Herbert C Hoover

Herbert Hoover was born in a very humble three room one-story home, built of upright boards whitewashed inside and out, on the bank of the Wapsinonoc Creek, across the alley from his father Jesse Hoover's blacksmith shop. Both of his parents died when Herbert was a young child and he was sent to live with an Uncle where he went to work in his Uncle's Real Estate Business, here he met an Engineer who impressed upon him the importance of a college education. Leland Stanford Jr. University formally opened on October 1st 1891, and young Herbert, though lacking a high school diploma, passed entrance exams and entered the Department of Geology & Mining. He received his diploma in 1895 and met Lou Henry during his senior year at Stanford where she majored in Geology and graduated in 1898.

In October 1897, a British company, Berwick Moreing, was looking for consultants to head to Western Australia where the Gold Rush was under way. They needed a young man, as the job would be extremely strenuous - but not too young, as it required thorough experience; say a man of thirty-five. His tutor did not conceal Hoover's relative lack of experience, but indicated that he was not yet thirty-five, he was well within the truth by twelve years, in fact Hoover was just twenty three years old! Hoover bade farewell to Lou Henry with whom he had an "understanding", he bought himself his first dress suit, crossed the Mississippi for the first time, and headed for New York, for London, for Australia, for the world.

It was a long journey by way of France, Italy, Egypt, and India before arriving in Albany Western Australia where he had to spend two weeks in quarantine, small pox having been discovered on board the ship. Then after three hundred odd miles inland by a recently constructed single gauge railroad, he was at Coolgardie, one of the area's assigned to him. Kalgoorlie & Leonora was flat and desolate land, vast distances covered with low, bristly sage bush, where the mercury rarely dropped below 100 even at night, a land in which water was almost as valuable and more rare than gold for which thousands of men were hunting feverishly.

For the rest of his life the very sight of a camel made Hoover seasick. In installments of thirty or forty miles a day, he traveled with the nauseous caravans from one of his mines to another; or on the trail of rumours that sometimes made millionaires in London and New York and more often fizzled out in disappointments.

At the Gwalia Museum stands the headframe of Oregon that Hoover designed, the Mine Mangers house, where he spent his 24th birthday in August 1898 in a partly finished house, (now restored) The Mine Managers Office, (now housing the photographic & small item collection) and the Assay building (now archives and office), lasting reminders of his contribution to Mining & Engineering.

Herbert Hoover was also a regular guest at the Kalgoorlie Palace Hotel in its early days and it was during this time he reportedly fell in love with a barmaid at the hotel before leaving to marry his college sweetheart Lou Henry. He also composed a poem to the barmaid, an excerpt of which hangs next to the famous mirror.

The elaborately carved mirror which stands in the foyer of the hotel was his parting gift to the Hotel where he spent much of his time when he was in Kalgoorlie.

Hoover became President of the USA in 1929, just before the stock market crash, unfortunately the depression descended on America as on many other Countries. His Presidency ended in 1933. Lou Henry Hoover died suddenly from a heart attack on 7th January 1944, while Herbert Hoover died 2Oth October 1964. 10 months after the Sons of Gwalia Mine closed at Christmas 1963.