Colonel William C. Greene and the Cananea Copper Bubble

Abstract

By far the most swashbuckling figure in the history of the Mexican mining industry was “Colonel” William C. Greene. While the Guggenheims built an empire founded on financial acumen and sound metallurgical practice, Greene built an empire founded on prospectuses and sheer bluff. Greene, in his time, controlled the largest copper ore body in all Mexico, yet he drove his company into bankruptcy. The story of his opening of the Cananea copper deposit is fantastic—stranger than fiction.