas, the mining industry was weathering the worst depression the nation had ever seen. Cates quickly galvanized the company into action by acquiring Nichols Copper Co. and the National Electric Projects Corp., which handled up to 500 million pounds of copper per year. Cates’ major focus, however, was on the challenge of bringing the 450,000,000-ton orebody at Morenci, Arizona on stream.
He made the final decision to mine by open pit and, thanks to the genius of Louis Cates, Morenci became one of the most outstanding mines in the world.
Cates succeeded in building Phelps Dodge from a firm with few mines into the third largest copper company in the world. Under his direction, the company acquired many valuable properties including the deposit in Jerome, the tremendous Irish Mag mine, the smelter in Douglas and the open pit mine in Ajo.
Because of his enormous achievement in the development of his massive Morenci orebody, Cates was awarded the Gold Medal of the Mining and Metallurgical Society in 1956.
