Welcome to WHITEHALL, MONTANA!

Whitehall is located in the southwestern part of Montana. As you can see in the map below, Whitehall is really pretty because we have lots of mountains by us. The mountains that lie to the southeast of Whitehall are the Tobacco Root Mountains. Bull Mountain is directly north of Whitehall. The Highland Mountains sit to the west of Whitehall.

A quick directional note - north is towards the top of the map!

We live in a town of about 1,200 people. Our town is at 45.88 degrees north in latitude, and 112.12 degrees west in longitude. Whitehall is in the Jefferson Valley. This valley stretches south from Whitehall for about 20 miles.

THE STATE OF MONTANA

Montana is located in the northwestern part of the United States. Montana is the fourth largest of all the states, being about 147,138 square miles. About a third is made up of mountains and about two thirds is plains. The ragged southwest boundary is one of the few long irregular boundary lines in the country that does not follow a river. Part of this boundary runs parallel to the Continental Divide - where waters of our continent separate. The northern boundary is shared by Canada. Idaho lies to the west and southwest of Montana. The Dakotas are on the east, and Wyoming is south of Montana.

MONTANA COUNTIES

Montana has a lot of counties, and we live in a big county, called Jefferson County, in Whitehall.

TOWNS NEAR WHITEHALL

Montana has a lot of small towns in the state. Just for a distance guide, Butte is about 20 miles to the northwest of Whitehall; Bozeman is about 56 miles to the southeast of Whitehall.

We are connected to the nearby towns by many roads. There are not a lot of people that live by us so we have a lot of room. A highway goes through us so we're a truck stop. There are a lot of places to raft, go fishing, and catch frogs. We have a Library, Town Hall, a good school, a Medical Clinic, a fire station, two gas stations, a Movie Theater, which it costs $2 for kids and $3 for adults. We have lots of places to eat, a grocery store, stores, and good programs for kids, and adults. We are paving old roads. It will be better because it gets dusty in the spring.

LAND USE AROUND WHITEHALL

We have a nice forest by us (the Deerlodge National Forest), some farms, and mining dumps. When we look around Whitehall we see a lot of crops growing like wheat, hay, barley, oats, and potatoes. The kind of animals you see here are black angus, red angus, dairy cattle, sheep, pigs, horse, birds, elk, and buffalo.

GEOLOGY OF THE WHITEHALL AREA

There are lots of different rocks around Whitehall. There are fossil beds found in the area. We also have a gold mine by us.

Whitehall is a pretty place because of the Golden Sunlight Mine.

WHITEHALL AND ITS MINING HISTORY

Whitehall and its surrounding area has a lot of old mines. People got careless and started throwing their junk everywhere(1800's to 1950's). It is a very good place for bottle collecting. There are a lot of old mining dumps.

The Whitehall area was divided into mining districts because there were so many mines here. Gold prospectors came here by 1863, and through the years people mined in all the mountains and valleys in the Whitehall area. The big gold nugget in the museum in Butte, Montana, was found in the Highlands Mountains (the Highlands are about ten miles west of Whitehall) in 1989. It was donated by a person from Billings in 1991 to the museum in Butte. Now you can't mine in the Highlands because nobody has the land rights or the water rights.

There are many types of mines in the Whitehall area. Each dot on the map is for a mine, and the color of the dot shows what kind of mine it is. Hardrock mines usually are for mining metals like gold, silver, and copper. Placer mines are mines where stream gravel is washed so that gold can be taken out. Limestone and gypsum are mined for industrial uses.

RAILROADING NEAR WHITEHALL

There were several railroads near Whitehall because of the mining and ranching work here. The Northern Pacific railroad came through the area in 1890, and the town of Whitehall was started.

I think that Whitehall is a nice place because it is a pretty place. We live in the Rocky Mountains, and have many rivers and streams near us. At the Jefferson River, it's fun to go there because you can fish there and you can catch brown and rainbow trout.You also see lots of wildlife like eagles, geese, and racoons, deer, and pheasants.

Lewis and Clark passed through here in August of 1805. There is an old fort, Fort Ellis, about sixty miles from us.

This atlas project was put together by Mrs. Turman's Fourth Grade Class at the Tia Kober Whitehall Elementary School!