At the moment, Rockwood’s concentration was on the Mustang Baseball Team. But he still retained ownership in other companies that grabbed his attention: Concrete Products, Roscoe Steel and Culvert, Inland Supply, two Gas Co-Op stations, and KBMY Radio.
Brown also owned part of a money-draining plaster plant near Greybull, Wyoming. In the mid-1920s, he had somewhat reluctantly accepted ownership in this small Wyoming production facility as payment for legal work. With it came a few mineral claims for gypsum, one of stucco plaster’s raw materials. Gypsum was already used at the plaster plant. But Brown was also given claims for bentonite clay, which was still relatively unknown and lightly used.
The early 1920s had seen a flurry of possible uses for this new mineral as a “de-inker” for newspaper print, a bug pesticide, beauty clay, and other obscure applications.
While supervising the state’s new water canals, Brown had noticed bentonite’s sealant properties. In fact, he had used it to coat roofs in his El Campo tourist units. So it had demonstrated minor commercial use. Yet, he had never acted on his own bentonite claims, which he guessed were still not economically viable.
In 1935, Rockwood regularly met with a cadre of nine prominent Billings entrepreneurs, who became known as “The Sheepherder Group.” Members of the group also owned a few Wyoming bentonite claims and wanted to know if they could become profitable.
Brown himself had no special knowledge of minerals or any background in strip mining. Even the U.S. government knew little about the mineral’s potential use. So, together, the Sheepherders decided to employ a geologist to determine the mineral’s current potential.
But it just so happened that the geologist they hired was also “in the pocket” of another group already buying up claims in Wyoming’s Big Horn Basin.
While sending a secret thumbs-up to this other investment group, the geologist discouraged Brown’s Sheepherders from spending any more time on what he suggested was “worthless speculation.”
As a result of his advice, nothing happened with these claims. For another 15 years.
But by the late 1940s, there had been too many positive notices about bentonite to ignore. The mineral was rapidly becoming a boon to Wyoming’s Big Horn Basin – the exact location where Rockwood’s claims had gone unused.
Maybe there was a future in this mineral after all, and maybe the geologist’s conclusions had been deceptive. Or wrong.