COEUR D’ALENE & THE SILVER VALLEY
THE “Bitterroot County” portrayed in this story is a fictional one, although the events that transpired in the 1970s and 1980s are very real events with very real consequences.
The Silver Valley devastation described in this novel is historically accurate. The only organization actively working to clean up this wonderful wilderness is the Silver Valley Community Resource Center. You can donate to this organization at SilverValleyAction.com.
The Sunshine Mine in Kellogg, Idaho, was once America’s richest silver mine, producing over 300 million ounces of silver in the course of its history through 2002.
The 91 men who died in the Sunshine Mine disaster in May of 1972 are memorialized in a permanent shrine built beside the I-90 highway outside of Kellogg. The shrine was built by a miner.
After the 1972 disaster, the Sunshine Mining Company could not be sued for lack of safety gear. Idaho law states that employers may be held liable only for workers’ compensation claims. The average family received death benefits to equal two years of a good miner’s salary.
To this day, the mystery of the fire that began the Sunshine Mine disaster has never been solved. Miners Tom Wilkinson and Ron Flory were the only two survivors found in the mine.
During the winter of 1973–1974, the Bunker Hill mine smelter broke, dumping some twenty years’ worth of undiluted and unfiltered lead oxide emissions on the communities of the Silver Valley.
In August of 1974, the highest lead levels ever recorded in human beings were found in children tested in the town of Kellogg. Bunker Hill mining operations produced record profits of $25.9 million in the same year.
In the late 1980s, it was revealed that the Bunker Hill board of directors had calculated that it would be profitable to operate the mine, despite the dangerously broken baghouse thimble room and smelter. The poisoning was just a business expense: their calculations included liability of “$6–7 million/$10K per child,” for planned settlements to families permanently damaged by lead.
The Bunker Hill mine went into bankruptcy proceedings in 1989. A variety of government studies have demonstrated continued toxic effects, although no person or company has ever been brought to account for their flagrant lead, cadmium, and zinc poisoning of the entire region.
To this day, lead levels in Silver Valley children run twice the national average, and a plume of heavy metals extends 200 miles downstream from Lake Coeur d’Alene into Washington State.
The region around the Bunker Hill mine was designated a Superfund site by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1991, although federally mandated warning signs regarding environmental toxins are not consistently posted in the area, due to the desire not to alarm tourists and other visitors to the region.
The Coeur d’Alene and Silver Valley destination resort areas today constitute some of the most successful tourist destination regions in the United States, despite the many tons of lethal mining residue that still cover the basin of Lake Coeur d’Alene and the lake’s tributary waterways.