Bob Hopper Determination And Crystal Formations Keep Bunker Hill Mine Running

Uncle Bunker stood abandoned, waterlogged, and neglected in 1991.

Its bankrupt owners shut off the pumps that kept water from overtaking the catacomb network of tunnels in what once was the world’s largest underground metals mine.

While others saw despair in the defunct Bunker Hill lead and silver mine, Bob Hopper saw the biggest opportunity of his mining life. And his biggest risk.

“All miners knew about Bunker Hill,” said Hopper, snapping the filter off a cigarette in his office surrounded by stock certificates from mining companies of the past. “It’s like all sailors know about the Queen Mary.”

Hopper - part-owner, general manager and president of the New Bunker Hill Mining Co. - and his crew of 14 miners are working a few spots in the mine and pulling out high-grade silver and lead galena. Slowly, as Hopper restores rails and access tunnels to new parts of the mine, more ore comes out of the mine each day.

Uncle Bunker once put food on the table for 2,200 men and women in Idaho’s Silver Valley. Closed in January 1981, an attempt to rework the hundreds of miles of underground tunnels failed in the late ‘80s.

The veins of silver and lead running through the Kellogg hillsides seem to run deep into Hopper, who has lived the life of a miner since his youth in Nevada and other mining hotspots. With a group of well-heeled partners, Hopper invested in the Bunker Hill workings in September 1991.

“People often can’t believe there’s still mining going on here,” Hopper said. “Well, we don’t have a fanfare department to tell them.”

Sweat equity runs the New Bunker Hill. Hopper does little else with his time other than supervise his miners who painstakingly repair and maintain the aging hoists, shafts and equipment.

Progress has been slow but oh, so rewarding for Hopper. On good days about 60 tons of glittering silver/lead ore rides out of the mine’s portal. That compares with more than 2,000 tons during Bunker Hill’s heyday.

“If we get to between 600 and 1,000 tons a day, there’s somewhere in that range where we’ll be profitable again,” he said. “It’s a tough business to be in. No one opens up a supermarket expecting to turn a profit in about 10 years, praying that the price of milk goes to $85.”

With a skeletal crew, small output and lackluster metals prices, how can the New Bunker Hill Mining Co. keep the lights on?

Pyromorphite crystals.

Mother Nature looked fondly upon the Kellogg hillsides long ago, creating little hollow pockets in the shifting rocks and galena ore. In those pockets, delicate lead crystals grew into fabulous patterns, like the Earth’s own artwork.

Hopper’s crew mines these crystal formations when and if they can find them. No one else in the world does, he said. That’s why the big ones fetch $30,000 or more.

“I didn’t even know about these when I bought the mine,” he said. “Who knows if you’ll find any more.”

Hopper spends hours carefully cleaning the crystal deposits. Dealers buy the crystals and sell them to individuals and institutions such as museums. Proceeds have helped keep the underground work running, Hopper said.

Two miles inside Uncle Bunker, Hopper beams with pride at the hoist machinery that he is preserving until it can be used again. Built as early as the 1920s, the hoists would work perfectly after only two months of preparation, he said.

“These were built back when America was the leader in everything,” he said. “To see what has happened with our steel industry, and what will soon become with us losing our metals industry, is probably the saddest commentary on our society that I can imagine.”

For Tim Olson, executive director of the Northwest Mining Association and former Bunker Hill miner, Hopper represents the last of a rare breed.

“Can you believe the risk and all the hard work he’s done to make this a reality?” Olson said. “That just doesn’t happen anymore.”

Big mining companies don’t take risks like this, Olson said. With much of the industry moving overseas, Hopper stands virtually alone in his bold investment.

Hopper doesn’t like the spotlight, preferring to let his years of underground progress tell the story of the rebirth of the region’s most famous mine. He worked two years without a day off.

“Sure I have hobbies, but it’s like being a rancher,” he said. “The cows don’t know it’s Christmas, they don’t know it’s someone’s birthday.”

The beauty of the mining cycle - galena emerging from Bunker, being crushed and milled at new equipment below the mine, the concentrate being sent to East Helena for smelting - keeps Hopper going.

“It takes a lot of blood and guts to make it in this kind of mining,” he said. “Once you’re in this business, you’ve just got to do it.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo