A Darkness Lit by Heroes

Book excerpt: The Granite Mountain-Speculator Mine disaster of 1917 is one of the most inspiring and heart-rending stories in the history of the American West. It was the worst hard rock mining disaster ever, killing 168 men, affecting nearly 1000 miners and the whole city of Butte, Montana. In 1917, the Speculator mine was the most complex and deepest copper mine on the ¿richest hill on earth¿, with 400 men in more than 300 miles of tunnels and workings extending 3700 feet underground. Just before midnight, June 8th, a fire started 2400 feet down in the main shaft, and rapidly filled the tunnels with smoke and deadly gas. Most of the miners had no idea where the fire was, but were suddenly thrust into life and death situations, making split second decisions on which everything depended. Their actions ranged from animal terror to the most inspirational courage. They desperately tried every means to escape the labyrinth to other adjacent mines as the poison gas chased and overwhelmed many. Hundreds were trapped, including groups that sealed themselves into dead-end tunnels to try to survive the onslaught of gas. The book is written in the form of a novel from the miners¿ perspective and their families above ground, but is journalistically true in detail, based on 600 pages of eye-witness testimony from 70 survivors. This testimony was carefully matched with mining maps to reconstruct the men¿s actions and thoughts. The disaster unfolds like an accelerating avalanche, a chaos of frantic terror along with tremendous self-sacrifice of the miners for each other. It then turns into a detective story as the rescuers fight against time with the survivors¿ lives ebbing away, hidden behind air-tight walls deep in the mine, lost in an ocean of darkness and rock. This is a true story of the hearts of men and the human spirit, as men are stripped down to their core with nothing left to sustain them but their wills and devotion to each other: ¿no greater love hath any man than to lay down his life for his friend.¿