Placer and Lode 



"They Fought It When It Came"— 

 New Rules and Exemptions 



Although the 1872 Mining Law is still in ef- 

 fect, both state and federal anti-pollution standards 

 have toughened considerably in the past 20 years, 

 and control at least the large mines on private as 

 well as public land. 



The Montana Metal Mine Reclamation Act of 

 1971 requires an exploration license and, for big 

 mines, an operating permit that may be reviewed 

 by the public and must include a plan for cleaning 

 up the site. The miner must post a bond to ensure 

 "reclamation" of the site. The state also performs 

 an Environmental Assessment and, if necessary, a 

 more detailed Environmental Impact Statement. 



In 1974, the Forest Service adopted regula- 

 tions similar to the state's. "Miners went a hundred 

 years with no regulation and they really fought it 

 when it came," says Ron Wachsmuth, minerals ad- 

 ministrator for the Missoula Ranger District of the 

 Lolo National Forest. 



But conservationist critics say neither the 

 Forest Service nor the state are capable of enforc- 

 ing regulations on the 55,000 mining claims in Mon- 

 tana. Bonds posted by miners are often grossly in- 

 adequate to the cleanup jobs required, say critics. 

 Sometimes the laws and regulations themselves 

 cause problems, says Bruce Farling of the conser- 

 vationist Clark Fork Coalition. For example, to keep 

 a claim on public land under the General Mining 

 Law, a prospector must spend $100 a year develop- 

 ing the site, and that may prompt needless activity. 

 "They go out with a bulldozer and knock down 

 several trees just to maintain the claim," says Farl- 

 ing. "There are also people out there for recrea- 

 tional purposes," he adds. "They get a claim and 

 they put up a cabin and use it for hunting."^ 



While Forest Service regulations cover all 

 mines, the state exempts those smaller than five 

 acres (or that remove fewer than 36,500 tons of 

 earth). Today, some 25 mines are operating on the 

 Rock Creek drainage, most under the state's small 

 miner's exemption.' Keeping track of them, much 

 less enforcing regulations, is difficult, to say the 

 least. Prospectors' methods and manners are still 

 the stuff of folk philosophy and legend. 



Rock Creek resident Adam Michnevich tells 

 stories of accosting miners bulldozing at night who 

 disappear by the time a Forest Service ranger arrives 

 to investigate. "Miners are very secretive by nature," 

 he says. Don Lawson, a staff field agent for the Mon- 



tana Bureau of Mines until his retirement in 1985, 

 has a slightly different perspective; he says a 

 "sleazy " few miners tarnish the reputation of the 

 rest. "Gold mining is scary," observes Jay Cornish, 

 a senior environmental biologist with MSE, Inc., a 

 Butte mining consulting firm. "It gets in your blood, 

 like gambling, and you always have to blast one 

 more round. You don't quit until you're forced to 

 quit." 



Whatever the nature of the miners. Rock 

 Creek country has yielded a small fortune in sap- 

 phires, lead and zinc in the past hundred years. But 

 it was gold — and rumor of gold — that generated the 

 greatest excitement. And it was gold that begat on 

 the banks of Rock Creek western Montana's biggest 

 boondoggle ever 



"A Gentleman So Prominent"— Babcock, 

 Quigley, and the Early Prospectors 



The story of Quigley, a place that rose to 

 boomtown and fell to ghost town in the space of 

 a year, begins with a Philipsburg mining promoter 

 named George H. Babcock. Babcock was a 

 "gentleman so prominent in mining circles," wrote 

 The Montana Silverite newspaper in 1896, that the 

 "mere mention of his name" was "sufficient 

 guarantee that the vast interests" of the company 

 he represented would be "well looked after. "'» That 

 reputation had helped Babcock in 1895 interest a 

 Wilmington, Delaware, grocery wholesaler named 

 Winfield S. Quigley in a gold mine at the top of 

 Brewster Creek, a Rock Creek tributary. Quigley 

 sent an investigator from the Colorado School of 

 Mines, who reported that this was the "largest body 

 of gold ore" he had ever inspected." 



Convinced, Quigley raised more than a 

 million dollars from eastern and English investors.'^ 

 That was nearly enough to finish a gigantic mill and 

 power plants as well as an electric railroad laid 

 across some of the steepest and roughest country 

 imaginable. 



By the summer of 1896, some 2,000 workers 

 from Missoula and Philipsburg had flocked to the 

 tent city of Quigley at the confluence of Brewster 

 and Rock Creeks.'^ At a time when industrial wages 

 averaged under $2.50 a day, union wages in Quigley 

 amounted to as much as $6.50 an hour for a 

 teamster with horses.''' The generous payroll at- 

 tracted shops and barbershops, saloons and 

 restaurants, a blacksmith and a tin smith, three 



