The picturesque Montana town of Libby is located in the Kootenai River Valley, close to the base of the Cabinet Mountain Range in northwest Montana’s Lincoln County.
This is the kind of region where you can encounter authentic mountain experiences lined with the kind of breath-taking scenery Montana is renowned for.
On top of that are the plentiful opportunities for outdoor recreation along with attractions in or close to the town like Libby Dam, Ross Creek Cedar Grove, the Kootenai River, and Kootenai Falls, which all make Libby a popular place in Montana to live in and to visit.
The first non-native settlers in the area were fur traders and trappers from British fur companies who appeared in the area as early as 1809 looking for supplies.
None of their former trading posts along the Kootenai River stand today as evidence, and although they most certainly navigated through the area, neither the Kootenai Indians nor any other tribe made Libby a permanent home for any length of time.
The tribes tended to use the area for hunting and spiritual purposes, and even today the Kootenai Falls on the Kootenai River is considered sacred by the local Indigenous people whose tribal members still commune with spiritual forces there.
The Libby area was prominent when silver and lead mines were first established, and activity escalated in 1867 when successful strikes hit Libby Creek-although the ‘boom’ lasted no more than a couple of years and the region was again virtually deserted not long after.
Vermiculite was later discovered in Libby and a mine was subsequently opened by a local rancher named Ed Alley in 1919.
This was done after he had learned that it had good insulating qualities, and it soon became widely used in insulation and plastering work. In 1963 the mine was bought by the W.R. Grace Company, which operated it from 1963.
Although it was closed in 1990, the vermiculite mine in Libby was a huge local employer during the town’s key years of development, as did logging and timber.
Some of the earliest ranches were in the area towards the end of the 19th century, starting out near the mouth of Libby Creek. Many incoming settlers were employed at the Libby Placers and were involved in the construction of homes and mills along Libby and Flower Creek.
Libby Creek was first reportedly given its name for the daughter of a prospector in the 1860s, and the developing town of Libby was subsequently named after the creek.
The community quickly expanded in the early 1900s, by which time there was a school, a church, and the first homes to be built in the town.
