Phoebe Hearst, wife of George Hearst, one of mining’s most notable successes, was truly the great “First Lady” of mining.​

From the day of their marriage in 1862, she immersed herself in helping George with his work: mining and prospecting.​

Wherever their explorations took them—California, Utah, Nevada, Montana, South Dakota—she made it a point to learn all she could about mining and those who worked the mines. She made it her personal financial responsibility to educate entire families of miners’ children—an interest which began a remarkable lifetime of philanthropic works.​

Mining had made her a very wealthy woman, and she generously poured millions back into it. She became the University of California at Berkeley’s College of Mining’s leading donor and served as the first woman regent of the University of California. After George’s death, Phoebe financed the Hearst Memorial Mining Building to house the mining college’s permanent home.​

Jack London wrote in the San Francisco Examiner, November 1902: “Not only will the Hearst Memorial Building be the finest of its class, but it will be the greatest of its kind.”​

This proved true, for what was then the College of Mining is today the Department of Materials Science and Mineral Engineering—and the Hearst Memorial Mining Building still stands proudly as home of one of the world’s finest colleges of mining.​

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