The Little Rocky Mountains rise from the plains of north-central Montana like an island in a sea of grass, a compact range of granite peaks surrounded by the wheat fields and cattle ranges of Phillips County. The mountains are small by Montana standards, covering only about forty square miles, but they contain gold deposits that attracted miners from across the West and sustained a mining economy for more than half a century. The camp of Zortman was one of the two principal communities that the Little Rockies gold rush produced, and its history is inseparable from the history of the mountains that gave it life.

Gold prospecting in the Little Rockies began as early as the late 1860s, when the first prospectors worked through the range looking for the placer deposits that had been found in similar geological formations elsewhere in Montana. The early work was inconclusive, and the range did not attract sustained development until approximately 1890, when Powell "Pike" Landusky and his partner Bob Ormond struck a rich vein that demonstrated the economic potential of the district. The discovery set off the development of the Little Rockies mining district, and the two camps of Zortman and Landusky grew up on opposite sides of the range to serve the miners who flooded in.

The camp of Zortman took its name from Oliver "Pete" Zortman, who recognized early that the lower-grade ores in the district could be processed profitably if the right milling technology were applied. Zortman and a partner constructed a mill near the camp that allowed the processing of ore grades that would otherwise have been uneconomical, and the mill's existence made it possible to work a much larger portion of the district's ore body than the high-grade operations alone would have justified. The decision to invest in milling infrastructure was a significant one, and it shaped the character of the Zortman district for the decades that followed.

The Ruby Gulch Mine, which began serious production in 1904, was the district's most productive operation. At its peak, the Ruby Gulch produced as much as $14,000 in gold per day, a figure that placed it among the more productive gold operations in Montana. The mill that processed the Ruby Gulch ore grew into the second largest cyanide mill in the world during its period of operation, a remarkable achievement for a remote district in the Montana plains. The cyanide process, which allowed the extraction of gold from low-grade ores that earlier technology could not have processed economically, was the key to the district's sustained production.

A destructive fire swept through Zortman in 1912, destroying much of the camp's commercial district. The community rebuilt, and the Ruby Gulch continued to produce through the First World War, when the mine shut down for a period before reopening in the early 1930s. The Little Ben Mining Company, formed to reopen the Ruby Gulch mines, operated through the 1930s and into the 1940s, when the Second World War brought another shutdown. The combined production of the Zortman, Landusky, and Beaver Creek mines over the district's active period is estimated at $125 million in gold, a figure that represents one of the more significant gold mining achievements in Montana history.

A second wildfire in 1936 swept through the Little Rockies and destroyed the majority of the mining operations, a blow from which the district never fully recovered. The combination of the fire damage, the wartime shutdown, and the postwar decline in gold mining activity left Zortman in the condition of a near ghost town, with a small resident population maintaining a presence in the community but the mining economy that had sustained it largely gone.

The Zortman-Landusky mines were among the first major heap leach gold mines in the United States, and the technology that made them pioneers in modern gold processing also created the environmental problems that have defined the district's legacy in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The heap leach process involves stacking crushed ore on lined pads and applying a cyanide solution that dissolves the gold, which is then collected and processed. The process is efficient and allows the extraction of gold from ore grades that earlier technology could not have processed economically, but it generates large volumes of contaminated water and waste rock that require careful management.

The contamination of groundwater and surface water in the Little Rockies district became a significant environmental and legal issue in the 1990s and 2000s, when the mining companies operating the Zortman-Landusky mines were required to address the contamination they had caused. The cleanup process has been long and expensive, and the environmental history of the district is as significant as its production history. The Little Rocky Mountains, which the Assiniboine and Gros Ventre peoples of the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation regard as a sacred landscape, have been affected by the mining activity in ways that extend beyond the economic and physical damage to include the cultural and spiritual dimensions of the relationship between the indigenous peoples and their homeland.

What Remains Today

Zortman retains a small resident population of approximately 60 people, giving it the character of a near ghost town rather than a completely abandoned site. The community's historic log cabins and miners' shacks lean between more modern buildings and trailers, creating the mixed architectural character that characterizes communities that have declined but not disappeared. A white clapboard church sits on a grassy mountainside above the town, elegant in its simple design and visible from the valley below.

The Little Rocky Mountains that surround Zortman provide a dramatic backdrop for the community and offer opportunities for hiking and backcountry travel. The Bureau of Land Management manages much of the land in the Little Rockies, and the area is accessible via the roads that connect Zortman to the highway system of Phillips County.

Visiting

Zortman is located in Phillips County, accessible via a paved road from US Highway 191 south of Malta. Malta, the Phillips County seat, is approximately 40 miles north of Zortman on US Highway 191 and provides visitor services. The Phillips County Museum in Malta has exhibits on the history of the Little Rockies mining district, including the Cowboys and Outlaws exhibit that covers the Kid Curry and Pike Landusky story.

Havre is approximately 100 miles west of Malta on US Highway 2 and provides a full range of visitor services for those exploring the Hi-Line country.