Mining Industry
Mining significantly impacted Montana’s history and shaped the built environment. The first Montana Gold Rush in the early 1860s set the stage for massive change. Upon the discovery of gold, boom towns soon dotted the territory and drew many people of various ethnic groups to the area to work claims and supply the miners. While early mining camps grew organically in conjunction with topography and resources, later town leaders platted market towns with orderly business districts and residential areas.
Mining impacted more than settlement patterns. A few lucky individuals made fortunes from silver, copper, and gold. Well-connected men such as William A. Clark and Marcus Daly shaped the social, economic, and political environment of the state. Their wealth affected the built environment, too, as they supported the construction of lavish mansions, churches, hospitals, educational facilities, and company homes. The mining industry itself became such a great economic asset to the region that the state used Enabling Act funds to establish the Montana State School of Mines in Butte in the late 1880s.
Railroads played a major role in the growth of Montana’s mining industry. Gold, silver, and copper mining towns served railroads such as the Union Pacific and Northern Pacific with destinations to which they could expand their service, and the ample supply of coal in Montana provided a steady source of fuel and product. Railroads knit the towns of the state together and provided Montanans with unprecedented mobility and access to products and information.
Few industries proved as important to Montana’s growth as mining, and in a few key areas this importance is written on the land.
Virginia City Historic District
National Historic Landmark
The spectacular gold deposit discovered in Alder Gulch on May 26, 1863, led to the rapid growth of this colorful and legendary gold camp town. Thousands of fortune‑seekers rushed to the area, and by 1864 the Virginia City area boasted 30,000 residents. Rough characters attracted by the gold rush…
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Kramer Building (Dress Shop)
Virginia City National Historic Landmark District
The hasty construction of this remarkably preserved early dwelling reflects the excitement of the gold rush to Alder Gulch during the summer of 1863. Its original dirt-covered pole roof predates the first saw mills; the roof was later covered over with sawn boards. The interior illustrates the…
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Philipsburg Historic District
Philipsburg’s early-day fortunes ebbed and flowed with mining. Today, its historic district is one of Montana’s best preserved late-nineteenth-century mining towns, with commercial, public, and private buildings dating from the boom period of silver mining. Silver was discovered south of here in…
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Helena Historic District
The crooked path of Last Chance Gulch, weaving between original mining claims, memorializes Helena’s chaotic beginning as a gold camp in 1864. Within a year of the placer gold discovery, a boomtown flourished, with homes and businesses in tents and log cabins. Fire was both constant threat and…
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F.R. Merk Block
Virginia City National Historic Landmark District
Gold dust was the common currency when George Higgins built this sturdy “fire-proof stone” business block circa 1866. F. R. Merk leased the new building for his mercantile, advertising fancy and staple groceries, liquors, household implements, and a tin shop with “prices to suit the times.” Merk…
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Christenot Mill at Union City
Prospectors discovered gold in Alder Gulch, Idaho Territory, on May 26, 1863. Within weeks, the countryside was teeming with thousands of prospectors, but the easily extracted placer gold soon played out. B. F. Christenot, acting independently or perhaps as agent to Philadelphia backers, began…
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Helena South-Central Historic District
This first permanent settlement of the gold camp at Last Chance Gulch offers a glimpse of early Helena from the late 1860s to the 1890s. By the 1870s, a Catholic cathedral, St. John's Hospital, two schools, and dormitories presided over the district atop Catholic Hill. In curious juxtaposition,…
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Helena West Main Street Historic District
The physical link between the earliest settlement of Helena and the ceaseless efforts to fully exploit the area’s mineral potential is nowhere more clearly apparent than in this narrow district, settled on mining claims. After the first local gold strike in June of 1864, choice claims were quickly…
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Orphan Girl Mine
Butte-Anaconda Historic District
From the time it was located in 1875 until it was purchased by Marcus Daly and associates in 1879, ownership of fractional shares in the Orphan Girl Mine changed hands faster than the ante in a poker game. The Orphan Girl eventually operated to a depth of over 3,000 feet. While not a huge producer…
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Walkerville, Butte
Butte National Historic Landmark District
Miners north of Missoula Gulch struck silver in 1872, and three years later Rollo Butcher located the Alice, one of the richest silver mines on the Hill. Butcher is credited with building the first permanent residence in Walkerville, and the Butchertown neighborhood bears his name. Word of…
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Butte-Anaconda Historic District
It took millions of miles of copper to build the telegraph, telephone, and electrical lines that transformed the United States from a collection of small, isolated communities to a cohesive, industrialized nation. Looming gallows frames and the towering Anaconda Company smokestack recall the…
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Pony Historic District
About 1866, a prospector of very small stature, Tecumseh "Pony" Smith, left his nickname attached to the creek where he found gold. In 1875, a settlement bearing his name grew to serve local miners. Pony's early population reflected the whims of gold miners, growing larger when a miner struck pay…
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Great Falls Northside Residential Historic District
Great Falls founder Paris Gibson was drawn to the power of the falls of the Missouri where he vowed to found an industrial center of unsurpassed beauty. Backed by railroad magnate James J. Hill, Gibson hired H. P. Rolfe to plat the townsite in 1883. Industry harnessed the rivers power and the…
