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Reviews
IDAHO'S BUNKER HILL: THE RISE AND FALL OF A GREAT MINING COMPANY, 1885–1981
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by Katherine Aiken
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| University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2005. Photographs, maps, notes, bibliography, index. 303 pages. $29.95 cloth. |
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| The Coeur d'Alene mining district in northern Idaho, embracing such colorful mining communities as Kellogg, Wallace, and Mullan and known today as the Silver Valley, has been one of the nation's most important silver, lead, and zinc producers and has launched several of America's prominent mining enterprises. While no comprehensive history of the district has been written, John Fahey made significant contributions in that direction by writing three monographs that are essential corporate histories for the Silver Valley: The Ballyhoo Bonanza: Charles Sweeny and the Idaho Mines (1971), about a group of mines that were Asarco predecessors; The Days of the Hercules (1978), about the Day family, which organized several other important companies in the Coeur d'Alene basin; and Hecla: A Century of Western Mining (1990), about the still-active Silver Valley producer. Those works left unattended the history of the district's most prominent mining company, the Kellogg-based Bunker Hill and Sullivan Mining and Concentrating Company (renamed the Bunker Hill Company in 1956). Katherine Aiken's Idaho's Bunker Hill: The Rise and Fall of a Great Mining Company, 1885–1981 fills that void. |
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Like Fahey, who was granted access to corporate records of Asarco, the Days, and Hecla while the records were still in company hands, Aiken was able to thoroughly research the Bunker Hill papers while they were still in Kellogg. The papers were donated to the University of Idaho Special Collections before she completed her manuscript, however, so she undertook the monumental task of translating her citations from Bunker Hill's less formal filing system into the more formal archival locations in which the papers are now maintained, a task for which all historians who follow in her steps should be deeply grateful. Aiken weaves together analyses of several themes of scholarly interest, notably: the evolution of Bunker Hill's corporate structure; the interdependent relationship that developed between Bunker Hill and the community of Kellogg, Idaho; and the history of conflict between Bunker Hill's managers and its workers as that history played out in the wider context of organized labor in the Coeur d'Alene mining district. Idaho's Bunker Hill will be of use and interest to both scholars and the wider reading public. |
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The book is organized chronologically into six chapters. The first chapter concerns the early years of the enterprise, from 1885 and Noah Kellogg's storied discovery of the Bunker Hill mine to 1903, when the company completed a tunnel of more than two miles from its underground workings to the flat along the South Fork Coeur d'Alene River adjacent to Kellogg, affording a more expeditious link between the mine and the concentrator. Although Aiken mentions parallel events occurring in the Coeur d'Alenes during Bunker Hill's rise, her focus is definitely on that corporation. The second chapter carries the story to construction of Bunker Hill's lead smelter at Kellogg in 1917, during a period in which the company was vying for dominance in the district with other parties, especially Charles Sweeny, the Federal Mining & Smelting Company, and the American Smelting & Refining Company (later ASARCO). One of the important episodes during that period was the apex litigation over rights to mine portions of the Last Chance claim. Fahey's book on Sweeny gives the case considerable attention, citing court records and ASARCO papers to which he had access. Aiken tells the story almost entirely through Bunker Hill papers. Although she quotes a line from Fahey's book about the apex law in general, she does not compare the perspective she derives from the Bunker Hill papers with Fahey's perspective on the litigation presented in Ballyhoo Bonanza. |
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Sticking close to the account available in the Bunker Hill records serves Aiken well, however, in the third chapter, in which she focuses on the close business and personal relationship that developed between Bunker Hill president Frederick Bradley, who lived in San Francisco, and Bunker Hill manager Stanley Easton, who lived in Kellogg and became Bunker Hill's president after Bradley's death. The two men formed the corporation and its mining operation into the significant enterprise that it was. The book gains strength as it progresses, describing the Depression and war years in chapter four, and the post-war period in chapter five. Perhaps the best chapter of the book is the last, which covers the period 1968–1981, when Gulf Resources executed a hostile takeover of the Bunker Hill Company, the company was embroiled in profound environmental controversies, and the parent Gulf Resources decided to close the Bunker Hill operation, leaving Kellogg without its major employer. Through nearly one hundred years of operating, Bunker Hill made major contributions to America's mining industry and to the social, labor, technological, and environmental histories associated with the industry. Aiken's book is a welcome addition to the scholarship on American mining. |
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| FREDRIC L. QUIVIK
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| Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
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