BAMBERGER, SIMON

BAMBERGER, SIMON (1846–1926), U.S. mining industrialist, railroad builder, and governor of Utah. Born in Germany, Bamberger immigrated to the United States when he was 14. He worked first in the store of his elder brother, Herman, in Wilmington, Ohio, and later the brothers became clothing manufacturers in St. Louis, Missouri. In pursuit of a debtor, Simon Bamberger found himself at Piedmont, Wyoming, a Union Pacific Railroad work camp. He decided to stay, erected shacks and tents which he rented to workers on the new railroad, and cashed their paychecks at a discount. He then moved on to Ogden, Utah, where he bought an interest in a hotel, and in 1869 settled in Salt Lake City. He was joined there by his brothers and they tended to his business interests, leaving him free to seek his fortune in gold mining. He found it in the lucrative Centennial Eureka Mines. Subsequently he built a railroad to a coalfield in southern Utah, and after a struggle lasting 17 years against competing interests and harassing litigation, the Bamberger Railroad went into operation between Salt Lake City and Ogden, with Simon Bamberger as director and treasurer.

In 1898 Bamberger entered public service as a member of Salt Lake City's Board of Education, where he devoted himself to improving teachers' conditions. From 1903 to 1907 he sat in the State Senate and then was elected governor of Utah (1916–20), the first Democrat and non-Mormon to become governor. During his administration Bamberger sponsored legislation for the control and supervision of public utilities, improved public health services, guaranteed full-year salaries for teachers, the right of workers to voluntary association, benefits for farmers, and other liberal measures.

Bamberger was one of the founders of Utah's first Jewish congregation, Bnai Israel, and was later its president. He supported the Utah colonization fund established by the Jewish Agricultural Society which attempted to settle 140 Jews from New York and Philadelphia in the Clarion Colony. He was also prominent in several Jewish philanthropic and communal institutions.

bibliography:

ajyb, 19 (1917/18), 249f.; N. Warrum, Utah Since Statehood (1919); L.L. Watters, Pioneer Jews of Utah (1952), 9f., 30f., 163–9; B. Postal and L. Koppman, A Jewish Tourist's Guide to the U.S. (1954), 608ff.

[Morton Mayer Berman]