Located just a few blocks from Interstate 90 in Superior, Montana, you’ll find the Mineral County Museum. Step inside, and you’ll realize that you’ve found a treasure. During most visits to the museum—housed in the former Mineral Community Hospital building that it shares with a local agricultural extension agent and a community library—chances are you’ll be greeted by a local history expert willing to share tales as colorful as the precious metals that gave the county its name.

The museum is small, but the collection is impressive. Exhibits take you on a tour covering thousands of years of Mineral County history—Native American artifacts, a scale model of the historic Gildersleeve Mine, mining and logging tools, an exhibit on Chinese miners, a section devoted to wildland fire and the lookout towers standing guard over the forest, and even a player piano help take you back to bygone eras.

For genealogists and historians—amateur and professional alike—the adjacent research room holds a sizable collection of historic newspapers, clipping files, and subject collections that have been painstakingly assembled and allow for an in-depth look into the county’s history. You learn that the county was formed in 1914 after breaking off from adjacent Missoula County and that the towns of St. Regis and Superior dueled for the coveted position as county seat. From Indian trails to an Interstate, there were booms and busts, natural disasters and festive celebrations, all of which took place beneath the stunning landscape of the Bitterroot Divide and never far from the fast-flowing waters of the Clark Fork and St. Regis Rivers. As historian Margie Hahn explained, “In both a literal and metaphorical sense, this wedge of land in western-most Montana known as Mineral County boasts a rich and proud history as full and worthy of high regard as any part of this legacy we know as Montana.”

Credits and Sources:

Mineral County Historical Society. Mineral County History. Superior, MT: Mineral County Historical Society, 2004.

Historic photographs of “Superior 1894,” “Pack Train from Lothrop to Lolo Hot Springs,” and “Superior’s First Band” courtesy of Mineral County Historical Museum, Superior, MT.

Contemporary photograph of Mineral County Historical Museum courtesy of Historical Research Associates, Inc.