Remembering the giants
Courtesy photo Large crowds gathered all over the I-90 corridor to watch as the stacks fell. This photo was taken from above the rock quarry in Smelterville behind the old truckstop and drive-in theater.
Courtesy photo This photo of two of the four Bunker Hill Smelting Plant Stacks was taken the morning of their demise.
Courtesy photo All four stacks as they stood in the winter of 1980.
It was 21 years ago today that the iconic Bunker Hill smokestacks were demolished in grand fashion in front of thousands of local citizens.
Now, over two decades later they are a figment of memories of a bygone era for the people who lived in the Silver Valley during the Bunker Hill Mine’s glory years.
For those who may have not been in the area or even alive at that point, we are going to take a short trip through history.
For more than 100 years, the Bunker Hill Mine was the crown jewel of the Silver Valley and had been one of the few mines to remain consistently profitable throughout its years in operation.
In the Winter of 1982, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had finally taken notice to the excessive amounts of dangerous health issues that had arisen from the millions of tons of mine tailings and constant toxic fumes from the stacks that had seeped into the soil and waters surrounding the mine and had contaminated them with dangerous levels of the heavy metals cadmium, zinc, and lead.
By the Fall of 1983, the Bunker Hill and it’s surrounding areas were hit with the dreaded and still much maligned Superfund tag.
Mining operations throughout history have been one of the primary recipients of the label ‘Superfund Site,’ but it was the long history of mining combined with the toxic Bunker Hill Smelting Plant that pushed the limits of local resident’s safety and forced the EPA’s hand.
The Bunker Hill Mine would shut down completely after its investors filed bankruptcy in 1991.
Despite the mine and its facilities being closed for five years prior to their demolition, the stacks had remained a welcome sight for people who regularly travelled through the area, especially the weary valley residents who saw the blinking red lights as a sign that they were almost home.
Former Shoshone County resident and Kellogg graduate Barb Lyle was one of the locals that found such joy in the sight of the stacks.
“When I was going to college in Spokane and I would come home on the weekends, the blinking lights would always let me know I was home,” said Lyle.
A group of locals even tried to get the stacks on the historic registry, but were unsuccessful in their venture due to issues with being able to maintain the over 700 foot tall main stack and not having the funding to keep the large lights on top of the stacks powered for travellers and aircraft to see.
At that point the EPA had spent more than $12 million in cleanup efforts including demolishing several structures that sat directly in the smelter’s path of destruction, including the Silver King School up Government Gulch in Smelterville.
The event was to be treated as a festival/holiday for the residents of Shoshone County and was planned for Memorial Day weekend so that the event afforded people the ability to travel home if they were coming from a distance.
A carnival was planned and set up in the Silver Mountain parking lot.
Shirts and other memorabilia were sold with the phrase ‘Blowing Our Stacks’ emblazoned across the front.
A raffle was even held with the winner being granted the privilege of pushing down the ceremonial plunger to begin the explosion.
Citizens took to any open area, outdoor sports venue, parking lot, and even climbed the mountain sides to ensure that they had a good view of the destruction.
I myself can remember sitting in a small camp of lawn chairs on the rocky lot between McDonald’s and the Gondolier gas station that day to watch the event with my family.
At 1 p.m., speakers at various viewing sites began to deliver small orations on the history of the mine, the stacks, and what to expect as we as a community moved into the future.
The blast was to begin at 2 p.m. and the masses would be informed by sirens that sounded at various intervals leading up to the ignition.
Crews from a Minnesota blasting firm spent several days preparing for the blast and used almost 500 pounds of explosives that were packed to bases of the stacks.
Specialty cuts were made in the stack structures so that the crews could have some control of where the massive cement chimney’s would fall during the event.
When the final siren sounded and all eyes were directed toward Smelterville, the ceremonial ‘plunger’ was pushed and the blast was both felt and heard by all.
What still stands out about that moment is that despite the large amount of explosives that were used, the stacks seemed defiant as they slowly toppled, almost as if they themselves did not want to go down.
The eerie, haunting feeling of remorse was felt by most of the crowd too as members of the generations from the previous decades were actually brought to tears by the sight of their makeshift welcome banner toppling to the ground.
21 years later the sting of the slowly deteriorating mining industry is still being felt, as is the EPA’s continued efforts to cleanup the damage that was created during the century of ‘good times’ that preceded the destruction, but people still talk about the stacks.
From titans of industry that signified the vast wealth of the county to the blinking lights that welcome people home, the stacks will forever be immortalized as the protective giants of the SIlver Valley.