Silver Threads
War in the Coeur d’ Alenes
1891-1892
by
Pat Cary Peek
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This novel tells the story
of the mining war in the Idaho panhandle in 1891-1892 from
the point of view of the miners and their families. It was
a tragedy that made history and news across the country.
The McCarthy family came
west with the railroads in the late 1880’s to find work in
the Silver Mines. They traveled, as we all do, with their
dreams and their demons, and when they arrived in the lush
wild country along the pristine Coeur d’ Alene River, they
found more than they bargained for.
The Coeur d’ Alene Mining
District is a large area in the heart of rugged mountain
country on the western edge of the Bitterroot Mountain Range
that separates Idaho from Montana. Later known as the
Silver Valley, here a strip of rich mineral deposits about
eight by twenty-five miles long became one of the most
productive areas in the west. It was up the narrow
rock-walled canyons that rich lodes of gold and later silver
were located and where vast riches were made for the owners
and shareholders starting in the 1880’s. In 1890 ten
million dollars worth of minerals were extracted from the
district. The men whose shoulders and backs carried the
tons of valuable ore barely made a living.
The family landed in Wardner,
where Joe and his son, Sam, worked in the Bunker Hill and
Sullivan Mine. Colleen, the eldest child, had dreams of her
own, but she put them aside to care for her two younger
sisters, Annalee and Polly, and help her mother Clara, who
suffered from a mysterious, debilitating depression.
The family struggled to keep afloat
through lay offs and strikes. The Bunker Hill Mine made
millions of dollars for its shareholders, but gave little
thought to the men upon whose backs and shoulders the
profits were made. The workers had no rights and their
personal safety was ignored. They lived with illness,
accidents and the threat of death with each trip down into
the black bowels of the earth. They had no voice and no
power over their lives. Then the union was organized and
their voice became of scream of protest and outrage.
 Sam, an impetuous, idealistic
young man, soon became a union agitator and outspoken
supporter of worker’s rights. He was right in the middle of
the action when, in 1891, the Coeur d’ Alenes exploded into
one of the most violent, destructive union battles in the
country. Men were killed and wounded and expensive property
destroyed. Martial law was declared and the miner’s rights
as free citizens of the new state of Idaho were ignored.
Hundreds of innocent miners were arrested, starved and
abused with no charges filed against them.
The McCarthy family was never the same afterward.
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