Joe Hirshhorn’s $30 Billion Uranium Discovery
From Eating Garbage to Conquering Wall Street: The Unbelievable Journey of Joe Hirshhorn and His Uranium Empire
As dawn breaks over the National Mall, the Hirshhorn Museum emerges as a standout example of modernist design among Washington DC's historic landmarks. Its unique circular shape sets it apart from the traditional architectural styles of nearby monuments, marking a significant shift towards the avant-garde. The museum is a gateway to the world of contemporary art. Few visitors would imagine the incredible backstory of the museum’s founder, a rough stock operator turned mine promoter who became the undisputed king of uranium at the height of the Cold War.
Joe Hirshhorn ate garbage to survive his Brooklyn childhood. His early struggles didn't deter him; instead they fueled his ambition. By his teens, Joe had conquered Wall Street. His triumph was no fluke; he relentlessly pursued knowledge and devoured business biographies. “Men Who Are Making America” by BC Forbes was his bible.
Joe's path was full of ethical dilemmas. Long-after he mastered Wall Street, he’d play a game with people who sought advice from him. Joe would tip them about a penny stock, saying it would reach $100 per share within a few months. The suckers piled in as Joe sold, offloading worthless positions. It was a tough lesson about greed and doing your own due diligence.
This cruel practice humiliated at least one of Hirshhorn’s four wives, after people close to her lost money. One Hirshhorn friend still loved him after experiencing it. “I cannot dislike Joe. He’s so extraordinary. He sold me a bill of goods. I lost a bundle.”
As a young curb-broker, buying and selling securities in the open air, Joe solicited friends to yell fake buy orders, attracting other traders. This practice, known as “spoofing” is outlawed today.
In 11 months at age 17, Joe grew $255 into $167,000 trading - the beginning of his financial rollercoaster. After buying his mom a house, he proceeded to lose everything on a supposed inside tip.
“I learned never to buy stock on a scaledown unless you’re an insider… otherwise you’re guessing,” Joe reflected 50 years later. He wanted “to deal the cards, not to draw them.”
Recovering, Joe earned $4 million by age 30. He cashed out weeks before the 1929 crash, sensing there was no one left to buy. Missing the action, Joe set his sights on gold mining and opened an office in Toronto. He announced his 1933 arrival with a full page ad in the Northern Miner that read, “My Name Is OPPORTUNITY and I Am Paging CANADA.”
A Gambler’s Origins
Born in 1899 in Djustk, Latvia, Joe Hirshhorn was the twelfth of thirteen children. His father died when Joe was 1, leaving his mother, Amelia, to raise the family and run their store alone.
Soon after Joe’s father’s death, Amelia sent Herman, her eldest son, on a buying trip with all of her savings. Herman never returned to Latvia. Fearing poverty and rising antisemitism, Amelia moved to Brooklyn in search of a better life. She arrived at Ellis Island in 1906 with two working age daughters.
The three Hirshhorn women worked 12 hour days, 6 days a week, for $3, as sweatshop seamstresses. 8 year old Joe and his remaining siblings set sail for America in September 1907. A couple in first-class noticed the handsome, tiny boy in steerage, and invited Joe to join them. He spent the remainder of the voyage on the upper deck. “Joey always wanted to be in first class,” sister Annie remembered.
The 9 Brooklyn Hirshhorns moved into a railroad-flat in Williamsburg. Herman appeared soon after, and moved in. When a fire engulfed the building, the Hirshhorns’ leapt into a fireman’s net to safety. It was Herman who noticed the fire and rounded up everyone, helping restore his standing. The fire killed an entire neighbouring family.
According to daughter Gene, Joe won a neighbourhood craps game after emigrating. The other boys roughed him up and stole his money. This ingrained in Joe a sense of toughness and suspicion that remained in later life.