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Anaconda Commercial Historic District
Backed by the powerful San Francisco syndicate of Hearst, Haggin and Tevis, Marcus Daly built the world’s largest smelter (combined upper and lower works) on Warm Springs Creek between 1883 and 1889. Along with the smelters, Daly envisioned a substantial city and filed the original townsite plat…
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South Butte Neighborhood
Butte National Historic Landmark District
John Noyes arrived from California in 1866 and purchased several mining claims just north of today’s Front Street. After he and his partners, including David Upton, “put in a ground sluice,” they cleared “about two ounces [of gold] to the man” the first night. The placer mines had played out by the…
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Central Business District, Butte
Butte National Historic Landmark District
A catastrophic fire consumed much of Main Street in 1879, removing traces of Butte’s mining camp past and ushering in a new era of masonry and stone construction. In the 1880s, single miners remained the primary customers of the district’s gambling halls, saloons, and brothels. However, the city…
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South Central Butte Neighborhood
Butte National Historic Landmark District
Discovery of rich silver deposits at the Travona, whose head frame still stands at the district’s west end, sparked Butte’s 1870s hard-rock mining boom. Most South Central buildings date from the 1880s and 1890s, after copper had supplanted silver as Butte’s economic engine. The Travona and nearby…
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Hamilton Southside Residential Historic District
The architectural character of this pleasant district was initially shaped by copper king Marcus Daly. Between 1890 and 1905, Daly's Anaconda Copper Mining Company constructed substantial high style residences for its managers and modest houses in various vernacular forms for its workers.…
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Red Lodge Commercial Historic District
Rapid growth of the young town of Red Lodge coincided with the arrival of the Northern Pacific Railroad’s branch line in 1889. The area became Montana’s leading coal mining region. Town lots were platted by the secretary of the Rocky Fork Town and Electric Company, a subsidiary of the mining…
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Garnet Historic District
The 1865 gold strike on Bear Creek in the Garnet Range drew prospectors from far and wide. The gold that washed down with spring runoff promised rich quartz veins, but without a road and little water for placer mining, the “mother lode” proved elusive. For thirty years, prospectors eked out a…
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Montana Tech Campus
Butte National Historic Landmark District
The Enabling Act of 1889 laid the foundation for the Montana School of Mines, providing for the first federal land grants for the establishment of mining schools. This landmark provision thus recognized the significance of mining industries to the newly admitted western states of Montana, North…
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Centerville Neighborhood, Butte
Butte National Historic Landmark District
Tightly clustered wooden houses built into the steep slopes of the Butte Hill characterize Centerville. Mostly constructed before 1900, the small Queen Anne cottages, hipped-roof workers’ houses, and vernacular gable-roof homes primarily sheltered immigrant miners and their families. Head frames…
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Belt Commercial Historic District
Pennsylvania native John Castner discovered rich coal deposits along Belt Creek in 1870. Within just a few years, he and Fort Benton trader T. C. Power opened a commercial coal mine near here. The partners sold coal for use by the Great Northern Railway, the Boston & Montana Refinery in Great…
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Ravalli County Courthouse
Copper king Marcus Daly established local logging operations and platted the town of Hamilton in 1890 to fuel his Anaconda copper mining ventures. When Ravalli County was carved from Missoula County in 1893, Stevensville won designation as county seat. But Daly’s interests soon brought Hamilton a…
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St. Mary's Neighborhood, Butte
Butte National Historic Landmark District
This historically Catholic neighborhood appropriately takes its name from St. Mary’s parish, which included the Irish communities of Dublin Gulch (since leveled) and Corktown. Known as the “miner’s church,” St. Mary’s scheduled services around shift changes, and early Sunday mornings miners’ lunch…
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Smith Mine Historic District
Thirty-nine corrugated metal structures mark the site of the Smith Mine, a ghostly reminder of a once vibrant mining district. The Montana Coal and Iron Company (MCI) began developing the Smith Mine in earnest after the arrival of the Montana, Wyoming and Southern Railroad, producing 8,000 tons of…
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Red Lodge Labor Temple
Red Lodge Commercial Historic District
Red Lodge Miner’s Local No. 1771 had grown to more than a thousand members when this labor temple was built in 1909. The United Mine Workers of America organized nationally in 1896 and by 1898, Local No. 1771 had 200 members. The building is a testament to the labor struggles of Red Lodge coal…
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Riverside (Daly Mansion)
Riverside served as the summer residence of Margaret Daly, widow of copper magnate Marcus Daly, from its completion in 1910 until her death here in 1941. Daly himself had begun buying Bitterroot Valley land in 1887, eventually owning 28,000 acres. After Daly’s death in 1900, Mrs. Daly had Riverside…
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Gildersleeve Mine
Rough-sawn lumber and the use of recycled materials testify to the ingenuity, resourcefulness, and industry of the Gildersleeve family, whose members mined gold and barite here beginning in 1924. The Gildersleeves built these board-and-batten (vertical board) structures—including a cookhouse/main…
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Bannack Historic District
National Historic Landmark
Bannack epitomizes the tough, primitive towns that sprang up with gold discoveries. Its story also illustrates a century of survival, through boom and bust periods associated with resource extraction and technological advances. On July 28, 1862, prospectors John White and company made a lucky…
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