Craters of the Moon Administrative History

Chapter 6:
RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Resource Management At Craters Of The Moon:
EXTERNAL THREATS: SOME PAST AND PRESENT CONCERNS: MINING

Craters of the Moon National Monument lies adjacent to historic silver mining districts in southcentral Idaho. The Lava Creek Mining District, of which the northern unit was a part, boomed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The mining towns of Era and Martin, located near the Pioneer Mountain foothills at the monument's northern boundaries, thrived and died with the silver market. Their legacy and the presence of precious metals or other natural resource commodities in those mountains have formed the heart of administrative concerns. And, as with other controversial topics, the Park Service inherited mining issues with the 1928 expansion. Although a time-consuming task for managers has been the settlement of mining claims and operations inside the monument, operations and explorations outside the monument have presented potential threats as well. [278]

Throughout the first several decades of the monument's existence, the Park Service attempted to gain title to all mining claims in the northern unit. In some instances it was successful and prevented further encroachments by mining operations. [279] But it was not until the late 1960s that the agency ended the longest-running mining operation at the monument, the Martin Mine. The mine operators were able to maintain their claim, it seems, by operating on a very low scale; in fact, it is not certain how much, if any, ore was mined after 1928. When the operation's final claim was purchased in July 1967, the monument then turned to managing the remains. [280]

The buildings and mine shafts remained intact until the early 1980s. At that time, Superintendent Robert Hentges cleared a program to return the site to its natural conditions. In 1981, the Park Service determined that the site had no historical significance and did not pose safety hazards, and consequently monument employees burned and removed remnants of the Martin Mine structures and filled the shafts sometime in the mid-1980s. [281] A shallow man-made pond, structural fragments, and three piles of mine tailings still impact the landscape. Revegetation projects of the site, while attempted, have proven unsuccessful possibly due to the heavy metals in the soil and tailings, and bare ground marks the past. [282]