This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2010, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Mining engineering is a pretty small profession, and the number of women in it is miniscule. But Desdemona Stott Beeson went fearlessly into that man's world and held her own.
Born in 1897, Desdemona grew up amid the mine headframes of Eureka. She thrived there. She loved to be underground. She talked the manager of one mine into letting her accompany the morning shift of miners and watch them at work.
Once her brother showed her a newly discovered cavity lined with silver ore, and she never forgot its beauty. After the mining companies began to restrict entrance to the mines, she persuaded a boyfriend — a foreman — to spend their evenings together in the Mammoth Mine.
Out of this passion came her life's vocation. Today, engineer Shelley Pearson understands how that could happen. When she went underground for the first time, "I was so fascinated because it was like another world. Like going to the moon."
Shelley also went on to become a mining engineer.
Desdemona studied at the University of Utah for a while (where she got in trouble for going downtown alone and without a hat). At the Alta mining camp she met geologist Joseph Beeson. Joe was looking for the lost ore body of the famous Emma Mine. They married, he found it, and then he went off to World War I.
Meanwhile, Desdemona went to Stanford, studying mining engineering and geology. When Joe came back, they became a dynamite team. Over time, they filed and worked mining claims in Bingham, Park City, California, Nevada, St. George and the Wasatch Mountains, with Desdemona helping stake the claims and running the operations.
She had to be tough-minded in this man's world, but she gained respect. Once the Beesons' employees went on strike; they wanted to be paid for their travel time to the mine shaft high on the mountain. Desdemona drove to Elko, researched the law and found a statute that stated travel time was not included in pay periods.
She drove back, nailed the statute to the door and invited the men who disagreed to leave. Calm but determined, she won that fight. The miners went back to work.
In the 1930s, the couple moved to Washington, D.C., where Joe worked for the government. Desdemona couldn't find a good job until during World War II, when men were in short supply. She monitored the demand for and production of metals around the world. When the war ended, her agency told her they didn't need her professional skills anymore — the men were back from the war — but she could continue to work as a secretary if she wanted. She quit in disgust.
Desdemona's toughest job came when she was in her 50s. She helped connect the Wasatch Drain Tunnel with the water-filled workings of the Cardiff Mine, then helped figure out how to mine below the tunnel level.
The Beesons sank a shaft down from the end of a 2-mile-long tunnel and installed power lines and pumps to pump out the water that continually flowed into the mine. They kept mining there until 1967.
Over the years, Desdemona had to deal with the same rigors that any man would. She hauled 4-by-4 beams when she was pregnant, got sunstroke, broke her ankle slipping on ice at the mine and got hit by a falling rock that broke her neck.
This last injury kept her in the hospital for months, but then she was back in the mines with a neck brace.
Desdemona didn't let either a broken neck or gender stop her from doing what she wanted. Interviewed in 1975, she expressed puzzlement at the "women's lib" movement. To her, women are born liberated.
Her life is an excellent case in point.
Kristen Rogers Iversen can be reached at kristenri@yahoo.com.