Accommodations

• The Stone House, Basin - Basin's newest traveler's inn is affordable, comfy, cozy, peaceful, and right next to the High Note Cafe. Owned and operated by founders of the Montana Artists Refuge.
• Merry Widow Health Mine, Basin
• Earth Angel Health Mine, Basin - 406-225-3516
  61 Earth Angel Road, PO Box 235, Basin, MT 59631
• Radon Health Mine
• Boulder Hot Springs and Hotel in Boulder
  (Tell Barb you're attending the Basin City Jazz & Art Experience and get a 10% discount on your stay!)
• Castoria Inn, Boulder - 406-225-3549
  211 S. Monroe, Boulder, MT 59632
• The Ranch, Boulder - 406-287-5835
  Located at Mile Marker 21 on Highway 69 between Boulder and Whitehall/Cardwell
• Beaverhead Deerlodge National Forest campgrounds

Look for a new website designed by a former MAR refugee, all about Basin, coming soon.

Area info for Jefferson, Silverbow and Lewis & Clark counties

• Jefferson County's Website
  
• Holter Museum of Art, Helena
  
• Myrna Loy Center for the Performing Arts, Helena
  
• Tizer Lake Gardens, Jefferson City
• Butte-Silverbow Arts Foundation and the Arts Chateau, Butte
  
• Helena Chamber of Commerce
  
• Butte Chamber of Commerce
  
• Cargill Outfitters and Guest Ranch

More Info

• "Small Town, Big Welcome," by Martin Kidston (Helena Independent Record). (See below)
• National Geographic Magazine feature article on the radon health mines in Basin, MT
• Visit Montana - Basin page - Montana Department of Tourism - good information and area campgrounds info.

Road Map

For information specific to artist resources visit our Resources Page.

Small town, big welcome

by Independent Record reporter Martin Kidston

Down on Main Street where dogs run loose and sleep placidly on the blacktop, nose tucked under paw with one eye open the citizens of Basin are hard at work.

Humdrum small-town living is the last thing you'll encounter here, where traffic races by on nearby I-15, droning away the days while leaving most motorists unaware what sits just out of sight. But for those who take the short trip into the overlooked community of roughly 300, a trip down Main Street is a trip back in time with a modern appeal and an eclectic twist.

Masonry stacks from yesterday's smelters keep their silent vigil on the hillsides around town, where mining slag and crumbled foundations linger as reminders of a different time. The Basin School, circa 1894, is a stark-white landmark, its high steeple visible from nearly every point in town. Not far off, a two-room dungeon built of brick and steel is a prison for yesterday's bandits, its iron doors and heavy bolts a deterrent on their own. But for everything old there's something new, including a refreshing wave of talented artists and their assorted galleries and the ongoing cleanup of the area's mines.

For this town that mined, milled and smelted its way through generations, riding the lucrative industrial wave for more than 80 years, something had to give when production died. Residents found themselves entrenched in a battle too familiar across Montana -- that of small-town survival. Basin would survive.

"People are staying and making it work," said MJ Williams, a jazz singer and trombonist who moved to Basin in the early 1970s, when the town's last smelter shut down and its machines fell silent.

Next to Williams stands Nan Parsons, a painter who listens with her arms tightly crossed, her eyes narrow in the sun. In so many words, she likes her community just fine, thank you very much.

"Here, people can be uniquely who they are," Parsons says. "That's what Basinnites love about each other. We're a little bit quirky."

"We were welcomed by a person in the community in the early 1970s," Williams adds. "She ran Hick's Soda Fountain and studied with a famous weaver named Mary Atwater."

Weavers in a mining town? Unlikely, but true-along with potters, painters, musicians, dancers and writers. One would think it tough for a mining town to bear, what with the streets running full of sensitive and sentimental artists. But here, where dogs, not lights, regulate traffic, folks are a diverse crew. In Basin, the people are accepting in nature and welcoming in spirit. Sincerity is a rule.

"Everyone here sticks together," says bartender Kristi Crowl, tending her hat-wearing, cigarette-smoking customers in the Silver Saddle Bar. Above, chandeliers made from wagon wheels and yellow light fixtures struggle to illuminate the room. A mirror behind the bar stretches as a reminder of one's own mortality.

"Everyone watches everyone else's kids," Crowl said. "Everyone here just takes care of everyone else."

Including Rose, the bar's owner and the proprietor of the suitably named Rose's Café.

"We get a lot of vagrants passing through," Crowl said, remarking on the town's proximity to the Interstate. "But Rose will give them a meal and put them upstairs. She'll find them a job for a day or two and put them on their way."

It's a lesson in kindness and for the 15 children who attend Kindergarten through sixth grades at the Basin School, district number five, it's a lesson well learned. On a Tuesday, as the school bell rings, the only teacher in Basin, Tammy Urich, lets the kids run free into the quiet afternoon. The sleeping dogs raise their ears for the first time all day. This year, Urich says, the school's enrollment is down from an average 21 students.

"I've been here nine years and this is the first year I've been teaching here alone," Urich said. "It's very hard, but I enjoy it. I like it."

People make it work, sometimes in unsuspecting ways. Williams, who helped found the Montana Artists Refuge in Basin in the 1970s, spent several years working as a musician in San Francisco. Now, one of many year-round Basin artists, she's skilled on the trombone and sings and plays jazz in "various configurations."

"But mostly I play with a trio," she said. By 1993, the artist's refuge was a full-blown classical residency. Run by Director Kris Larson, the refuge coaxes artists to town through various grants. On a good year, the grants fully fund the stay of visiting artists. Now, although small and unknown, Basin attracts artists with national and international reputations.

"We had a screenwriter here not too long ago -- she wasn't interested in publicity," Williams said. "We also had a dancer from New York who did a seminar here in town."

New York may have Carnegie Hall, and San Francisco may have its Orpheum Theatre, but Basin has the old Rex's Flour Shop, currently the town's community hall. The brick building doubles as a sort of performance square. Like nature, art also finds a way.

"It works out very well," Williams said. And so the town continues to thrive. And so the story goes.

Re-published with permission from the author, Martin Kidston