Hoover? Hoover? Was he a vacuum cleaner salesman? In 1896, Mr. Louis Janin, a successful California mining engineer, employed W. H. Clark, a veteran surveyor and a recent graduate of Stanford, Mr. Hoover. Janin sent the two men on a survey trip in the Four Mile District. They were to “run a line on a syphon just north of Craig, Colorado.” Translated: they were to survey an area planning to use a syphon to pipe water to a placer mining site. The high pressure water would flush gold bearing gravel from a hillside in to a sluice. Some of the land being examined was owned by William H. Welch of Meeker. Clark and Hoover reported back to Janin, who was staying in the Brown Palace in Denver. W.H. Clark remarked in an interview in 1928, that “after the work was done, Hoover went on and I never saw or heard of him again until he came into prominence in Belgium relief work.” William Henry Clark went on to become Colorado U.S. Surveyor General in 1921, a position he held for four years. Mr. Louis Janin took Hoover to be his office boy and quickly promoted him to an engineering position. This was the first real job for Herbert Clark Hoover. Louis later recommended young Hoover for his next mining job in the gold fields of Australia. H.C. Hoover made a better mining engineer than a surveyor. His millions carried him into the political arena and became the 31st President. Ten years before meeting Hoover, W. H. Clark was hard at work as the first Mayor of Meeker, Colorado. For a short time, William technically owned Meeker…all of it! In 1887, when the U.S. government approved the land patent conveying title to the incorporated town of Meeker, title was given directly to Mayor Clark. I guess that was fair, after all, W. H. Clark surveyed the town plat to be submitted to Garfield County. In addition to being the first mayor, William Clark was a school teacher in Meeker. In October 1896, Clark was holding class when a ruckus was heard at the Hugus & Company Mercantile and bank. Clark ran to the scene only to be shot by one of the foiled bank robbers. Clark was saved when the bullet struck a book in his breast pocket. In 1900 he was County Superintendent. His surveying skills carried him all over Northwest Colorado. He eventually became employed as a U.S. government surveyor and moved his family to Denver in 1915. William Henry Clark, born December 29, 1857 Waterloo, Black Hawk, Iowa, died July 5, 1932 Yuma, CO at the home of his daughter Hazel Clark Fox. Clark died the same year Hoover was defeated by Franklin D. Roosevelt. Meeker and the upper White River were favored by several members of the Roosevelt clan. History again makes a circle. “Time is an unseen web. Filaments vibrate throughout eternity.” (Ed Peck, 2025.)
Sources: Rio Blanco Historical Society; This Is What I Remember books; Bio of Louis Janin by the Washington County, Utah Historical Society; Federal Census 1880,1900, 1910, 1920; Coloradohistoricalnewspapers.org; Rocky Mountain News Oct 11, 1928; RMN June 25, 1896; Meeker Herald; Clark had been in Colorado since 1880 (as a teacher in Denver). He was employed as a Deputy Land Surveyor under the Surveyor General of the District of Colorado on July 11, 1881.
By ED PECK
