New Mexico Mineral Symposium — Abstracts

Louis Polhemus is known to mining historians as an inventor and salesman of carbide lamps. He was a retail merchant in the copper mining town of Miami, Arizona, from 1915-30. He was a colorful and social character whose trademark was a pet parrot.

Polhemus reinvented himself several times, in both residence and vocation. His ancestry is traced to the Bahamas, and his youth was spent on the Texas Gulf Coast. As a young man, he declared himself an engineer, and found his first career in southern Mexico helping to develop a hydroelectric plant. After spending 15 yrs in Arizona, he traveled to Central America, and returned as a naturopathic doctor...or so it seemed. His final home was in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

This presentation will chronicle the life of Louis Polhemus as well as the artifacts that remain in his memory.