Joe said he experienced “the bitter taste of poverty” in Brooklyn, telling biographer Barry Hyams that he “stayed alive on garbage.” Joe sold newspapers and gave his wages to Amelia, determined to improve her circumstances.
One day, young Joe travelled through Manhattan on his way to a track meet. As he walked down Broad Street, he noticed the action on Wall Street and froze. Joe spent the next 5 hours staring at the commotion of outdoor trading, skipping lunch and missing the track meet entirely. "I made up my mind that some day I was going to come back and be a stockbroker. It was that simple,” Joe remembered.
The four foot eight inch Hirshhorn (Joe reached five feet, four inches after age 20) dropped out of grade 9 at age 14. He began door knocking on Wall Street, looking for work. Feigning experience as a telephone switchboard operator, he landed his first Wall Street day job, also delivering Western Union messages by night. “He marked one truth that jumped out from those messages he carried and studied,” daughter Gene wrote, “that buyer or seller, profit or loss, the gain was always the broker’s and, therefore, the more transactions a man could stimulate, the better.”
In his Wall Street beginnings, Joe only ever ran, never walked. Older brokers took notice. Joe joined a financial publishing firm, charting stocks and learning technical analysis. One mentor staked him in trading. Others sent him business. In the Roaring 20s, Joe thrived as a broker and trader.
“When doctors, lawyers, dentists left their professions to play the market full time, I knew it was time to quit,” Joe said of his timely August 1929 exit from stocks.
In the 1930s, Joe began commuting weekly from New York to Toronto. He established Technical Mine Consultants, and built a dedicated team to sift through potential investments.
“He was what was known as a broker’s broker, someone who completes transactions for other brokers rather than for individual investors. Of course, all the while Joe traded stocks for his own account,” daughter Gene wrote.
Joe had a habit of calling people, especially competitors, while they were still in bed in the mornings. He thought they would be more likely to blurt out of the truth inadvertently in the early hours.
“It was difficult to talk to Joe, because he did most of the talking,” remembered Dit Holt, a geologist who worked with Hirshhorn on later uranium ventures. “He'd go, “How's your mother? How's your father? How's your girlfriend? How's your sister?” You wouldn't get a word in edgewise.”
For the next two decades, Joe had many false starts in mining. But through risk-taking and capital-access he eventually earned credibility.
A $2000 bet on two prospectors exploring near Geraldton, Ontario, paid Joe $500,000 after a gold mine discovery. In Free Gold: The Story of Canadian Mining (1947), Hirshhorn explained why he made the investment: “Why? Don’t ask me. For one reason, I liked their looks. And I had a hunch.” He helped fund the Macassa gold mine in Kirkland Lake, today operated by Agnico Eagle. Joe cornered the market in Preston East Dome, leading to a reckoning for short-sellers when it became a significant gold producer.
“Since those days, “Little Joe” has blossomed like a rose. A bundle of nerves and energy, ever bursting with grand plans and unfailing generous impulse, he has opened a flood of money from the United States to Canada,” Free Gold’s Arnold Hoffman wrote.
Enter Frank Joubin
Joe Hirshhorn’s greatest triumph was still to come. It came through collaboration with Frank Joubin, an accomplished prospector from British Columbia. “They acted as catalysts for each other,” geologist George Werniuk said.
Drawn to Joe’s work ethic and intuition, Joubin was 41 when he teamed up with Hirshhorn, then 53. Recognizing Joubin’s soft-spoken drive and brilliance, Joe reluctantly agreed to share 10% of his mining profits with him.
When Joubin was a child, his mother brought him to see a clairvoyant. She predicted he would triumph in his 40s. "Each time [mother] spoke of this I smiled inwardly,” Joubin wrote in his memoir. “I knew that in the vast majority of cases good fortune comes because the person to whom it comes recognizes opportunity when it arrives."
