The Silver Valley: How a Runaway Jackass and a Billion Ounces of Silver Made Idaho Mining History
In September 1885, a prospector named Noah Kellogg was combing the hills above Milo Creek in Idaho's northern panhandle when the jackass he had been grubstaked with wandered off. When Kellogg tracked it down, legend says the animal was standing on a glittering outcropping of galena, a lead-silver ore, gazing across the canyon at another. That chance discovery became the Bunker Hill and Sullivan lode, one of the largest of its kind in the world — and the town that grew up nearby took Kellogg's name.