The Deep Dark

The following excerpt from The Deep Dark: Disaster and Redemption in America’s Richest Silver Mine, written by Greg Olsen and published in March 2005, is reprinted with permission from Crown, a division of Random House. The book chronicles the events surrounding the deadly underground fire at the Sunshine silver mine in Kellogg, Idaho, on May 2, 1972, which killed 91 men. The hardcover sells for US$16.47 on the Internet at www.amazon.com or for $24.47 at www.chapters.indigo.ca.

Morning rush hour in the Idaho panhandle was a stream of primer-splattered bombers and gleaming pickups on big tires that pushed the cab halfway to the sky. All were driven by miners hurrying to get underground. Many rode together so their wives and girlfriends could use their cars to run errands during the day. Some smoked and nursed hangovers with coffee as they planned their day underground: how much they’d have to blast, and how much muck they’d haul out.

Some of the best of them took the Big Creek exit between Kellogg and Wallace. Around a sharp curve on the edge of the Bitterroot Mountains, buildings congregated among the steep folds of stony terrain bisected by the rushing waters of Big Creek. A giant green structure clad in sheet metal was planted as though a twister had dropped it in on the edge of the parking lot. A few other buildings flanked the green monster, though none was nearly as commanding. On the other side of the creek was a backbone-like array of metal and wood-frame buildings that included a mill, dry house, machine shop, warehouse, hoist house, assay office, electric shop, drill shop, and compressor shop.

The most visually pleasing edifice was the personnel office, a 2-story, variegated redbrick structure with a peaked roof and a walk-up pay window. A sign proclaimed that the property belonged to the Sunshine Mining Co., but the biggest billboard faced the mine yard. In demi-bold letters it read, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life — live it safely.”

Sunshine has long been legendary, even sacred, among miners. Maine brothers Dennis and True Blake discovered what would become Sunshine in 1884 when a soft glint beckoned from an outcropping on the eastern ridge of Big Creek Canyon. Assaying indicated tetrahedrite, a superior silver ore, and not galena or lead, which was scavenged by other area mines. For a couple of decades, the former farm boys worked underground by candlelight while mules hauled out ore and dragged it down Big Creek Canyon on skids. They quietly made a small fortune, calling their discovery the Yankee Lode. Later, in 1921, when they sold their stake to interests based in Yakima, Wash., it was renamed Sunshine Mining Co.

It was another decade before Sunshine came into its own, when, at a depth of 1,700 ft., an ore vein of astounding breadth — 23 ft. — was discovered. In time, the mine would give up more silver than any other mine in the world, a distinction it would hold for decades. In addition to lead and copper, it was also a leading producer of antimony, a metallic byproduct primarily used to harden lead. Sunshine’s triumph was the result of the development effort led by the go-for-broke, risk-taking owners from Washington state. Most silver mines followed veins from outcroppings that eventually became stringers and petered out. Outside of the Coeur d’Alene mining district, it was a rare operation that extracted ore at depths greater than 1,000 ft. Not only did Sunshine have viable ore below 1,200 ft., but in the decades that followed, crosscuts chased high-grade deposits all the way to the 5600 level. Sunshine by itself was far richer and produced more silver than all the mines on the fabled Comstock Lode combined.

Idaho mines shared more than just a luminous underground Dagwood sandwich of lead, silver, and zinc. Labour strikes, chronic absenteeism, and pumped-up wanderlust made the workforces somewhat fluid. Tough and experienced miners moved freely among Galena, Lucky Friday, Star, Silver Summit, Bunker Hill, and Sunshine. But even as itchy-footed as miners could be, every man had his home mine. It was the mine to which he knew he could always return.

Around the time Bob Launhardt, 41, backed his ’68 maroon Chrysler Newport out of his Pinehurst driveway, the sun had risen, leaving the sky awash in luminous hues. The men of Sunshine’s graveyard shift were leaving the mine. As safety engineer, Launhardt made it a practice to get underground as early as possible — before the day shift rode down to their working levels. He liked to get a head start on the day.

Tall and lanky, Launhardt had dark, wavy hair that he combed back with a slight swoop. Black-framed glasses made him look like a schoolteacher, or maybe a middle-aged Buddy Holly. After a five-year absence, Launhardt returned to the district in February 1972, bailing out of another job going nowhere, wanting to reconnect with a part of his life where he felt worthwhile. He was quiet and thoughtful, the kind of man who got lost in a crowd, yet Launhardt believed he stood out because of his fierce dedication to the safety of the men of Sunshine. No one questioned his passion for his work. It was apparent in every move he made.

Many, however, found it difficult to connect with him on a personal level. Guys he’d known for years never even got his name right. They called him Bob Longhart. Part of the distance was the result of his personality, but it was also his status as a salaried man. Miners saw Launhardt, other managers, and office workers as outsiders. The fact that Sunshine’s owners were now New Yorkers who hadn’t blasted a round in their lives didn’t help. Yet managers and bean-counters were necessary. Silver mining was, after all, a business.

And a dangerous one at that. As safety engineer, Launhardt was there to make certain that each day every man who went into the mine came out alive. That involved working with national and state labour agencies and the U.S. Bureau of Mines to ensure safety regulations were in place. It meant seeing that equipment was up to date and miners were properly trained in evacuation and rescue techniques. Guarding miners’ lives was a crucial job because so much could go wrong. Government statisticians and mining district undertakers frequently acknowledged mining as the most perilous job on or under the earth. Some assumed the safety engineer’s position existed solely to meet government regulations, mitigate the risk of union complaints, and dodge civil lawsuits. Some mine managers considered it little more than a necessary nuisance. The workers themselves understood that there were ways to avoid injury, but they dismissed many of those measures. Many considered risk and danger essential to the job’s mystique. Launhardt, a bespectacled goody-two-shoes among his peers, believed that if he could get men to think before they blast, to wear safety glasses, to cool it on the horseplay, just maybe he could save a life. His biggest challenge in 1972 was the same as always: to convince men that accidents are unacceptable and unnecessary. For Launhardt, who had once studied to be a Lutheran minister, promoting safety became as important as preaching the word of God.

There were many reasons for his vigilance, and all were damned good ones. Sometimes men fell down shafts so deep that nothing remained but bloody clothes and serrated splinters of bone. Rock bursts or air blasts, however, were the most feared of district hazards. Those occurred when the stone ceiling exploded under pressure and sent slabs of rock the size of camping trailers down to pulverize men into biological splat. Other times, it was the floor that gave way. The lucky ones were buried alive until someone could move two tons of rock to free them.

Although Sunshine had its share, the district’s Galena mine was considered one of the worst, if not the worst, for rock bursts. Anyone who’d worked there longer than a month experienced the sudden and frightening reaction of rock giving
way to pressure. Old hands knew that as long as the rock was talking –making characteristic popping and grinding noises — they’d be all right. When it got quiet, that was the time to think about moving to a different location or taking lunch early. Whenever it was quiet underground, look out.