page_title: Basin, Montana
section_title: Boom and bust
hierarchical_section_title: Basin, Montana / History / Boom and bust
caption_attribution_description: Ruins of the 19th century Glass brothers' smelter in Basin, Montana
context_page_description: Basin is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Jefferson County, Montana, United States. It lies about 10 miles southeast of the Continental Divide in a high narrow canyon along Interstate 15 about halfway between Butte and Helena. Basin Creek flows roughly north to south through Basin and enters the Boulder River on the settlement's south side. The population was 212 at the 2010 census, down from 255 at the 2000 census.
  Archaeologists have discovered evidence of human habitation from 10,000 years ago at a site near Clancy, 20 miles northeast of Basin. From about 2000 BCE through the mid-19th century, nomadic tribes hunted bison in the grassy valleys that trend east, away from the Rocky Mountains and into the plains. By the time miners found gold in the streams in and near Basin, most of these tribes of Indians had been forced onto reservations by the U.S. government.
  Basin rests above the Boulder Batholith, the host rock for many valuable mineral ores found in this part of Montana.
context_section_description: Two mines, the Katy and the Hope, owned serially by several different companies between the mid-1890s and the mid-1920s, contributed to Basin's prosperity. In 1894, the Basin and Bay State Mining Company, organized by two brothers named Glass, began expanded operations at these mines. However, flooding and fires caused both mines to close by 1896; the Glass brothers lost control of the property, and the mines went idle. Despite the ups and downs of the local mines and despite several disastrous fires in town, Basin prospered. In 1905, the Basin Reduction Company led by F. Augustus Heinze, who owned mines in Butte, took over the properties left by the Glass brothers and improved them. By then, Basin had a population of 1,500, four rooming houses, a drug store, three hotels, a bath house, three grocery stores, a bank, a newspaper, and 12 saloons.
  An unpublished manuscript on file with the Montana State Historical Society describes life in Basin between 1906 and 1910 in great detail. Two railroads, the Northern Pacific on the north side of the Boulder River, and the Great Northern on the south side, served the city; both had depots and warehouses in Basin and carried passengers as well as freight. The Glass brothers' smelter had been set up on the north side to process concentrated ore delivered by rail from out of town or from the mills on the south side. Infrastructure included a weight scale for ore cars and an overhead tram to carry ore across the river from the reduction mill to the smelter. Although the smelter was a "massive unit" equipped with furnaces, conveyors, and machinery ready for operation, it "never turned a wheel".
  While the smelter sat idle, mining activity continued on the south side of the river in the Hope-Katy mine complex, at the Hope Mill, which crushed and separated ore, and at the Basin Reduction Works. Flumes carried water from upstream on Cataract Creek and Basin Creek to a storage reservoir in town and supplied water to the mills as well as the town's fire hydrants. A separate flume carried water to the mills from upstream on the Boulder River. At the Basin Reduction Works, Corliss steam engines, driven by the coal-fired boilers, provided power to run the mine hoists and the mill machinery, and an electric generator powered by a water wheel made electricity for factory lights and the arc lights at Basin's street intersections. Surplus tailings were discharged into the river and into a dam built for the purpose downstream of Basin.
  In addition to homes, Basin structures between 1906 and 1910 included a dance pavilion, a grandstand, a baseball diamond, and a playground near the confluence of Basin Creek with the river. A footbridge connected the playground with a picnic area on the south side of the river. Meeting places included churches, a union hall, and a two-story building shared by the Fraternal Order of Eagles, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the Masons, and Eastern Star. Among the town's businesses were a hardware store, a bakery, livery stables, several "units of harlotry", a blacksmith shop, a brewery specializing in Basin Beer, a sawmill, and a dairy barn from which "milk was delivered in five-pound buckets", sometimes with covers.
  In 1909, after Heinze abandoned his properties in Basin, the Butte and Superior Mining Company used buildings and machinery at the site of the Basin Reduction Works to treat zinc ore by a new process called froth flotation. Sued for patent infringement, the company shut down its Basin plant in 1912. Max Atwater, a mining engineer who had worked for Butte and Superior, obtained a license for the process and ran a smaller zinc-extraction plant in Basin from 1914 through 1918. His wife, Mary Meigs Atwater, described Basin as "a mining camp, subject to recurring periods of boom and bust... A tiny telephone office and a drugstore died with the end of our era of boom... Just above the town were the headframe of our mine, and the old mill, and the never-quite-finished skeleton of a projected smelter."
  The most extensive and successful mining of the Hope-Katy 
caption: Ruins of the Glass brothers' smelter in Basin (2007)
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