“Between River and Rail”: 

A History of Troy, Montana

Tucked into the far northwestern corner of Montana near the Idaho border, Troy sits in a narrow cleft of the Kootenai River valley, surrounded by the Cabinet and Purcell mountains. At roughly 1,892 feet above sea level—remarkably low for the Big Sky State—Troy occupies the lowest elevation of any incorporated community in Montana. Its setting has always shaped its story: the thundering Kootenai Falls just downstream; thick forests rising on all sides; and, beginning in the 1890s, the iron road of the Great Northern Railway threading the gorge.

Long before Euro-American settlement, this was—and remains—K̓aqawakanmituk (Kootenai/Ktunaxa) country. The river and falls are central in Kootenai cosmology and lifeways; seasonal movements followed salmon, sturgeon, game, and plant harvests, and the people used the river corridor for travel and trade. Today, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes describe Kootenai history across western Montana and underscore the spiritual significance of Kootenai Falls as a place of power and teaching.

The first sustained non-Native incursions arrived via the ubiquitous vectors of the nineteenth-century Northwest: fur trade reconnoiters, mineral prospectors, and timber cruisers. Yet geography delayed dense settlement; steep slopes and the river canyon limited arable land and overland travel. In the late 1880s, however, prospectors pushed into the Kootenai and Yaak drainages, and the subsequent decision by James J. Hill’s Great Northern to drive its transcontinental line across Montana’s northern tier proved decisive. As the rails approached from the east in 1892, surveyors platted a townsite along the river and rail—at first “West Troy”—to serve a new freight and engine facility. From these twin magnets of minerals and railroading, Troy took shape as a rough-and-ready camp that quickly developed the institutions of a mountain town: hotels, beaneries, saloons, a one-room school, and a small commercial core.

The railroad’s presence stitched Troy into regional and national markets. On the west end of the Great Northern’s Flathead Division, the yards and shops here and in neighboring communities employed carmen, section hands, and hostlers; trains hauled out logs and sawn lumber, as well as ore from small but persistent claims in the Cabinets. The pattern mirrored northern Montana more broadly: when the railroad shifted operating priorities, towns rose or fell. Kalispell, for instance, briefly served as a division point between Cut Bank and Troy from 1892 to 1904—evidence of how Troy sat at the hinge of a larger operational geography, even as the local economy diversified around the woods.

Troy’s early decades mixed boom with fragility. Fire—ever a presence in these dense forests—tested the region repeatedly. The enormous 1910 “Big Burn” swept through millions of acres of northern Idaho and western Montana, ushering in new federal fire policies and a culture of seasonal vigilance that reshaped labor, logging, and land management throughout the Kootenai country. Even when flames stayed distant, smoke, closures, and the ever-present risk of conflagration were woven into community memory and the annual rhythm of work.

By the 1910s and 1920s, Troy matured. A 1912 county bridge vote produced the first Kootenai River crossings at Libby, Troy, and Rexford, replacing ferries and fords with steel confidence. The Roosevelt Highway (today’s U.S. 2) tied the Kootenai corridor to automobile travel, while the small civic landmarks of any Western town—jail, theater, garages, and improved storefronts—appeared in quick succession. The one‐room school gave way to larger facilities as families settled more permanently. Yet the town was not immune to busts: fires and economic shocks in the late 1920s pruned growth as the region adjusted to shifting markets and tighter credit.

Logging dominated mid-century life. Troy was, as one Montana historian has put it, a “gateway” settlement: a compact, blue-collar base for crews and contract truckers working the Kootenai National Forest, with cafés, bars, and garages built around seasonal peaks. Work was hard and the culture proud; the town’s small commercial spine reflected a forest economy where paychecks moved quickly through the till on Friday nights. 

The single most transformative public works project in the valley, however, arrived in the late 1960s with the damming of the river itself. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers broke ground on Libby Dam in 1966, closed the gates in 1972, and brought commercial power online in 1975. The dam created 90-mile-long Lake Koocanusa and introduced a new hydrologic regime—flood control, peaking power, and temperature changes—that rippled through fisheries and riparian habitats downstream of the dam, including the reach below Troy. The Corps and state biologists have spent decades monitoring sturgeon and bull trout, managing flows, and balancing ecological goals with flood protection and energy.

