Wednesday when I was helping to clear the Daisy Creek trail I encountered a very pleasant surprise; a brief journey back into some of the history of this area. Next to the trail, about a mile and a half up is the site of the old Iron Daisy Mine.
This mine is located in the Coeur d’Alene Mountains of western Montana, a mile and a half south of Prospect Creek and eleven miles west of the small town of Thompson Falls. It produced gold, silver, zinc and lead intermittently from about 1894 to 1936. In 1928 a small mill was built on the site and by 1931, 3,000 feet of tunnels had been built and the depth of the workings was 100 feet. I could find no information dated after 1936, and as far as I can tell, the State of Montana now considers the mine to be abandoned.
This appears to be the remains of the mill built in 1928.
It’s significant that the large piles of tailings seem to be the only remains that have almost completely survived nature’s process of reclamation: the dumps always remain intact.
These are the remains of an old building which appears to have been a storage building or equipment shed, judging by the construction.
A short distance from the mine site and above it, on a slight rise, are found the remains of two old cabins, built side by side. For a few minutes, let your mind take you back seventy to a hundred years in the past and imagine what it must have been like to live there when they were in their prime. (There was even a “picture window” in the larger cabin!)
Montana Outdoors 