Copper Mining Devastated Montana. Now Industry Comeback Is On Horizon.

"The Treasure State looks poised to permit its first new copper mine in decades. Sandfire says it will raise the environmental bar — a promise Montanans have heard before."

"WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, Montana ― In the late 1800s, a homesteader named Johnny Lee settled in a remote gulch along Sheep Creek, a tributary of the Smith River that zigzags west through the rolling Little Belt Mountains of central Montana. For two decades, Lee toiled on a nearby hillside where a small amount of copper had been found, hoping to uncover a large underground deposit of the valuable ore.

Lee didn’t realize he was working along a fault; the copper there had been carried away from a rich vein a third of a mile to the east. "

Chris D’Angelo reports for HuffPost July 5, 2019.

Source: HuffPost, 07/05/2019