Silver Bow County Montana Gold Production
The Highland district is in southern Silver Bow County about 15 miles south of Butte, 2 or 3 miles east of the Continental Divide in the Highland Mountains. It contains both placer and lode gold deposits. Placer deposits were discovered along the upper course of Fish Creek in 1866. Lodes also were located in the early years. The town of Highland, established near the head of Fish Creek, was larger than Butte in 1869; however, the richest placer deposits were soon exhausted, and the town was virtually abandoned by 1876 (Winchell, 1914a, p. 87). The lode mines were reactivated in about 1931 and operated through 1944; their peak output was 9,945 ounces in 1939. Activity declined sharply after 1941, and there was only small sporadic production through 1959. Total gold production of the district through 1959 must have been in excess of 50,000 ounces.
The bedrock of the Highland district consists of slate and quartzite of the Belt Series of Precambrian age and contact-metamorphosed limestone, sandstone, and shale of Paleozoic age along the southeast border of the Boulder batholith (Winchell, 1914a, p. 87-89; Weed, 1912, pi. 1).
The ore deposits include veins, chimneys, and irregular contact deposits in marbleized Paleozoic limestone and irregular veins in the quartz monzonite near the contact (Winchell, 1914a, p. 89-90). The sulfide ore consists of chalcopyrite, bornite, galena, pyrite, pyrrhotite, arsenopyrite, tetradymite, argentite, and pyrargyrite. Much of the ore was oxidized and contained native gold and silver and oxidized copper and iron minerals.