The biggest smelter on earth, and a century of what it left behind
Every telling of the Bunker Hill strike gives the credit to a jackass. Noah Kellogg, prospecting in the Coeur d'Alene country of northern Idaho in 1885, was grubstaked by O. O. Peck and Dr. J. T. Cooper of Murray, and the animal they supplied is supposed to have led him to the galena vein. Phillip O'Rourke filed the Bunker Hill claim, named for the Revolutionary War battle, on 10 September 1885 along the west side of Milo Creek, with Kellogg as witness. When the grubstakers sued, Justice Norman Buck awarded them a quarter interest on the strength of the jackass.
What grew from it was the Bunker Hill Mine and Smelting Complex at Kellogg, in what became the Silver Valley, and when built its smelter was the largest smelting facility in the world. Simeon Reed incorporated the Bunker Hill and Sullivan Mining and Concentrating Company in 1887, and the company's own smelter at Smelterville fired up on 5 July 1917. By 1948 it turned out almost 10,000 tons of lead a month, with zinc, cadmium, antimony and silver besides. It was also the scene of intense struggles between the miners' unions and the owners: on 29 April 1899 union miners hijacked a train at Burke, rode it to Wardner, fought the company guards and blew up the $250,000 concentrator.
The cost was poured into the valley. Tailings went straight into the Coeur d'Alene River until the water ran opaque grey and the stream earned the name Lead Creek. Farmers sued in 1910 and were awarded a dollar each. In the 1950s the Forest Service complained that zinc plant fumes were killing trees. On 3 September 1973 a fire wrecked part of the smelter's baghouse, and the company kept smelting, even raising output while prices were high, until lead emissions reached 35.3 tons a month. After two Kellogg children were hospitalised in 1974, the Centers for Disease Control found that 22 percent of children within a mile of the smelter had lead poisoning.
In 1981 the parent company, Gulf Resources, announced it would close the complex, citing low metal prices and a stricter federal lead limit. In 1983 the area went on the Superfund National Priorities List. The Coeur d'Alene Tribe, which had long depended on the river's fish, sued the mining companies in 1991, joined by the federal government and later Idaho, and settlements brought $263.4 million plus interest for cleanup. On 27 May 1996 the four smokestacks, the tallest 715 feet, were blown down. The work goes on: a new treatment plant and a clay barrier up to 25 feet deep are meant to keep zinc from the old workings and the 20-million-cubic-yard Central Impoundment Area out of the South Fork.
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