Bunker Hill Revival Plan Advances

Spokane’s Royal Silver Mines Inc. has raised enough cash to start its joint venture at the Bunker Hill mine in Kellogg.

Royal Silver Mines sold shares of the company primarily in Europe to secure $1 million, said Bob Jorgensen of Royal Silver.

The money goes to Placer Mining, the company that has explored the labyrinth of underground workings at the historic Bunker Hill mine much of the decade.

The two companies are betting that millions of ounces of silver still lie buried at the mine. Bob Hopper, who runs Placer Mining and who has invested much of his life into turning Bunker around, will get 1 million shares of Royal Silver Mines and the cash on July 22.

In return, Royal Silver gets 80 percent of the mine.

Royal Silver needs to finish an environmental study on the project before committing the money to the joint venture. Bunker Hill lies in the middle of the federal Superfund cleanup site, where demolition of old Bunker buildings and soil cleanup continues.

“We’re just wrapping things up right now,” Jorgensen said. “We’re crawling before we walk.”

Jorgensen and his company, which owns a few Nevada mining properties but has focused its attention on the Silver Valley, have said they plan to spend up to $40 million on Bunker Hill.

While Bunker Hill has produced millions of ounces of silver, it remains a mine known for lead and zinc. Hopper and a small crew of miners have been painstakingly restoring the equipment and access areas of the mine to prepare it for full production.

If the joint venture begins to spend money to increase the mine’s output, more hiring of miners is likely to follow, Hopper said when the deal was announced in April.

This effort isn’t the first to revive the Bunker Hill workings, which closed in 1981. The effort that came closest to succeeding went bankrupt in 1991. Hopper bought the rights to the mine at an auction later that year.

, DataTimes