Silver Creek to London: 

The Rise and Long Decline of Montana’s Drum Lummon Mine

Origins of a Mining District

The terrain northwest of Helena offers little to suggest exceptional mineral wealth at first glance. The mountains there are heavily timbered, the drainages narrow, and the elevations modest by Rocky Mountain standards. Yet beneath the surface of the hills above Silver Creek, in what would become Lewis and Clark County, lay one of the richest concentrations of gold and silver ore ever extracted in the American West. The mine that eventually drew British capital, triggered decades of federal litigation, and transformed the fortunes of a single Irish immigrant into a Helena landmark had its origins in the placer workings of the early 1860s.

Placer gold and silver had been worked along Silver Creek since that decade, part of the broader mineral activity stretching from Rimini north to Marysville that accompanied Montana’s first sustained mining rush (Montana Historical Society Library and Archives, Mines and Mining in Montana Photograph Collection). Placer operations recovered loose particles and small nuggets deposited by stream action, a relatively simple undertaking that required little capital and left the underlying lode deposits untouched. It was the presence of quartz adhering to panned gold that eventually suggested to at least one prospector that a primary source — a subsurface vein — remained unlocated.

Thomas Cruse and the Discovery

Thomas Cruse was born in County Cavan, Ireland, in either 1834 or 1836, depending on the source consulted, in the parish of Drum Lummon. He immigrated to the United States in 1856, spent several years in New York, and traveled to California by steamer in 1863. He then prospected across California, Nevada, Idaho, and Montana without significant success before arriving in Helena in 1867 (Thomas Cruse Papers, 1841–1956, Montana Historical Society Library and Archives, Archives West, Orbis Cascade Alliance). In 1868, Cruse settled near Silver City — in the area that would become the Marysville district — and began working a placer claim made available by an acquaintance named William Brown. While panning, Cruse repeatedly found quartz mixed with his recovered gold. He interpreted this as evidence of a nearby lode and set about locating it.

Progress was slow. Cruse filed an initial claim in the mid-1870s, and various sources indicate he formally staked the Drumlummon claim in either 1875 or 1876. The Montana Historical Society’s portal for the Drumlummon Mine dates the discovery of rich, deep veins of silver and gold to 1876, which is the date most consistently supported across primary-linked sources (“Drumlummon Mine,” Montana History Portal, mtmemory.org). After staking the claim, Cruse spent the next four years driving a tunnel into the hillside. A five-stamp mill — built by William and Charles Mayger in 1880 — began processing Drumlummon ore within a few years of the discovery, and early production confirmed that Cruse had located a significant deposit (Montana Mining Company, Limited, Records, 1882–1934, Archives West, Orbis Cascade Alliance). A disagreement over royalty payments led Cruse to buy out the Maygers’ interest in the mill, consolidating control of both the mine and its processing infrastructure in his own hands.

Cruse named the mine after his home parish in Ireland. The name itself derives, in the scholarly assessment of Rick Newby of the Drumlummon Institute, from Old Irish words signifying “the ridge of the bare tree,” a phrase that could serve equally as a description of the timbered slopes above Silver Creek (Newby, qtd. in “Mining Montana Culture and History,” Missoulian, 14 Oct. 2016). Though the settlement of Marysville was historically established in 1870, it was named after its first female resident, Mary Ralston, and truly boomed following Cruse's lode discovery (Marysville Pioneers Association Historical Marker, erected 1970, Marysville, Lewis and Clark County, Montana).

The British Sale and the Montana Company

Word of the Drumlummon’s productivity reached financial circles well beyond Montana Territory. On November 11, 1882, the Joint Stock Association, a London-based syndicate, agreed to purchase the mine from Cruse. The transaction was completed the following year, at which point the syndicate reorganized as the Montana Mining Company, Limited, to operate the property (Montana Mining Company, Limited, Records, 1882–1934, Archives West). The purchase price paid to Cruse was approximately $1.5 to $1.63 million, with some sources indicating Cruse retained a partial ownership stake in the mine. One detailed account holds that the company paid $1.63 million and allowed Cruse to retain a one-sixth interest (Montana Mining Company Records, 1882–1934, Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library, University of Montana). Another source places the figure at $1.5 million in cash plus retained shares, with Cruse’s total earnings from the transaction eventually reaching close to $6 million after profit distributions (Montana Cowboy Fame Hall of Honor, montanacowboyfame.org). The discrepancies among sources regarding the precise sale terms reflect differences in how later researchers tallied the various components of the agreement; the base cash payment of approximately $1.5 million is consistently documented.

