War Under the Mountain

John C. Holgate died first, pistol in hand, leading his men down a smoke-filled mining shaft. J. Marion More was gunned down in the streets of Silver City, Idaho—his supporters said murdered—only two days after signing a truce to end one of the era’s most violent mining conflicts. Prominent pioneers of Idaho’s gold rush, both men fell victim to a dispute over what one 1867 visitor called the “richest and most wonderful deposit of quartz yet discovered in the United States—even ecl