Parrot Mine, Butte Mining District (Summit Valley Mining District), Silver Bow County, Montana, USAi

Regional Level Types
Parrot Mine	Mine
Butte Mining District (Summit Valley Mining District)	Mining District
Silver Bow County	County
Montana	State
USA	Country

The Parrot lode (Mine) was one of the first hard-rock veins discovered on the Butte Hill, by Dennis Leary and H.H. Porter in October 1864. The vein and its extensions ran about east-west, from what is now the eastern edge of the Berkeley Pit to a point near today’s Jackson and Copper Streets, a total length of nearly two miles. The Gagnon and Original Mines and others exploited parts of the Parrot Lode.

The Parrot was called the source of “the best copper ore in the camp,” consisting of “black oxide of copper often thickly bespangled with native silver.” Multiple miners and partnerships worked the length of the vein, but the focus was on the segment south of Dublin Gulch east of Wyoming Street.

Even in the depression of 1869-1874, when Butte’s population fell to 100 or 200, work continued on the Parrot Lode. At that time, Butte was called “an apple of gold in a picture of silver with none to pluck its riches,” but James Gilchrist had a shaft on the Parrot down to 65 feet in November 1872 reaching 105 feet by the next year, while William Park and Joseph Ramsdell were selling ore to the First National Bank in Helena, which shipped it to Baltimore, Maryland, for smelting.

With Butte’s rejuvenation in 1875, the Parrot saw at least five separate operators working the vein, including Downs, Talbot, and Leary, who were producing from a 90-foot shaft with two drifts that yielded ore assaying 38% copper and $30 in silver per ton. For comparison, good ore in the Berkeley Pit ran about 3% copper, and Montana Resources produces copper from ore grading about 0.3% copper.

(Description and Parrot history provided by Richard Gibson)

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