PHILIPSBURG, Mont. — Montana's extensive mining history coined its nickname. The Treasure State. For generations, people have been flocking to find their own treasures near Philipsburg. At the Gem ...

All his great expectations for that claim never came to pass, for Jake Hoover never struck that rich vein of gold he was seeking in central Montana. The consolation? That blue chatter of pebbles in ...

Sapphire hunters pay $14 a bucket for a supply of gravel. The method is to throw a few handfuls of gravel into a foot-square box with a screen bottom. Take the box to a water trough and soak it, ...

I have heard that sapphires can be found near Butte. Is this true? Where do they come from? — A Butte resident The answer to your first question is simple — yes. Your second question is an excellent ...

Montana's history is rich with stories of mining. In Helena there was gold, in Butte it was copper, but just off the banks of the Missouri River and Hauser Lake, there's a different type of mining ...

MISSOULA, Mont. — The Bureau of Land Management has approved a five-year plan for sapphire mining in Lewis and Clark County. The McCune Bar sapphire mine will cover 6.1 acres about a quarter-mile ...

There above the gravel, amid the black ring of hematite, lay sapphires -- sapphires that were planted. Or, as a miner might say, the gravel was salted. Salted for a good reason, to excite and engage ...

Mar. 19—Flathead Valley landowners and neighborhood advocates are among those opposing a bill in the Montana Senate that would ease regulations on open-pit gravel mining. House Bill 599, sponsored by ...