Bunker Hill Mine

The worst of it came after a fire. On September 3, 1973, the smelter's baghouse, its main filter, burned, and with metal prices rising the operator, Gulf Resources, kept the smelter running without proper filtration until August 1974. Tests that year found 99 percent of children within a mile of the smelter with blood lead above 40 micrograms per deciliter, averaging 67.4 and reaching 164, in what Idaho's basin commission calls the worst childhood lead poisoning event in the country's history. The smelter closed in 1981.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sunshine Miners Memorial — 4.2 mi
  A steel miner raises his drill at the mouth of Big Creek, above ninety-one small headstones.
• Cataldo Mission — 11 mi
  The Schitsu'umsh built it, the 1873 reservation line left it outside, and every August 15 they come back.
• Pulaski Tunnel Trail — 11 mi
  The mine tunnel where a ranger held his crew at gunpoint while the 1910 fire burned over them.

More markers nearby

• Sunshine Mine Disaster — 4.1 mi
• Old Mission of the Sacred Heart (sq'wt'u) — 10 mi
• Wallace — 10 mi
• Mining Wars — 13 mi