Oral Histories

Alexander Wilson was the president of Utah Construction & Mining Company, later known as Utah International, which held mines such as the Lucky Mc uranium mine, Navajo coal mine, and Bowen Basin mine in Australia. Alexander "Bud" Wilson was born in Tulare, California, in 1922 and attended both Visalia Junior College and UC Berkeley in the early 1940s. After WWII, he returned to university and graduated from the UC Berkeley College of Mines in 1948. His first jobs out of college were for the Yellow Pine Mine in Idaho and Mountain Pass Mine in California. He was then recruited by Tony Mecia for Utah Mines. Wilson started as a metallurgist but transferred to the Utah San Francisco office, where he eventually took over the mining department after Tony Mecia's death. During his time with the company, he facilitated the merger between Utah International and General Electric in 1976 and the later merger with BHP Mining. In this interview, Wilson discusses his family history, education, UC Berkeley, service during WWII, engineer work for Yellow Pine Mine, friendships made in Stibnite, heading the Utah Mining Division, Utah and Queensland Coal, family and health issues, running the mining company, merger with General Electric, GE President Welch, merger with BHP, Geough Whitlam and the Australian government in the 1970s, Marcona iron mine in Peru and selling iron ore to Japan.