Silver Bow Creek Remediation and Restoration

The creek's name came first and nearly went last. Prospectors working its placers in 1864 named it for the way a sunlit bend shone like a silver bow, and for more than a century it carried Butte's mine and smelter waste. The upper reach through town was officially the Metro Storm Drain until Fritz Daily, Ron Davis and Sister Mary Jo McDonald sued the state in 2010. In 2015 District Judge Brad Newman ruled that the channel from Texas Avenue to George Street was historically Upper Silver Bow Creek, a natural waterway the state must protect.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mai Wah Museum — 14 mi
  Two brick buildings left from Butte's Chinatown, and a store whose goods came home after seventy years away.
• Granite Mountain/Speculator Mine Memorial — 14 mi
  An overlook above the shaft where the 1917 fire began, and the letters some of the trapped men wrote while they waited.
• Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site — 22 mi
  A Métis trader's 1862 house, a cattle king's headquarters, and a grandson who threw nothing away.

More markers nearby

• The Anaconda-Pintler and Flint Creek Mountains — steps away
• Anaconda — steps away
• The Boulder Batholith and the Richest Hill on Earth — 17 mi
• Butte — 17 mi