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.

A dozen years of development saw no production, but all efforts paid off on June 2, 1901: Paulsen struck a rich silver-lead vein in the No. 2 Tunnel. The first commercial shipments went out that fall, and in December the partners received their first dividend. By the end of 1903 the Hercules was netting $40,000 a month.

Disgusted with price manipulation by the "smelter trust" -- the American Smelting & Refining Co. (ASARCO), -- the Hercules in its early years sought out independent smelters, settling primarily,after 1903, on the Selby Smelting and Refining Company of Vallejo, California. However, when ASARCO gained control of the Selby two years later, the Hercules began shipments to the trust's Perth Amboy, New Jersey smelter and later its East Helena, Montana plant.

In 1912 ASARCO and the Hercules temporarily settled their differences on terms quite favorable to the latter company: Harry Day became president and general manager on a three year contract of an ASARCO subsidiary in the Coeur d'Alenes, the Federal Mining and Smelting Co., and Hercules ore received preferential terms at East Helena. With Harry occupied at Federal, Eugene Day took over the management of the Hercules. Harry devoted his three years to evaluating and acquiring new properties for Federal, but when the contract expired in 1915, the Hercules discovered that ASARCO proposed a drastic increase in rates. The Days then bought their own smelters, an old copper treatment plant at Northport, Washington, called the Northport Smelting and Refining Company, and the Pennsylvania Smelting Co. at Carnegie, Pennsylvania. For several years Jerome Day managed the Northport, Eugene continued as head of the Hercules, and Harry coordinated work between the companies--Hercules, Northport, Pennsylvania, and other mines in the Coeur d'Alenes (most notably the Tamarack & Custer Consolidated Mining Co.) which the Days had begun acquiring during the depression of 1907. This arrangement lasted until 1921 when the Days closed the Northport, later selling it to ASARCO, which once again contracted to buy Hercules ore.

Rich crude Hercules ore went directly to the smelter until late 1905 when the first Hercules mill opened in Burke. When that plant burned on Labor Day, 1909, the Hercules leased the Tiger Mill, operating it until their new plant opened in Wallace in April 1911. Here Hercules ore was reduced to concentrates or slimes until the mine shut down in 1925, while custom milled ore from other regional mines kept it going until 1932. The Wallace plant operated under lease to the Sullivan Mining Co. in 1935-1936, and then opened again as the Hercules Custom Mill from 1937 to 1942, when it closed for good.

In the early years, the Days and their partners had been friendly to labor organizations in the Coeur d'Alenes. Levi Hutton was implicated in the dynamiting of the Bunker Hill Mill during the strike of 1899, and in 1901, shortly before the family struck it rich at the Hercules, Eleanor Day married Edward Boyce, then the president of the Western Federation of Miners. But during the resurgence of union activity at the height of World War I, the Hercules management feared sabotage or even revolution. Jerome fired the entire Tamarack crew, suspecting they were members of the Industrial Workers of the World, and Eugene discharged a quarter of the Hercules workforce for the same reason.

By 1911 the Hercules had become the third most profitable mine in the Coeur d'Alenes, trailing only Federal and Bunker Hill. The market slowed briefly when Congress reduced tariff duties on lead and zinc in 1913, but the outbreak of World War I and continuing chaos in Mexico soon drove metal prices upward. The Hercules was the most profitable mine in the district in 1916, and dividends peaked at $3,800,000 in 1917. Lead prices plunged after the Armistice, however, and the mining industry was sharply depressed by 1919. The Hercules shut down and opened only in April of 1919, and then at reduced wages. Thereafter, the Hercules mine would reopen or close depending on the market.

During this period ownership of the Hercules was consolidated, although the number of partners increased later as shares passed to children and other relatives. In 1906 Hutton, Paulsen, and Markwell bought out Samuels' 1/16, and Reeves sold his last 1/16 share to Eleanor Day in 1911, giving the Day family almost half of the mine. Since Frank Rothrock consistently voted with the Days, they maintained practical control, and after Cardoner died in 1916, Eugene bought his share, bringing the Day ownership to 33/64. This majority was threatened when Eugene Day died in 1922 and his estranged wife began a bitter dispute over his estate.

After the war the Hercules partnership operated in a new business environment. Costs were much higher, the burden of federal and state regulation much greater, the income taxes imposed on the partners onerous...and the mineral wealth seemed near its end. Perhaps primarily for tax reasons, on Dec. 31, 1923 the Hercules partnership was dissolved and the Hercules Mining Company incorporated in the state of Delaware. The new company had an authorized capitalization of $5 million divided into 500,000 shares, 430,280 of which were initially distributed among the seventeen owners in proportion to their holdings in the former partnership. Eleanor Day Boyce was the largest single stockholder. The first directors of the company were Harry Day, president and treasurer; Jerome Day. vice president; Eleanor Day; August Paulsen; Levi Hutton; Frank Rothrock; and Frank Markwell.

Harry's son Henry Lawrence Vincent Day served as assistant manager, then as manager, and succeeded to the presidency upon his father's death in 1941. Under his direction the last car of ore left the Hercules on Mar. 25, 1925, as the mine finally bottomed out, and the company evolved from a mine operating firm to a holding company for new properties and, until 1942, the manager of a custom mill. In 1947 the Hercules Mining Company merged with eleven other Day dominated mining companies in the Coeur d'Alenes to form Day Mines, Inc. For each 1000 shares of the Hercules, stockholders received 692 shares of Day Mines Inc.