Hercules Mining Company.

In August 1889, Harry L. Day, a bookkeeper and clerk in his father's general store in Wardner, Idaho, and Fred H. Harper, a prospector, walked one and one half miles up the pack trail between Burke and Murray to stake mining claims on the nearby mountain. These two claims, the "Hercules" and the "Firefly," later formed the Hercules mine, one of the richest silver and lead mines in the Coeur d'Alene region. Though Day and Harper began working their claims immediately, their lack of resources, regional labor troubles in 1891-1892, and a recession in 1893-1894, slowed progress. By 1895 Harper had sold his half to his father-in-law, a barber, C.H. "Dad" Reeves.

In need of cash and labor, Day and Reeves together sold a 1/4 share to August Paulsen, a farm laborer. Paulsen paid for it mostly in work at the mine. By 1899 Reeves had sold much of his remainder: a 3/32 share went to railroad engineer Levi W. Hutton (husband of May Arkwright Hutton, later the author of a famous tract on the Coeur d'Alene labor violence of 1899, and a champion of woman's suffrage); 1/8 to dairyman Sylvester Markwell; 1/16 to teamster Harry Orchard; and 1/32 each to butcher Frank M. Rothrock and lawyer Henry F. Samuels. Orchard (later notorious for the 1906 assassination of Frank Steunenberg, former Idaho Governor) soon forfeited his share to storekeeper Damian Cardoner for debt. Harry Day divided his 3/8 with his siblings--Eugene, Jerome, and Eleanor--and by 1900 the Hercules partnership had stabilized, if only temporarily.

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