Milwaukee  Mining Company  stock certificate circa 1887

Uncommon early Idaho mining piece with a great vignette of miners working in a mine.  Unissued and not cancelled. Circa 1887.

Incorporated  in 1887, the company had mines on "property situated on  Canyon Creek, Shoshone County, Idaho".  The mines were in the heart of the silver, lead, and zinc district. The area also had gold and coal mining activities. The district was rough and tumble for many years.

Hard rock miners in Shoshone County protested wage cuts with a strike in 1892. Two large mines, the Gem mine and the Frisco mine in Burke-Canyon 1 mile south of Burke, operated with replacement workers during the strike. Several lost their lives in a shooting war provoked by the discovery of a company spy named Charles A. Siringo The U.S. Army forced an end to the strike.

Hostilities erupted once again in 1899. In response to the Bunker Hill company firing seventeen men for joining the union, the miners dynamited the Bunker Hill & Sullivan mill. Lives were lost once again, and the army intervened. One of more famous images of early Idaho were the train tracks in Burke running through the main road. The narrow main part of town had to share its boundaries with the Northern Pacific rail spur.

When the railroad had to widen, instead of destroying the main hotel, the railroad and hotel came up with a unique situation—i.e. the railroad ran through the area where the Tiger Hotel's lobby was, with an enclosed walk way constructed above for hotel guests to move between the two halves of the hotel without worry about the train or the weather. The hotel became increasingly unprofitable in the 1940s and was torn down in 1954.