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Lost to history is why geologists Bill “Boomer” Block and Joe Dreschler chose “Big Sore” as the name of their 1974 aerial discovery of evidence of a large underground anomaly on the northern end of Alaska’s Admiralty Island. No matter, though: what they’d found was the extraordinary Greens Creek mine, North America’s largest, most prolific, and lowest-cost polymetallic silver mine.
Hecla purchased an interest in the multi-venture project in 1987. A decade later, Greens Creek yielded, for Hecla’s accounts, 2.9 million ounces of silver and 17,000 ounces of gold. And by 2007, the mine served up 8.6 million ounces of silver, 68,000 ounces of gold, 63,000 tons
of zinc, and 21,000 tons of lead. The cash cost of the silver mined, when factoring in by-product credits, was actually in the minus column.
So when Rio Tinto’s Kennecott division, owner of the remaining portion of the project, offered up all of Greens Creek for sale in 2008, Hecla CEO Phil Baker pounced. He believed it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the company. And he was right. In 2015, the mine produced 8.5 million ounces of silver and more than 60,000 ounces of gold.
Right: Operating on Admiralty Island, a national monument, Greens Creek demonstrates that improving operations while maintaining high environmental and safety standards is not just a goal, it’s a reality. Facing page: The Greens Creek ferry takes employees between Juneau and Young Bay on Admiralty Island.
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