The Miners of Silver Valley

Here in Wallace, in the heart of Idaho's Silver Valley, a statue honors the men who pulled fortunes out of the mountains and the families who waited for them. This narrow canyon district has produced more silver than almost anywhere on earth, and the work was as dangerous as it was rich. The statue shows a miner with his tools and his family.

It is a hopeful image, but the valley knows the other side too. Not far away, near Kellogg, stands a far more somber memorial to the ninety-one men who died in the Sunshine Mine fire of nineteen seventy-two, one of the worst hard-rock mining disasters in American history. Together the two monuments tell the whole story of Silver Valley, its wealth and its cost.