A Booming Little Place

The legal woes the panel mentions were a quarrel over where a vein began. Under the apex rule of the 1872 mining law, whoever owned the top of a vein could follow it underground, and the neighboring St. Louis Mining and Milling Company said the Drumlummon vein's apex lay on its ground. It sued the British owners in 1893, won a judgment of $195,000, and the fight ran for more than twenty years. The mine closed in 1904 while the case went on and its lower levels flooded; in 1911 the Drumlummon was sold at a sheriff's sale.

What the plaque says

A Booming Little Place Marysville owes its existence to the nearby Drumlummon Mine developed by a determined miner named Tommy Cruse. The British-owned Montana Mining Company acquired the mine in 1883. Expansion of Drumlummon operations, including a large ore processing mill, brought miners, their families, and businesses to the adjacent camp called Marysville. Soon substantial wood-frame and brick buildings replaced the old camp's log shacks. Within a few years Marysville consisted of genteel residences surrounding a vibrant commercial district. Along with grocery stores, hotels, mercantiles and restaurants, Marysville included churches, a variety of fraternal societies, an orchestra, and a substantial schoolhouse. A brewery and 27 saloons satisfied the town's earthier needs. One writer predicted in 1892 that "within a dozen years Helena will only be a suburb of Marysville." It was not to be. By 1895, a severe national depression and the mining company's legal woes drifted Marysville into a slow decline. A fire devastated the commercial district in 1910 and the Northern Pacific Railway abandoned its line to Marysville in 1925 as the ore, and business, played out. While not quite the "Denver of the North," the town endures and is proud of its heritage.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Montana State Capitol — 17 mi
  A copper-domed capitol won in a copper kings' election, with a Russell painting that put the Salish at the center.
• Mann Gulch — 21 mi
  Thirteen markers on a grass slope above the Missouri, where a fire outran a crew of smokejumpers in 1949.
• Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site — 31 mi
  A Métis trader's 1862 house, a cattle king's headquarters, and a grandson who threw nothing away.

More markers nearby

• Marysville Montana — steps away
• Over a Billion Years of Montana's Geologic History — 12 mi
• The Frenchwoman's Road — 13 mi
• The Mullan Road — 14 mi