The British period began with organizational instability. The Montana Company installed George Attwood as general manager, but Attwood and the company’s initial directors were forced to resign in 1884 due to stockholder dissatisfaction, particularly over what investors saw as an imbalance between capital expenditures on expanded milling capacity and actual production revenues. Henry Bratnober and R.T. Bayliss then took over management. Their tenure proved more productive: under Bayliss and Bratnober, and with the arrival of more competent on-site management, the mine entered its most profitable phase. During the late 1880s, dividends averaged 22.5 percent, and nearly 500,000 tons of ore were removed yielding approximately $9.2 million in that period alone (Montana Mining Company, Limited, Records, Archives West).

The company invested significantly in physical infrastructure. The Montana Company constructed multiple large stamp mills on site — a fifty-stamp mill was operational by the mid-1880s — along with a cyanide processing plant completed in 1896 (Montana History Portal, “Drumlummon Mine,” mtmemory.org, accessed 4 June 2026). The Northern Pacific Railroad extended a trestle to the site, linking the Marysville operations to broader markets and reducing the costs of ore transport, as documented in the Haynes Foundation Photograph Collection at the Montana Historical Society. This access contributed to Marysville’s rapid expansion. At its peak, the town reportedly housed approximately 4,000 residents and supported some 60 businesses, including hotels, churches, a bank, drug stores, a dry-goods establishment, newspapers, and three dozen or more saloons (Marysville Pioneers Association Historical Marker, 1970).

Apex Litigation and Corporate Decline

The prosperity of the late 1880s did not persist. By the end of that decade, ore grades at the Drumlummon were declining, and the company became entangled in a series of boundary disputes with adjacent mining claimants. The most consequential of these involved the St. Louis Mining and Milling Company. In 1889, a feud erupted over competing claims to a vein being worked by both operations. The dispute centered on the application of the federal extralateral, or “apex,” rights doctrine: under the mining laws of 1872, the locator of a vein whose top, or apex, lay within a surface claim’s boundaries was entitled to follow that vein along its dip outside those boundaries. The St. Louis company filed suit in the federal circuit court for the district of Montana on September 16, 1893, seeking $200,000 in damages for the Montana company’s extraction of ore it claimed belonged to its vein (Montana Mining Co. v. St. Louis Mining & Milling Co., 204 U.S. 204, 1907, Legal Information Institute, Cornell University Law School).

The litigation was protracted, technically complex, and financially devastating. Multiple related cases wound through federal courts over roughly two decades, with the Supreme Court of the United States addressing aspects of the dispute in several decisions. The legal battle finally culminated in a definitive 1910 Supreme Court ruling (Montana Mining Co. v. St. Louis Mining & Milling Co., 220 U.S. 611) that permanently crippled the Montana Mining Company. The costs of the legal proceedings — which ultimately reached nearly $400,000 — combined with the adverse rulings and the continuing decline in ore values to render the firm's position untenable. By 1911, the company was forced to sell the Drumlummon at a sheriff’s sale, bringing the British ownership period to a close (Montana Mining Company, Limited, Records, 1882–1934, Archives West).

Subsequent Ownership and Eventual Closure

Following the 1911 sheriff’s sale, the Drumlummon passed through a succession of operators, each attempting to extract commercial value from the depleted but not exhausted deposit. The mine was briefly reopened in 1924 and continued intermittent operation through portions of the 1930s, a period when falling commodity prices drove operators toward cost reduction through mechanization rather than new capital development (Western Mining History, “Marysville Montana,” westernmininghistory.com, accessed 4 June 2026). The mines and mills of the Marysville district largely closed in 1933, ending what had been one of the most sustained periods of precious metal production in Montana’s history (Montana Mining Company, Limited, Records, Archives West).

The large stamp mill that had processed ore from the Drumlummon for decades burned in 1971, removing what had been one of the most visible remnants of the mine’s industrial infrastructure (Montana History Portal, “Drumlummon Mine,” accessed 4 June 2026). As of the early 2000s, the site and the surrounding Marysville district retained a number of historic structures, and the town’s small permanent population — estimated at roughly 80 residents by Western Mining History — has maintained a physical continuity with the mining era. Reports of exploration for new gold deposits emerged in 2010, though no commercial reopening has followed.

