The Clark Fork River is the major drainage that flows across Western Montana. It runs along the Continental Divide with the headwaters near Butte, where it flows for 310 miles to drain into Lake Pend Oreille, just over the border in Idaho. Mineral mining has always been big business in the Clark Fork watershed. Pollution […]
The 1850s were an extraordinary period in American history. Every person – rich or poor – seemed to have just one thought in mind – Gold. During the period, the news of gold in the west spread like wildfire. This prompted a wave of migration of people wanting to try their luck at finding gold. […]
Ellen Baumler, the author of the book, ‘The Town that Gold Built: The First 150 Years’ was right on the dot. Helena, the capital city of Montana, owes its existence to the yellow metal. And, here is a lesser-known secret… many believe there is still gold under the ground that no one has found. The […]
Libby Creek still offers the modern-day prospector a good chance of finding gold. This certainly wasn’t Montana’s largest gold strike, but every year prospectors still come to this areas to search for gold hiding amongst the gravel. The creek drains the high country of Lincoln County, with the nearest towns being Libby and Troy. The […]
The Richest Hill on Earth. Once upon a time that was the nickname of the city of Butte, Montana. The minerals there not only made miners wealthy, but many immigrants took advantage of jobs that paid well enough to make themselves a very comfortable living. In the 1860s, a basin a mile high sitting just […]
The Gold Strike on Grasshopper Creek Bannack, Montana is just a ghost town now, but one with a very colorful history. John White, and some other miners known as the “Pikes Peakers” from Colorado, discovered gold on July 28, 1862 in Willard Creek. Lewis and Clark had named Willard Creek in 1805, but White […]
Garnet may be one of the few boom towns that attract people even after their proverbial death. Most of them come into oblivion, get demolished by nature and disappear completely. However, when a town is conserved in a good condition long enough, people become interested in it as a museum. What better way is there […]
Lots of people believe that the “old timers” found all the gold, but there are still some amazing discoveries being made. One of those discoveries was made in Montana as recently as 1989. A gold nugget weighing over 27 troy ounces was unearthed by placer miners from a known mining area south of Butte. […]
Montana is the 7th largest producer of gold in the country, and most of the gold districts in the state are in the west near the Idaho border. Idaho itself is ranked 9th. The western part of the state is a rugged mountainous area along the Continental Divide, and is much richer than the remaining […]