Few chapters in Idaho history are as dramatic as the mining wars of the Coeur d'Alene district — two explosions of violence, in 1892 and 1899, that pitted union miners against mine owners, drew in the governor's militia and federal troops, and ended with one of the most notorious labor bombings in American history.
The trouble began over wages. In April 1892, union miners walked out after owners cut pay; the owners answered by hiring nonunion replacements and armed guards. On July 11, fighting erupted at the Frisco Mine in Burke Canyon, north and east of Wallace. The Frisco mine was blown up and company guards were taken prisoner. The violence spread to the community of Gem, where union miners forced the Gem mine to close, then marched on the Bunker Hill complex at Wardner and shut it down too.
Several men were killed in the canyon fighting. The governor declared martial law and dispatched the Idaho National Guard and federal troops. Some 600 miners and sympathizers were locked in outdoor "bullpens" without hearings or formal charges, and military rule lasted four months. A U.S. Supreme Court decision later freed prisoners the court found had been held illegally.
The peace did not last. Bunker Hill's owners, organized with other owners into a Mine Owners Protective Association, refused to negotiate with the union and fired seventeen men for joining it. On April 29, 1899, union miners hijacked a Northern Pacific train at Burke at gunpoint and rode it down the canyon toward Wardner, stopping along the way to pick up armed reinforcements.
At Wardner, the mob stormed the Bunker Hill and Sullivan ore concentrator — one of the largest mining mills in the world, valued at $250,000 — and set off some 3,000 pounds of dynamite. The mill was completely destroyed; the company office, the boarding house, and the mine manager's home were burned. Two company men were killed, and one union miner died in mistaken friendly fire. The miners then re-boarded what the newspapers called the "Dynamite Express" and rode back up the canyon.
Federal troops returned, martial law was declared again, and hundreds of miners filled the bullpens once more. Through the Western Federation of Miners, the battles in the Coeur d'Alenes became entangled with Colorado mine strikes — and the shockwaves reached years into the future, when former Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg was assassinated in 1905 by Harry Orchard, a member of the union, in retribution for the crackdown of 1899.