At the same time, the valley’s wild heart retained—and deepened—its pull. Kootenai Falls, among the largest free-flowing cascades in the Pacific Northwest, became both a symbol of the region and a practical amenity: day-use recreation in summer, a swinging suspension bridge that offers dramatic overlooks of the river’s turquoise chutes, and a trail linking overlooks along a half-mile of stair-stepped falls. Interpretive materials at the site emphasize Kootenai spiritual connections and ask visitors to tread respectfully. The falls, just a few miles east of town, have become one of Troy’s calling cards, fueling seasonal visitation that complements the traditional extractive base.

Mining never fully disappeared from Troy’s economy. The best-known late-twentieth-century venture was the Troy Mine, an underground copper-silver operation that opened in the early 1980s, endured cycles of closure and reopening, and ultimately shut down in the mid-2010s amid seismic issues and price declines. When Hecla Mining acquired Revett Minerals in 2015, the company moved the property from “care and maintenance” to closure and reclamation—an inflection point that rippled through local payrolls and contracting. In the years since, cleanup and revegetation have proceeded under state and federal oversight, adding “mine reclamation” to the vocabulary of local work.

The Kootenai valley’s other environmental story—one that cast a long, somber shadow—centered on nearby Libby’s asbestos-contaminated vermiculite. In June 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency issued the first Public Health Emergency in its history for the Libby asbestos site, an action that recognized both the severity of exposure and the need for federal health-care assistance. Although Libby was the epicenter, the emergency and subsequent medical support explicitly encompassed the wider community, including Troy residents. A decade and a half on, the Superfund cleanup has markedly reduced risk, even as monitoring and health services continue. 

Today’s Troy is small—fewer than a thousand people by either the 2020 Census or the latest survey estimates—but resilient. Logging persists in a leaner, more regulated form; outdoor recreation and heritage tourism have grown; and the river remains the throughline, an emblem and a resource. If the town’s first century was defined by rail and timber, its second has been defined by water: by the dam that tamed it, the falls that still thunder over ancient shelves, and the complex environmental legacies that demanded public action. Through each turn, Troy’s history reads like the Kootenai itself—narrowed by rock, powerful in flood, and always moving west. 

Notes and Sources

Visit Montana, “Troy,” accessed August 30, 2025. US Army Corps of Engineers

U.S. Forest Service, Kootenai National Forest: Kootenai Falls & Swinging Bridge, accessed August 30, 2025. US Forest Service

Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, “History & Culture: The Kootenai,” accessed August 30, 2025.

(Context) See also: National Indian Law Library (NARF), “A Demographic Profile of the Federally Recognized Tribes in Montana,” 2000 (for background on tribal distribution), accessed August 30, 2025.

Montana State Historic Preservation Office, National Register of Historic Places Registration Form: Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Bridge (Lincoln County, Montana), October 1990 (includes historical context for the bridge program, highways, and Kootenai crossings), accessed August 30, 2025. 

Montana SHPO, Kalispell Multiple Property Documentation Form (esp. section on the Great Northern’s Flathead Division and division-point geography between Cut Bank and Troy), October 1993, accessed August 30, 2025.

U.S. Forest Service, “The 1910 Fire (The ‘Big Burn’),” historical overview, accessed August 30, 2025. 

Carroll Van West, “Lincoln County’s Gateway Towns,” Montana’s Historic Landscapes (history blog), August 21, 2016, accessed August 30, 2025. 

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Libby Dam Project Facts (Seattle District), accessed August 30, 2025. 

Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks, ENSIS Project: Libby Dam Flow and Temperature Effects on Kootenai River Fisheries (report PDF), accessed August 30, 2025. 

Bob Henline, “Hecla Mining to Acquire Revett,” The Western News (Libby, MT), March 31, 2015 (discusses the transition of the Troy Mine toward closure and reclamation), accessed August 30, 2025. 

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “EPA Announces Public Health Emergency in Libby, Montana,” news release, June 17, 2009, accessed August 30, 2025. 

Environmental Protection magazine, “Agency Declares Asbestos Emergency in Montana,” June 18, 2009 (notes that the emergency covered the towns of Libby and Troy and outlines CERCLA significance), accessed August 30, 2025. 

U.S. Census Bureau (via Wikipedia summary for the incorporated place), “Troy, Montana,” citing 2020 decennial count, accessed August 30, 2025; see also Census Reporter, “Troy, MT,” ACS 2023 5-year profile.