Replies to post #5054 on Applied Minerals Inc (fka AMNLQ)

[wald]

The fortunes of Idaho's Silver Valley pick up with metal prices, ski resort
By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS
The Associated Press 5/27/08
KELLOGG, Idaho — Just when locals thought the mining industry was deader than Noah Kellogg's mule, more miners are suddenly heading back down the shafts in northern Idaho's Silver Valley.
A steep rise in metals prices has re-energized this battered area's original industry, even as two decades of efforts to turn Kellogg into a ski resort are finally paying off.
The scene is the same in some other Western mining towns that were long given up for dead............
growing numbers of workers are putting on hard hats and riding cages deep into the Sunshine and Lucky Friday mines.
Many are former residents who left for mining jobs elsewhere.
"A lot of people who left have been coming back, because things are pretty good," said Rick Decker, a miner for three decades who is also president of Local 5114 of the United Steelworkers in Kellogg.
Don't expect any clash of cultures in this narrow mountain valley that has produced silver for more than a century. The ski bums wouldn't stand a chance.
"There is definitely a mining culture in the Silver Valley," said Vicki Veltkamp, spokeswoman for Hecla Mining Co., which owns the Lucky Friday..............
Silver was discovered here when prospector Kellogg's mule kicked over a shiny rock of ore in 1885. People rushed in, and the Silver Valley once employed 4,200 people in mining.
Then the bottom fell out of the industry. Mines laid off workers and the Bunker Hill smelter closed. According to the Idaho Department of Labor, Shoshone County's population fell 28 percent in the 1980s as people left to find work. But in the past few years population is slowly growing again, topping 13,000 in 2006..........
the community added 200 mining jobs in the past year, bringing the total to 705. That's about twice what it was at the lowest point in 2003. These jobs pay an average of $57,000 a year, a huge salary by local standards........
Mining produces the kind of steady workforce that buys homes and incorporates into the community, compared to more transient tourism workers, said Norma Douglas, head of the Silver Valley Chamber of Commerce........