Page 44 - HMC 125 Year Book Narrative_042816.indd

Founded by Amasa Campbell, Patsy Clark
and John Finch, Hecla Mining Company is incorporated in the state of Idaho on October 14.
1898 I Hecla is incorporated in Washington State on July 12 with Amasa Campbell voted in as president. Capitalized for one million shares with a par value of 25¢, Hecla’s stock rises within three months to 45¢ per share. Hecla’s management begins to buy up the claims adjacent to the Hecla lead
mine, and Campbell exults, “The Hecla is developing into a wonderful mine.”
1900 I The company pays its first dividend of 2¢ per share on July 5 – just as Amasa Campbell had forecast. By the end of the year, Hecla sells $229,550 worth of ore and pays $100,000 in dividends.
1904 I On October 14, Hecla transfers its records from the offices of Finch and Campbell in Spokane, Washington, to Wallace, Idaho – where it would stay for more than 80 years.
1915 I Hecla stock begins trading on the New York Curb Exchange – later the American Stock Exchange – on September 23. With the listing, Hecla begins printing an annual report, which previously had been a typewritten statement from James McCarthy’s handwritten draft.
1923 I Fire sweeps through Burke, Idaho on Friday, July 13, destroying the Hecla mine buildings, damaging the hoist, and decimating the Burke business district along with 50 homes. Miraculously, no one is injured: men working underground as far down as the 1600 level are hoisted out of the mine before flames cut off the electricity. The rest climb hand-over-hand to the surface – 2,000 feet above them.
1924 I The Burke fire puts Hecla out of commission five months and 18 days; ore is hoisted again on January 27, 1924. The new Hecla plant, fireproof and twice as large as the old one, processes ore from both the Hecla and Star mines. An 8,203-foot crosscut from the bottom of the Hecla Shaft to the 4000 level of the Star mine is completed after 32 months of round-the-clock digging. The longest tunnel in the world at the time, the venture costs $531,887.
1930 I Hecla acquires the Polaris, one of the oldest claims
in the district. Though some are initially skeptical of the company’s first real silver venture, a spectacular ore intercept of 24% lead and 125 ounces of silver per ton is discovered
in 1944. The Polaris, staked in 1884, pays Hecla’s dividends through the 1940s.
1932 I With lead at its lowest price since 1914 and silver lower than anyone can remember, the annual report of the Idaho state mines inspector notes that the year was “the leanest...in 40 years.” Net operating profits from the Coeur d’Alene District’s mines plummet to $437,013 from $4.2 million just two years earlier.
While Hecla uses the lean Depression years to look for new mines and to develop those it owns within its means, a reviving market enables the company to reopen the Star mine in October.
1938 I 18.85 percent of Hecla’s profits are claimed by state and federal governments as taxes. Only 50 to 60 percent of lead output is being sold, while the zinc plant holds 7,700 tons unsold. The metals market continues its erratic behavior toward the end of the decade, causing investors to dump shares.
After four decades of production, the last tonnage is hoisted from the original Hecla
Shaft in 1944. Bottoming out at 3,600 feet, the company’s namesake mine yields more than nine million tons of ore during its lifetime.
1945 I Hecla-Polaris crews begin driving down the Silver Summit Shaft, their intent to explore deeper in the silver belt. They sink 1,596 feet in 11 months and eight days – said to be a record speed.
1946 I Hecla acquires 131 claims and take options on others in the Rock Creek drainage southwest of Wallace. The Wallace Miner calls it “one of the biggest deals in recent years.” But by the end of the decade, Hecla sinks more than $408,000 into the project – with no commercial ore present. The property is sold five years later at a loss.
1954 I Hecla signs a deal to acquire an interest in the rich Radon and Hot Rock uranium deposits in Utah. Over a nine- year life, the two mines yield a net income of $9.3 million.
1958 I On December 12, Hecla purchases 184,000 shares in the Lucky Friday Silver-Lead Mines Company, and with an additional acquisition of 644,058 shares becomes the largest shareholder in the Lucky Friday silver-lead mine in Mullan, Idaho. “None of us ever dreamed,” Hecla President Les Randall later reflects, “that it would become the great mine it is.”
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