Before the westward expansion of the United States, various
indigenous peoples lived in the area, with the
Kutenai and
Bitterroot Salish as the most recent and the
Piegan Blackfeet earlier. They lived in base camps and seasonal camps based on the availability of plants and fish: "lower elevations in the winter and... uplands in the summer and fall," with spring camps near
camas prairies, which had edible bulbs. Due to the area's geography and settler fears of the Kutenai, the area remained unsettled until gold was discovered in the 1860s and
galena and
vermiculite in the 1880s. In 1886, the first miners arrived, prospecting on the
Kootenai River at a tent camp first known as "Lake Camp, Lake Creek Camp, and Lake City", and making land claims on Grouse Mountain. In 1892, a William O'Brien surveyed the Lake City claim, renaming it Troy. The town's first hotel, then called the Windsor Hotel, was built. One transplant described the town as such: "Fifteen saloons gaily lit filled to the doors with “wild men and wild women” yelling, singing, dancing, and cursing, with glasses held high, such was Troy. Two large
dance halls were in evidence, one grocery store run by John Bowen, several 'beaneries' (called restaurants by some), one drug store owned by 'Doc' Sailey and many shacks and tents where the 'wild women' congregated. Fights and ribaldry were the order of the days and nights."
Vermiculite cleanup After citizens, media, and local government raised concerns, the
United States Environmental Protection Agency began in 1999 to investigate the contamination of the area surrounding
Libby and Troy from vermiculite mines in Libby, which were themselves contaminated with a toxic and easily crumbled form of
tremolite-
actinolite series
asbestos, sometimes named Libby Amphibole asbestos (LA). ==Geography==