Richard Edwin “Dick” Wagner was the individual most responsible for discovery of Missouri’s Viburnum Trend. Dick Wagner’s 1955 discovery became The New Missouri Lead Belt, a world-class district that has produced more than $5 billion in lead, zinc, copper, and silver and that will ultimately produce more than $8 billion in metal values. During the decade of the 1990s, New Missouri Lead Belt Mines accounted for two-thirds of U.S. mined lead production.
Dick Wagner went to work for St. Joseph Lead Company (now The Doe Run Company) in 1926, shortly after receiving his BS in mining engineering from the Colorado School of Mines. He started as a mining engineer and surveyor in St. Joe’s Old Lead Belt mines in southeast Missouri. In the 1930s, while working as a mining engineer, Dick Wagner started what he called a “sub-rosa” study of mine geology, since the manager at the time thought geology was a waste of time.
Later in the 1930s, Dick Wagner became drill foreman for St. Joe’s surface diamond-drill prospecting effort. He worked closely with the Sullivan Company to introduce many innovations to the drilling system, significantly reducing costs and improving efficiency. Many of his changes are still in use today.
In 1944, Dick Wagner transferred to St. Joe’s newly organized Geology Department, formed because the company’s Old Lead Belt reserves would deplete over time. This new department was charged with initiating an exploration program outside the Old Lead Belt. Wagner studied numerous Old Lead Belt drill holes and developed a stratigraphic facies zoning system for the Bonneterre Formation. His systematic work led to identification of the favorable brownrock facies that hosts the lead ores. Moving outside the Old Lead Belt, Dick Wagner’s exploration resulted in the 1948 discovery of the 30-million-ton Indian Creek Mine in Washington County, Missouri.
Dick Wagner then traced the brownrock to the west side of the St. Francois Mountains. In 1955, he discovered the #27 Mine, the first mine in the area of the Viburnum Trend. The first pay hole actually drilled on the Viburnum Trend was bottomed in May 1956. Exploration by other companies exploded on the Viburnum Trend, and by 1964, a nearly continuous lead ore body 40 miles long and containing 500 million tons of plus five-percent lead ore was outlined.
Dick Wagner was a strong believer in studying and learning from the rocks. For more than 20 years, he spent a few hours virtually every working day studying drill core, in addition to spending much time studying outcrops in the field. Dick Wagner had an encyclopedic knowledge of the Bonneterre Formation and mineralization throughout southern Missouri. He was an ingenious innovator, constantly finding new ways to analyze geologic data.
In his 37 years at St. Joe, Dick Wagner’s strong and highly contagious enthusiasm for exploration geology enriched the mining industry and all of his associates.
