After the Boom
When the 1910 Census was performed for Burke, Idaho, the Census Bureau found 1,400 residents packed into this site on Canyon Creek. Eighty years later, in the last Census to officially recognize Burke as a separate location, the bureau registered a population of only 15.
Burke, which had boomed due to the silver and lead mining of operations such as the Hecla Mine, quickly died as the mines shut down. What was once a thriving downtown is now but a few ruins and boarded up storefronts standing in the shadow of the shuttered mine buildings. If the records didn't say so, and old pictures didn't exist, one might find it hard to believe that this handful of remnants stands as a epitaph for a series of mining towns that once stood in the canyon. Thousands of people once resided in towns alongside Burke such as Gem, Mace, and Frisco, yet today, apart from a sprinkling of structures, only Burke really remains as a reminder of what once was.
After the Boom
When the 1910 Census was performed for Burke, Idaho, the Census Bureau found 1,400 residents packed into this site on Canyon Creek. Eighty years later, in the last Census to officially recognize Burke as a separate location, the bureau registered a population of only 15.
Burke, which had boomed due to the silver and lead mining of operations such as the Hecla Mine, quickly died as the mines shut down. What was once a thriving downtown is now but a few ruins and boarded up storefronts standing in the shadow of the shuttered mine buildings. If the records didn't say so, and old pictures didn't exist, one might find it hard to believe that this handful of remnants stands as a epitaph for a series of mining towns that once stood in the canyon. Thousands of people once resided in towns alongside Burke such as Gem, Mace, and Frisco, yet today, apart from a sprinkling of structures, only Burke really remains as a reminder of what once was.