George Ernest Collins died at the age of 76 in hospital in Ouray, Colorado, on May 4th, 1946, of injuries received two days earlier when the mine bus in which he was returning from inspecting a mine of the American Smelting and Refining Co. left the highway and plunged down a steep boulder-strewn slope.
He was born in Truro, Cornwall, and studied the profession under his father, the late Mr. J.H. Collins, a founder-member and past-president of the Institution, and was made a partner in July, 1889, of the firm J. H. Collins & Son.
His career in America, the whole of which was centred on mining in Colorado, began in 1895 as general assistant to Mr. A.L. Collins at Central City and joint manager of the Central Development Syndicate, Ltd. From 1898 to 1900 he was manager of Reynolds and St. George mines of The Gold Reefs of Georgia, Ltd., and then took charge of other large mills and mines of the Central Development Syndicate. In 1901 he was managing the Polar Star mine, San Juan County, Colo., a property in which he subsequently acquired a controlling interest. Since 1902 he had maintained a practice as consulting mining engineer with an office in the Boston Building, Denver. Between 1902 and 1910 he managed various properties in Gilpin and Clear Creek Counties; in 1909 he was instrumental in opening up valuable tungsten deposits in Boulder County, and also assumed the managership of the Argo tunnel, Clear Creek County, which was completed in 1910, in which year he also became manager of the Druid mine, Gilpin County, with a controlling interest. A few years later he took up the position of manager of the Mary Murphy Gold Mining Co., at Romley, Colo. This company acquired, in 1917, the Red Mountain mines at Ouray, which had since been worked continuously on a small scale under Mr. Collins’s management.
He took an active interest in the introduction and adaptation of rock drills to mining and the use of steel sets instead of timber. He was also prominent in fostering early developments of flotation and electro-static mineral separation. Among his writings are two papers which he contributed to the Transactions of the Institution — ‘Vein structure at the Reynolds mine, Georgia’ (vol.9, 1900-1) and ‘The relative distribution of gold and silver values in the ores of Gilpin County, Colorado’ (vol.12, 1902-3).
He was elected an Associate of the Institution in 1895 and was transferred to Membership in 1900. He was also a member of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers and member and chairman of the Committee of Professional Conduct of the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America; he was also an ex-president of the Colorado Scientific Society and an ex-governor of the Colorado branch of the American Mining Congress.
Vol. 56, Trans I.M.M. 1946-7, p. 613
