Mining Production



The duration, quantity, and value of mining production in the Coeur d'Alenes is legendary.

One web page on North Idaho's history and culture, for example, characterized the dimensions of the district's mining as follows:
Over $5 billion worth of metals has been extracted from the Coeur d'Alene Mining District. The Coeur d'Alene Mining District claims many records for silver production: The deepest, the Star-Morning Mine at Burke (7,000 feet deep); the richest, the now-closed Sunshine Mine on Big Creek (over 300 million ounces of silver produced); the biggest, now closed Bunker Hill (over 180 miles of underground workings).

Yet such statistics are always changing and, moreover, sometimes given to hyperbole.

One of the tasks of a National Heritage Area effort will be to locate the most complete and authoritative sources regarding the descriptive characteristics of the district's mining. 

Regarding mining production, that source is at present the
Tucson Field Office of the U.S. Geological Survey.
Keith R. Long, a Mineral Resource Analyst at this USGS facility explained: 

The best source of data on the production of the Coeur d'Alene mining district and the US as a whole is that collected and published by the US Bureau of Mines and USGS in the Minerals Yearbook, an annual publication that dates back to the 1880s under the original name Mineral Resources of the United States.

In a recent project, Long himself compiled the production statistics for the Coeur d'Alenes and brought them up-to-date to the most recent year for which complete staticstics were available, 2004.  He was kind enough to share his table of results with us.  (Long's Excel spreadsheet is available via email attachment from the Pulaski Project -- contact ron@roizen.com.)

Long's spreadsheet provides an impressive image of the contribution of the Coeur d'Alene Mining District.  His table offers data on both the district's and the nation's production of silver, gold, and a series of base metals comprising lead, zinc, cadmium, and antimony over the history of mining in the region, from pre-1884 production to 2004. 

Here are some highlights:
  • Silver:  1,170,872,705 troy ounces produced, representing 18.3 percent of total U.S. mine production over the same period
  • Lead:  8,210,793 short tons produced, representing 16.2 percent of U.S. production
  • Zinc:  3,182,454 short tons produced, representing 5.7 percent of U.S. production
  • Gold:  518,847 troy ounces produced
  • Total value of metals produced:  $29,337,000,000 in year 2000 dollars and $6,035,035,090 in contemporary dollars (a billion dollars more than the figure cited above, incidentally)
The 120-year period covered in Long's spreadsheet also provides a statistical profile of the ups and downs in the district's mining industry.  Indeed the repeating cycle of good times and bad times is an important rhythm of the district's life and culture.  The amplitudes of year-to-year variations in production are notable -- for example:
  • Silver production climbed to a peak of 12,178,000 troy ounces in 1914 but fell to only 4,815,000 troy ounce in 1919, a 60 percent decline from 1914's level.
  • In 1887, silver production in the Coeur d'Alenes amounted to less than 1 percent of national silver production; in 1959, however, slightly more than half of U.S. silver production (53 percent) was coming out of the Coeur d'Alenes.  Our region produced over 40 percent of U.S. silver production over the whole decade of the 1960s.
  • Lead production peaked at 186,000 short tons in 1917, as the demands of the World War I munitions bore down on the mines; in the same year lead produced in the Coeur d'Alenes accounted for 30 percent of production in the nation.
There is quite a story and social history embedded in the historical variations in Keith Long's table of production in the Coeur d'Alenes, quite a story indeed.