Mining Country

The German town on the board is Freiberg, in Saxony, a silver-smelting town with a mining academy since 1765, not Freiburg. The Welsh shipments have a documented start. In 1866 copper ore from William Park's Parrot No. 3 claim at Butte went to Swansea for refining, and the cost of hauling it there swallowed most of the profit. When Marcus Daly's Anaconda ore began reaching Wales in the 1880s it assayed so rich, around 45 percent copper, that the smelters wrote to ask what new process had made it. Daly answered that it was natural.

What the plaque says

Mining Country This is about the center of a rich mining district extending from Butte to Helena. The mountains are spurs of the Continental Divide. Ghost and active mining camps are to be found in almost every gulch. The ores yield gold, silver, copper, lead and zinc. The district has been producing since quartz mining came into favor following the first wave of placer mining in the 60s. In those days placer deposits were the poor man's El Dorados. They needed little more than a grub stake, a pick and a shovel to work them. Quartz properties, seldom rich at the surface, required machinery and capital, transportation and smelting facilities. Before smelters were built in Montana, ore from some of the richest mines in this region was shipped by freight team, boat and rail to Swansea, Wales and Freiburg, Germany for treatment.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Granite Mountain/Speculator Mine Memorial — 21 mi
  An overlook above the shaft where the 1917 fire began, and the letters some of the trapped men wrote while they waited.
• Mai Wah Museum — 23 mi
  Two brick buildings left from Butte's Chinatown, and a store whose goods came home after seventy years away.
• Montana State Capitol — 24 mi
  A copper-domed capitol won in a copper kings' election, with a Russell painting that put the Salish at the center.

More markers nearby

• Jib Mill — 1.0 mi
• The Boulder River Bridge — 8.6 mi
• Elkhorn Mountain Volcanoes — 15 mi
• Freighters — 15 mi