Hirshhorn’s Routine
Not For Gold Alone, Joubin’s 1986 autobiography, paints a vivid picture of Joe in the early 1950s:
“Hirshhorn had installed on his desk an exceptionally extensive telephone network. It consisted of two hand-held telephones (sometimes in simultaneous use) and about twenty or more push-buttons to connect him directly to his banker, traders, and brokerage officers in a score of cities. He called this his "piano." It was his pride and joy, as well as his most effective professional tool.”
“Joe Hirshhorn was primarily an intuitive, vocal person. Eighty to ninety per cent of his business was transacted over the telephone. When not in a meeting, Joe was almost continually at work on his telephone "piano." He was the centre of a widespread and highly efficient financial and mining communications network."
"He seemed to enjoy criticism… He never tried to outsmart his trusted staff. He constantly asked us searching questions and was satisfied only by reasonable and understandable answers."
"Joe would shout, gesticulate, prance about, and wave the cigar, lit or unlit which was always near at hand. I was the contemplative realist, concentrating on Joe's "machine gun" delivery."
"His pleasure, his joy, and his skill were raising [money]."
Jewel in the Wilderness
In 1949, Joubin first visited the north shore of Lake Huron, Ontario, near Elliot Lake, curious about a prospector’s discovery of radioactivity. It hinted at the presence of uranium, the critical metal needed for the new Atomic era.
However, they couldn’t find any uranium in rock samples. Joubin never forgot it. A few years later, he learned claims to the area were set to lapse. Joubin ordered them staked for Joe’s account.
Joe was superstitious about names, and favoured the letter P. Peach Uranium and Metal Mining was incorporated with Joubin as president. Peach was later renamed Pronto, Spanish for “hurry.”
In March 1953, Joubin visited the British Museum in London, meeting Dr. Charles Davidson, a leading uranium expert. Davidson described how surface uranium at South African mines had dissolved deeper into the ground.
A lightbulb went on for Frank Joubin. After a month of pleading, Joubin convinced Joe to invest $35,000 to drill the radioactive target in Ontario.
Drilling began April 5, 1953. On May 2, results showed a big, low-grade ore body. Its size and proximity to rail was promising.
Joubin’s team needed a geological map of the region. A copy was found in a Toronto used book store. It showed a 90 mile formation in the shape of a big Z. Joubin’s team, armed with geiger counters, found radioactivity across the entire area.
Joubin ordered Peach’s drill removed, to look like a failure. He and Joe set about planning the largest staking campaign in Canadian history, to tie up as much of the 90 miles as possible.
In those days, each prospector could only stake 9 claims. They hired over 100 men to stake the 1500 needed in secrecy. To cover their tracks from local competitors, the staking campaign that became known as the “Back Door Staking Bee” was coordinated from Timmins, a mining town about 200 kilometres to the north.
Huge bugs and rough terrain greeted the stakers, who lived in the bush for the whole six week process.
"Joe Hirshhorn served as the dynamic "field marshall," constantly shouting to me through the open door of our adjoining offices in Toronto. "What’s the news? What’s the news?” Joubin remembered.
More than 56,000 acres were claimed in late Spring 1953. When the work was finished, Hirshhorn sent a team of lawyers to the mining recorder offices to help process the paperwork. Meanwhile, Joe told Peach shareholders to hang on. "Don't sell! Don't sell! Hold for a big roll!"
When news of the rush spread, prospectors staked an additional 8000 claims. But Joe Hirshhorn and Frank Joubin beat them to it, and got most of the 90 mile structure for themselves.
In just a few months, shares of Peach climbed from $1 to $135 per share. Twenty drills ran day and night, pioneering deep drilling techniques. 50 of the first 56 drill holes hit paydirt. The first mine opened just over 2 years later. Within 5 years, 12 mines were brought into production near Elliot Lake, which became the dominant uranium supplier for the US Cold War effort.
