Spencer Penrose

Spencer Penrose (November 2, 1865–December 7, 1939) was a businessman, entrepreneur, venture capitalist and philanthropist at the turn of the 20th century. Although principally in and around Colorado Springs, Colorado, his interests included concerns in Arizona, Utah, and Kansas.

History

Spencer was born into a prominent Philadelphia family of Cornish descent to Richard Alexandria Fullerton and Sarah Hanna Penrose, and was brother to Boies Penrose and Richard (R.A.F.) Penrose. In 1886, he graduated last in his class from Harvard. Penrose started as a ladies-man and an adventurer who became a successful entrepreneur in the gold fields of nearby Cripple Creek in the 1890s as a manager of the local real estate office of Charles L. Tutt, a general supplies' merchant and gold assayer; his great fortune evolved from his associations with his geologist brother's gold and silver mine in the Commonwealth mine in Pearce, Arizona, and in his prescient purchase of Utah property that held enormous reserves of low grade copper ore that was extracted via a new metallurgical technique developed by one of his engineers in his Cripple Creek associations.