Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,730

This is the grave of Charles Senter.

There’s not that much out there really on this guy, but one can extrapolate a few things. He was born in 1845 was in the Navy during the Civil War, on the good side. Eventually he went West and evidently this was to fight Indians. He married a Native woman, I am not sure of which tribe. But I want to be very clear, marrying a Native woman by no means meant you were not pro-genocide. Mostly, it meant you were pro having sex with a woman and not much more. He joined the Army at this point and was involved in various fights against the Tribes in the Dakotas. The available information doesn’t give us much information as to who, largely because the few people who write about a guy like this tend not to care. He was mustered out as a sergeant in 1869.

The only available information on Senter easily discovered is about the mining that we will discuss below. But we can surely talk about Custer’s Avengers. This was the reconstructed Seventh Calvary and they were men truly committed to genocide to avenge the brave and manly (and incredibly vain and almost unbelievably stupid) George Armstrong Custer. These were soldiers who committed depredations of the worst and grossest kind across the Plains, against any Indian they could find. They were not looking for evidence. They were looking for sport. These were about 1,700 new recruits, under George Crook and under the direct command of Lieutenant Colonel Richard Henry Dodge, this was nasty stuff and it did force the Lakota and Cheyenne to surrender.

After all this, Senter went to Colorado and wanted to find gold. He didn’t find that, but in 1879 he did find something else that was almost as good, or would be at a later date–molybdenum. Now, moly, which resembles graphite, wasn’t that well known. In fact, Senter had no idea what it was. But he saw all these weird mineral deposits and realized that it was not graphite so he took samples to assayers, who sent them to the Colorado School of Mines. This was really early. Supposedly, the first dedicated moly mine opened in Norway in 1885. I am not sure how this works with this information, but I think Senter was mostly just picking away at it. There wasn’t that much of a market for it at the time. But shortly after, it became a really critical ingredient in producing steel and that made molybdenum a critical element and it remains critical to steel production today. As late as 15 years ago, there was a huge molybdenum mine open in northern New Mexico, near the Colorado border.

Anyway, this was the Climax Mine, a few miles outside of Leadville. Senter staked some claims and worked them, but there wasn’t that much of a demand for molybdenum at this time. It wasn’t until shortly before World War I that the Germans realized the true alloying potential of molybdenum. Senter was old by then and I don’t think he held the claim any longer, having sold it, It was in 1916 that the Climax opened and became the enormous economic engine for the Colorado Rockies that it would remain for a long time. In any case, Senter certainly did not grow rich for it.

Senter died in 1924. He was approximately 79 years old, but I’m not sure because I don’t have birth and death dates for him.

Charles Senter is in Riverside Cemetery, Denver, Colorado. I didn’t come to this cemetery see this guy, but if your grave is chatty, you might win your way into this series.

In 2019, Senter was inducted into the American Mining Hall of Fame. And what a hall it is!!!! If you would like this series to visit other august members of this hall, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Pope Yeatman, a mining engineer who helped open the South African gold mines, is in Whitemarsh, Pennsylvania. AJ Prichard, who first discovered gold in the Coeur d’Alene district, is in Shoshone County, Idaho. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.