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Nye City in the Stillwater River
Valley near the turn of the century.
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Packtrain loading ore samples, 1939.
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Portal of the Titanic Adit, December
1940.
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Part 1: Early Mineral Exploration
Mining in the Stillwater complex began not with the platinum
group metals, but with chromite and copper nickel. Since the
late 1800s, the Stillwater complex and adjacent rocks were
known to contain copper, nickel and chromium.
Copper-nickel exploration
Sulfide rich rocks were discovered within the Basal series, the
metasedimentary rocks immediately below the complex, in 1883.
Jack Nye and brothers Jimmy and Jonas Hedges found the sulfide
rich rocks in Mountain View, Benbow and Initial Creek areas.
Nye traveled to Minneapolis and submitted his findings. On the
basis of those findings, the Stillwater Mining Company was incorporated
in the summer of 1884 and a mining project commenced in 1885.
On September 10, 1885, Nye sold to the Stillwater Mining Company
his quartz claims in the Benbow and Initial Creek areas and a
placer claim in the Stillwater River Valley. On October 2, 1885,
he sold quartz claims in the Verdigris Creek area and additional
placer claims to Stillwater. Two weeks later, Stillwater sold
these claims to the Minneapolis Mining and Smelting Company.
After the transaction, construction of Nye City began.
Nye City was located just west of the American Chrome Company
hospital building. By 1887, a small smelter had been assembled
and the town grew to a peak population of 300 to 400 people,
and counted, at one time, six saloons, a store, a commissary,
a boarding house, and an assay office.
A fly in the ointment of success brought things to an abrupt
end. A government survey of the Stillwater basin revealed that
Nye City was not part of the Federal domain included in Gallatin
County, but was actually on Crow Indian Reservation lands. Because
government laws prohibited such exploitation of tribal lands,
the mining operation had to be dismantled and removed. The last
official record of Nye City was a March 28, 1889 judgment deed
for $12,255. In 1890, the Crow Indians ceded the land, which
reopened the Stillwater basin to mining and claim staking.
In 1904, a group of prospectors banded together for a trial shipment
of ore. A six-ton shipment representing 500- to 1,000-lb units
from individual claims was sent to Omaha, Nebraska, for smelting.
Unfortunately, recovery was substantially less than the assays
indicated, and the value of the ore did not warrant production.
Interest in the patented claims vanished.
Little more was done on the claims until Bill Mouat, a nephew
of the president of the Minneapolis Mining and Smelting Company,
became interested sometime around World War I. He hired Otto
W. Miller, a Columbus, Montana, resident with some mining experience,
to redeem the claims. This started a new episode of development.
The Mouat property was brought to the attention of the Anaconda
Minerals Company in the early 1920s. In a 1925 report by Vincent
D. Perry, later president of the Anaconda Minerals Company, preliminary
sampling results included the first geologic maps of the property.
On the basis of the assay results, further work was recommended.
In 1937, 11 holes were drilled totaling 6,432 feet and adits
in the Verdigris Creek area were assayed. The results showed
lower grades than indicated by Perry’s sampling and determined
that the massive ore stores had only limited continuity. In 1940
and 1941, the U.S. Bureau of Mines conducted exploration with
5,981 feet of drilling in eight holes, then sampling and metallurgic
testing of the results. This provided data for the considerable
mapping work was conducted throughout the 1940s, which was eventually
published in 1954 as a geologic outcrop map of the Mountain View
area. This plane-tabled map, at a scale of 1:1,200, covered the
Verdigris Creek-Mouet nickel mine area and served as the fundamental
source of information for this area for many years.
In 1966, the Anaconda Minerals Company began new evaluation reconnaissance
of the low-grade, high-tonnage, copper-nickel resource in the
lower margin of the Stillwater complex. Full scale project work
began in 1967, including drilling in September.
The project focused on areas of known mineralization, i.e., Initial
Creek, Mountain View, Nye Basin, and Benbow. Geochemical analysis
for copper and nickel and a number of other techniques were used
to define anomalies and drilling targets. Anomalies were most
favorable in Mountain View, Nye Basin and Benbow areas. From
1967 to 1970, a total of 92, 041 feet of core from 95 holes were
drilled in the Mouet Ni-Cu prospect in the Mountain View area,
9,626 feet from 15 holes in the Nye Basin and 5,564 feet from
9 holes in the Benbow area. Two adits were collared and driven
during this period: the Mouet tunnel was begun in September 1970,
and advanced 1,547 feet before work was stopped in July 1971;
the Nye Basin adit was begun in October 1970, but only advanced
206 feet before stopping in January 1971.
Geochemical and geophysical surveys also suggested that significant
anomalies existed in the Cathedral Creek-Bluebird Ridge area
west of Initial Creek, in the Crescent Creek area and in the
Gish Mine area. By 1970, four drill holes with a combined footage
of 1,693 feet had been drilled in the Crescent Creek area.
Although this work indicated a moderate to large reserve containing
0.25 weight percent Cu and 0.25 weight percent Ni in the east
third of complex, a combination of findings and events brought
the project to a near standstill: Metallurgic problems with the
ore were found; environmental concern over the area increased;
in Chile, the newly elected Allende government expropriated Anaconda’s
holdings there. As a result, work on the Stillwater complex was
withdrawn to assessment work and very limited drilling.
Finally, in 1977, Anaconda initiated a re-evaluation of their
properties. Geological mapping, compilation, evaluation and metallurgic
testing were resumed. Additional holes were drilled and geophysical
surveys were used to delineate and define anomalies. A helicopter-borne
precision proton-magnetometer survey was completed over the entire
Stillwater Complex in June, 1978.
Other companies were exploring the area for copper-nickel in
the 1960s and 1970s as well. Under the authority of the Freeport
Exploration Company, in 1965, a search for mineralizations of
copper-nickel sulphide of economic concentrations, This geophysical
survey delineated seven conductive zones, three of which coincided
with known copper-nickel occurrences within the Basal series
and a fourth with a major fault structure and post mineral diabase
dike. Three geophysical anomalies were singled out for further
study because they showed a potential association with as-yet-unrecognized
copper-nickel mineralization. After further investigation, all
three were secured with with unpatented lode claims in 1966.
After that discovery, prospectors further explored the lower
part of the complex, among them William M. “Bill” Mouat
and scientists from the Anaconda Minerals Company, Amax Exploration,
Amoco Minerals Company, Cyprus Mines Corporation, Lindgren Exploration
Company, Princeton University, University of California at Berkeley,
the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Bureau of Mines. Little
of this early activity was recorded, but sulfide
occurrences at Benbow, Mountain View, Crescent Creek, Placer
Basin and the Boulder River were well known.
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