It’s a place steeped in beauty and history.
This past weekend, the Museum of the Beartooths offered folks a chance to see some of the rarely accessible mine sites in Stillwater County.
See the sights from tour below:
It’s the third year that museum has held the historic mine tour.
“It’s just amazing to have people see this,” says Penny Redli, executive director of the museum.
Mining has long played an integral role in this part of Montana, with chromium first discovered back in the 1880s.
“The mining has been a huge important piece of Stillwater County even prior to Stillwater County becoming a county in 1913,” says Redli.
Attendees loaded up on dozens of all-terrain vehicles for the tour, which provided lessons on the area's mining history and geology along with stunning views.
“It is just a cool adventure getting off the beaten track and seeing the sites this way—it’s real interesting and very educational too,” said Rachel Stockdale, who was visiting Montana from Ireland.
One of the first stops on the tour was to the site of the old Benbow Mine, a chromium mine that played an important part in World War II after the Germans disrupted shipping channels.
”They needed it for the war effort and so they had to come up with a domestic source, and of course, here at the Stillwater complex and south of Red Lodge is a chrome source and that was mined for two years,” says Ennis Geraghty, a former mine geologist, who helped lead the tour.
The mine closed abruptly closed after the shipping channel reopened.
The Benbow site is accessible for the public to explore, but soon the tour would move onto private mine land—climbing high above the current Stillwater Sibanye mine where attendees were briefed on operations.
From there it was back to the past and one of the highlights of the tour—a visit to the historic Mouat Mine and Mouat Lake Camp—which was almost like a small town of its own for miners and their families.
Rosie Reynolds remembers it well. She lived in the camp during grade school with her family.
“The miners worked hard to make a good life for families up here,” she says.
The houses that once filled the camp are long gone, but many of the old buildings still stand, including the school, rec center, store, and boarding houses that many of the miners lived in.
“The Lake Camp is just such a beautiful pristine ghost town—walking the areas where we used to play and used to go to school is just a delight,” says Reynolds.
The mine ceased operation in 1961, and the buildings have stood silence since— a monument to Montana’s rich mining history.
“It is so beautiful. It is truly a Montana treasure,” she says.
Click here for more information on the Museum of the Beartooths.
