Mining Wars

After the 1899 explosion General Henry Merriam's troops, most of them Black soldiers of the 24th Infantry, arrested men by the hundreds, and with the county jail far too small they were held in an old barn at Wardner known as the bullpen, some of them for months, nearly all without charge. A state permit system then decided who could work: no member of the Western Federation of Miners could get a permit without leaving the union. When Steunenberg's assassin implicated union leaders, Clarence Darrow defended William Haywood at Boise in 1907, and the jury acquitted him.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Pulaski Tunnel Trail — 5.1 mi
  The mine tunnel where a ranger held his crew at gunpoint while the 1910 fire burned over them.
• Sunshine Miners Memorial — 8.9 mi
  A steel miner raises his drill at the mouth of Big Creek, above ninety-one small headstones.

More markers nearby

• Levi and May Hutton — 1.6 mi
• Burke — 1.6 mi
• Wallace — 4.1 mi
• Willow Creek Slide — 6.7 mi