J. P. Loftus
Wherever men gather to develop the natural resources of the land and build a community, it falls to the lot of a few to lead, to many to follow. In the wonderful story of Nevada's golden outpouring of riches there appear characterswho stand out in bold relief against the background of the majority. In the pursuit of wealth on Nevada's deserts men pause to speak in praise of the work and achievements of J. P. Loftus, of the firm of Loftus & Davis.
What measure of success has come to this man, and Fortune has smiled on his efforts, is due to perseverance, to keen business judgment, and to his own honest endeavors. Of the men who have made Nevada, Loftus and Davis stand in the foremost rank.
J. P. Loftus was born in New York. He acquired an education, as he has done all else that he possesses, by his own efforts. He was left an orphan at the age of six years, but has faced the world manfully on his own resources from that time to this. Mr. Loftus came to the camp of Goldfield in the early days. As he expresses it, his office was under his hat, for the first two years.
The mining operations of Mr. Loftus and his partner, Mr. Davis, have been on an extensive scale, so extensive that the firm has the reputation throughout Nevada and the United States of making as many mines as any one firm in this western country. Both men had been thoroughly trained for their work, Mr. Loftus having had seventeen years of experience. Some of their big ventures were the Block Five lease on the Sandstorm, undertaken November 23, 1904; the purchase and developmentof 100 acres of land comprising the property of the Bullfrog Gold Bar Mining Company, four miles from Rhyolite; the Great Bend Mining Company near Diamondfield,in January, 1906, and the Round Mountain Mining Company in March, 1906. The latter property was secured in conjunction with J. P. Sweeney, J. S. Cook and Louis Gordon.
For the accommodation of the News Publishing Company, of which Mr. Loftus is said to own the control, he has planned and constructed at a cost of $100,000, theNews Building at the corner of Crook and Columbia streets, and as president of the Montezuma Club the work of planning and constructing the new home of that organizationhas been entrusted to him. There is hardly a large business enterprise of merit in which he has not a finger.
A word concerning the man: Mr. Loftus has a serene and manly disposition that inspires confidence. He has an intellectual forehead, a keen, penetrating eye, and a rugged, honest face. He stands for what is right and honorable, and his remarkable success is so justly merited that not even a business rival would attempt to detract from it.
Mrs. Loftus, before her marriage, was Gertrude Portia Hopkins. Their boy was the first baby in Goldfield. Many successful men are prone to take all the credit for their achievements to themselves, but Mr. Loftus is not of that class. Speaking reminiscently of his work, he pays a loving tribute to the woman whose constant words of encouragement have upheld and supported him even in times of apparent adversity, and to her he attributes in great part that "measure of success" which he modestly admits he has attained.
Updated December 2014
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