In 1956, Rothschild controlled British mining conglomerate Rio Tinto acquired Hirshhorn’s companies. Joe yielded a $35 million profit on $35,000 in startup capital according to Joubin. "Blue chips are alright for Momma," Joe told a reporter. "I like a thousand-for-one payday!" In the 1980s, an estimated $30 billion had flown into Canada’s economy as a result of these finds.
Flush with more cash than ever, Hirshhorn accelerated his art collecting. He befriended the likes of Pablo Picasso and Willem de Kooning. Imagine buying a piece of art a day for 33 years. That’s essentially what Joe did. His collection grew so important that US president Lyndon Johnson fought off Queen Elizabeth to build a museum to house them. Joe eventually donated over 12,000 works to the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC.
In an interview with the Smithsonian in 1976, Joe said the first 6500 pieces had cost him $32 million, and were worth approximately $125 million at the time. When Hirshorn died in 1981, at age 82, he was said to leave behind over $100 million.
Joe's personal life, however, was less successful. His relationships suffered as his focus remained on accumulating wealth and art. Joe’s early children sued him in the 1940s for access to money. One daughter called him “a monster.” An ex wife referred to Joe, who was Jewish, as “Hitler.” His daughter Gene said the family was hurt that Joe did not share more of his extraordinary life with them. To Joe Hirshhorn, artists could do no wrong, but his family could do little right.
“If Uncle Joe had been a better father, he wouldn’t have had time to accomplish what he did,” said nephew Lawrence.
In the end, Joe Hirshhorn returned to the earth, like the uranium that made him rich. The man who once ate garbage to survive left a museum filled with treasures, a testament not just to wealth but to the enduring allure of beauty and the relentless pursuit of a vision. Joe’s story shows the cunning of a stock operator who mastered mining and failed in the nurturing of a family. Success at Joe Hirshhorn’s scale does not come without a price.
In 1958, Hirshhorn was travelling from New York to his home in the south of France, when one of the aeroplane’s engines cracked and broke. The plane dropped to 6000 feet, and hobbled to Newfoundland for an emergency landing. Hirshhorn kept spirits high on the flight by breaking out in song and dance, easing tensions. "When praised for his poise under fire, [Joe said] that as a mining entrepreneur he was accustomed to brushing off the stress of risks," Gene wrote.
Of the 56,000 acres claimed in the Backdoor Staking Bee, Joubin and his team managed to miss one 83 claim parcel near Quirke Lake. It became the richest mine in the region. The man behind it was an arch rival who had many similarities to Hirshhorn. I’ll tell you all about him in the next issue.
Special thanks to Dave Lotan, chairman of Finland gold explorer Aurion Resources (TSXV:AU - $63 million market cap), for inspiration for this story. Thanks also to Kerry Knoll and Phil O'Neill for discussing it with me. O'Neill is CEO of Radio Fuels Energy (CSE:CAKE), a $28 million market cap uranium explorer with $20.6 million in cash and securities at Nov 30, 2023, and a 107 million pound historical uranium equivalent resource (indicated plus inferred) in the Elliot Lake region.
Sources:
Video: Carved from Rock: The Story of Elliot Lake (Smithsonian, National Dream Productions Inc 2005 (Producer Antony Anderson, editor Eric Abboud) https://www.si.edu/object/siris_sil_1068065
Canadian Mining Hall of Fame https://www.mininghalloffame.ca/joseph-h-hirshhorn
Little Man in a Big Hurry (2009) by Gene Hirshhorn Lepere https://www.amazon.ca/Little-Man-Big-Hurry-Hirshhorn/dp/0533160790
Not For Gold Alone: Memoirs of a Prospector (1986) by Frank Joubin https://www.amazon.ca/Not-Gold-Alone-Memoirs-Prospector/dp/0969379307
Oral history interview with Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1976 Dec. 16 https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-joseph-h-hirshhorn-12741
Free Gold: The Story of Canadian Mining (1947) https://www.amazon.ca/Free-Gold-Story-Canadian-Mining/dp/B0006AR5NE