Thomas Cruse and His Legacy

Thomas Cruse died on December 20, 1914, missing the functional completion of the grand cathedral his wealth helped build by mere days, as it opened for its first public Mass on Christmas Day of that year. The structure itself was not fully finished until 1924. Cruse contributed approximately one-third of the construction cost of the Cathedral of St. Helena — a neo-Gothic structure whose cornerstone was laid on October 4, 1908 — making the building perhaps the most enduring physical monument to the wealth extracted from the Drumlummon Mine (Grokipedia, “Cathedral of Saint Helena,” citing Helena Cathedral construction records, accessed 4 June 2026). Fittingly, the first service held in the new church was Cruse’s own funeral. He had also purchased and underwritten the bonds that funded Montana’s State Capitol building, established the Thomas Cruse Savings Bank in Helena in 1887, and expanded into cattle ranching and oil speculation before his death (Thomas Cruse Papers, Archives West).

Cruse never learned to read or write, according to multiple sources. He came to Marysville without financial resources, borrowed money to develop his claim, and endured years of mockery from fellow prospectors who regarded him as a habitual taker of grubstakes who never produced returns. The social transformation that followed the Drumlummon sale reflects both the rapid upward mobility that characterized the territorial mining economy and its limits. This transformation included Cruse’s relocation to Helena, his bank and mansion, and his March 1886 marriage to Margaret "Maggie" McGinniss, whose sister Ellen was married to Montana Senator Thomas H. Carter—making Cruse and the influential senator brothers-in-law. Sadly, Maggie passed away in December 1886, just ten days after giving birth to their daughter. Ultimately, the Drumlummon’s riches translated into civic architecture and institutional philanthropy; they did not persist as a family mining enterprise.

Significance in Montana Mining History

The Drumlummon Mine’s historical importance rests on several foundations. As a deposit, it was among the most productive in the Rocky Mountain West, yielding figures variously estimated between $15 million and $30 million or more in total bullion, depending on the period and methodology used by the reporting source. The Marysville district as a whole was credited with producing more than 1.3 million ounces of gold, placing it alongside Butte, Helena, and Virginia City as one of only four Montana districts to exceed that threshold (Western Mining History, “Principal Gold Districts of Montana”). As a commercial enterprise, the sale of the Drumlummon to British investors in 1882 exemplified the pattern by which territorial mining discoveries were monetized through access to transatlantic capital markets — a process that transferred ownership and profits offshore while concentrating workers and environmental costs locally.

The apex litigation that consumed the Montana Company’s final decades also contributed to the development of federal mining jurisprudence. The cases arising from the Drumlummon vein disputes became part of the body of law interpreting the extralateral rights provisions of the 1872 Mining Law, provisions that remained in place and continued to generate litigation in western mining districts throughout the twentieth century. For Montana, the Drumlummon thus figures not only as a story of individual fortune and industrial enterprise but as an early, consequential encounter between the legal frameworks of extractive capitalism and the geological realities that those frameworks only imperfectly addressed.

Works Cited

Darlington, John. “The Drum Lummon Gold and Silver Mine, Montana.” 1882. Thomas Cruse Papers, 1841–1956, Montana Historical Society Library and Archives. Montana History Portal, https://www.mtmemory.org/nodes/view/90369. Accessed 4 June 2026.

“Drumlummon Mine.” Montana History Portal, Montana Historical Society Library and Archives, https://www.mtmemory.org/nodes/view/128860. Accessed 4 June 2026.

Jackson, W. Turrentine. “The Irish Fox and the British Lion: The Story of Tommy Cruse, the Drum Lummon, and the Montana Company, Limited (British).” Montana: The Magazine of Western History, vol. 9, no. 2, Spring 1959, pp. 28–42.

Mines and Mining in Montana Photograph Collection. Montana Historical Society Library and Archives. Archives West, Orbis Cascade Alliance, https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:80444/xv647063. Accessed 4 June 2026.

Montana Mining Company, Limited. Records, 1882–1934. Archives West, Orbis Cascade Alliance, https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv28731. Accessed 4 June 2026.

Montana Mining Co. v. St. Louis Mining and Milling Co. of Montana, 204 U.S. 204. Supreme Court of the United States, 1907. Legal Information Institute, Cornell University Law School, https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/204/204. Accessed 4 June 2026.

Montana Mining Co. v. St. Louis Mining & Milling Co., 220 U.S. 611. Supreme Court of the United States, 1910. Legal Information Institute, Cornell University Law School.

Marysville Pioneers Association. Historical Marker, Marysville, Lewis and Clark County, Montana. Erected 1970. Documented in Historic Marker Database, https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=154440. Accessed 4 June 2026.

Thomas Cruse Papers, 1841–1956. Montana Historical Society Library and Archives. Archives West, Orbis Cascade Alliance, https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:80444/xv29417. Accessed 4 June 2026.