Basin History
The town of Basin began as a 19th century mining camp near the confluence of Basin Creek with the Boulder River. Gold deposits at the mouth of Cataract Creek, about half a mile downstream of Basin, were reported as early as 1862. Prospectors staked claims and built cabins and within a few years placer mining extended the full lengths of Cataract and Basin Creeks.
When a settlement was established in Basin, the buildings at the mouth of Cataract Creek were gradually moved to Basin, and the Cataract camp was abandoned.
Searches for the lode veins on both creeks succeeded by the 1870s and eventually led to significant lode mining at the Eva May, Uncle Sam, Grey Eagle, Hattie Ferguson, and Comet mines in the Cataract Creek district and the Bullion, Hope, and Katy mines in the Basin Creek district.
By 1880, the settlement at Basin became the local source of supplies for mines and miners. A post office was established that year. As smelting and rail infrastructure improved throughout the decade, the mining operations found increased success and Basin evolved into a prosperous mining town.
Although the mines were silver producers, gold, lead, and zinc were also mined commodities here, allowing Basin to weather the 1893 silver crash better than most silver districts. In 1905, the Basin Reduction Company, led by Butte "Copper King" F. Augustus Heinze, took over some of the Basin mining properties.
The period from 1905 to 1909 was the most prosperous period for the town, and the population swelled to around 1,500. During this period Basin had two railroads, four rooming houses, a drug store, three hotels, a bath house, three grocery stores, a bank, a newspaper, and 12 saloons.
The Heinze operation closed in 1909, but mining activity in the district continued intermittently until the mid 1920s. Although small-scale mining and the reworking of tailings dumps continued for several decades, mining was no longer a major industry in the area.
For over 50 years people have been traveling to the Merry Widow Health Mine and similar mines in Basin, seeking relief from health problems such as arthritis through the controversial process of exposure to radioactive mine water and radon.
From 1993 through 2011, Basin was home to the Montana Artists Refuge, which occupied two commercial buildings on Main Street (although the refuge closed their website appears to indicate there has been activity there in recent years).
Like most former mining towns, Basin has struggled to reinvent itself in the post-mining era. Today just 200 people call Basin home.
Mining at Basin
The Montana DEQ's Montana Abandoned Mine Lands program maintains a database of historic mining district histories. The following text is from their report on the Basin district.
A factor which limited the district's development prior to the 1880s, was the need for smelters which could treat the complex ores. As early as 1867, a smelter was built across the divide at the Gregory mine near Wickes in the Colorado district, followed shortly after by a similar plant at the Minah mine, also near Wickes. Concentrators using gravity methods were constructed at the Comet and Eva May mines in the Cataract sub-district but none of these early operations were very efficient.
In 1883 the railroad line from Helena to Wickes was completed and the smelter at Wickes was remodeled and enlarged. These developments provided an incentive to mining throughout the area, resulting in a boom which lasted about a decade until the silver panic of 1893 forced many of the region's mines to shut down.
In addition, many of the leading mines had reached depths where it was too expensive to mine using wood-fired steam plants and, in some cases, the good ore had been mined out. Few production records were kept during this period but it has been estimated the Basin district produced about $8,000,000 in gold.
Most mining throughout the region south of Helena, from this point on, consisted of smaller-scale operations, carried out with limited capital and equipment. For the most part, old tailings dumps were reworked or old mine workings were reopened on a reduced scale. The Basin district, however, was somewhat of an exception to this trend with a number of major mining operations being developed after the turn of the century.
The Katy and Hope mines were reorganized by the Basin & Bay State Mining Company in 1894. The mines prospered in the 1890s despite low silver prices. A new mill was built at the Katy which ran successfully until the mine flooded and the mill burned down in 1895. The following year the Hope mine's concentrator also caught fire.
In 1905 the Basin Reduction Company took over the operation and spent $500,000 building and equipping a 1500-ton smelter and concentrator which reworked the mine tailings; the mill ran at full capacity for several years around 1906, but by 1911 it was idle.
Both mines, along with the White Elephant, were later reopened by the Jib Consolidated Mining Company in 1924, and produced $1,700,000 in gold before the operation was forced to close due to mismanagement and stock market manipulations, thus ending Basin's last major mining boom.
Since then, small-scale mining, the reworking of older mine dumps as at the Comet, and a few placer operations have been conducted in the greater Basin district.
Principal Gold Districts of Montana
In Montana, 54 mining districts have each have produced more than 10,000 ounces of gold. The largest producers are Butte, Helena, Marysville, and Virginia City, each having produced more than one million ounces. Twenty seven other districts are each credited with between 100,000 and one million ounces of gold production. Read more: Principal Gold Districts of Montana.
