Matters to Contemplate: May miners' advocate Bob Hopper rest in peace

January 19, 2011

Arriving in Dayton January 5, we received sad news: Bob Hopper, the best man at our wedding 42+years ago, had passed away. Bob co-owned the Bunker Hill Mine in Kellogg, Idaho, founded in 1885, producing lead, silver and zinc.

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Then, the Historical Society of Dayton Valley's schoolhouse museum building served as a community center where fist-pounding-county political debates at town meetings rocked the ghost town's abandoned millworks, but, on Sunday's, Mr. Raeborn drove from Reno to officiate Sunday School there, changing the meeting aura when parishioners filled the old schoolhouse with old-fashioned church music, his wife accompanying songsters on a piano.

Like prospectors lured to Dayton during the Gold Rush, Bob and Stony formed an instant camaraderie akin to gold fever. They studied old mining maps and collected data about remote mining districts, explored open shafts, abandoned millsites, and staked mining claims all over this end of the state.

They were the last ones to operate an original stamp mill: "It was the only stamp mill left on the Comstock. We wanted to see how those old mills worked so Bill Donovan (longtime Silver City mining entrepreneur), let us run it."

Prospected out locally, Bob's love for mining and rocks in general prevailed. The Hoppers moved to Wrangell, Alaska, Cle Elum, Washington and in 1990, to Kellogg, where Bob's dream of running an active, productive mine came true.

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