Carbide Lamp - From Alta, Utah Silver Mine

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From Utah Division of State History Artifact Collection:  This “Guy’s Dropper” model Carbide Lamp was found near the former silver mines at Alta, Utah. It was donated to the Historical Society in 1978 by Gaylon Hansen. Although carbide lamps were replaced by electric lights in 1923, the simple design of using the calcium carbide flammable gas by-product, acetylene, was discovered as early as 1862. Guy’s Dropper carbide lamps were named after their inventor, Frank Guy. They were first manufactured in 1913 in Springfield, Illinois and were especially popular during World War I. Silver was first discovered in Alta in 1864, and by 1871 efforts to incorporate Alta as a city were underway. In 1875, a railroad connecting the Emma and Flagstaff mines to the Salt Lake Valley was completed. But by 1873, the value of silver began to drop and Alta’s mining community dispersed along with it. A “boom-and-bust” mining town, Alta’s population went from 3,000 in 1872 to 300 in 1880. Although there was another population boom around 1904-1917 during the operations of the Jacobsen Brothers, by 1930 Alta had begun to shift its image from a prospering silver mining district to one of the West’s most popular ski resorts.