Basin is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Jefferson County, Montana, United States.

It lies approximately 10 miles (16 km) southeast of the Continental Divide in a high narrow canyon along Interstate 15 about halfway between Butte and Helena.

Archaeologists have discovered evidence of human habitation from 10,000 years ago at a site near Clancy, 20 miles (32 km) northeast of Basin.

From about 2000 BCE through the mid-19th century, nomadic tribes hunted bison in the grassy valleys that trend east, away from the Rocky Mountains and into the plains.

Basin rests above the Boulder Batholith, the host rock for many valuable mineral ores found in this part of Montana.

[3] In the late Cretaceous (roughly 81 to 74 million years ago), molten rock (magma) rose to the Earth's surface in and near what later became Jefferson County and eventually formed an intrusive body of granitic rock up to 10 miles (16 km) thick and 100 miles (161 km) in diameter.

This body, known as the Boulder Batholith, extends from Helena to Butte, and is the host rock for the many valuable ores mined in the region.

[8] Archeologists think it likely that the first people to live in Montana crossed from Asia to North America over the Bering Land Bridge that existed during the last major Ice Age about 12,000 years ago.

Because the middle of the continent was covered with sheets of ice, people who migrated south did so on trails along the edges of glaciers melted by seasonal warming.

[9] About 2,000 years ago, a new prehistoric people known as the Late Hunters appeared in Montana, thriving on a bison (buffalo) population living in open grassy areas on the plains and in river valleys.

Acquiring horses and firearms, and numbering about 15,000, they formed alliances with other incoming tribes, the Assiniboine and the Gros Ventres, and by the mid-18th century dominated the state.

"[9] During the 1870s, a few years after the first white miners began looking for gold near Basin, the last large-scale battles between the U.S. government and the Indians took place in Montana.

Gold deposits at the mouth of Cataract Creek, about 0.5 miles (0.8 km) downstream of Basin were reported as early as 1862.

[10] Prospectors staked claims and built cabins, and within a few years placer mining extended the full lengths of Cataract and Basin Creeks.

[11] In 1905, the Basin Reduction Company led by F. Augustus Heinze, who owned mines in Butte, took over the properties left by the Glass brothers and improved them.

[12] An unpublished manuscript on file with the Montana State Historical Society describes life in Basin between 1906 and 1910 in great detail.

Although the smelter was a "massive unit" equipped with furnaces, conveyors, and machinery ready for operation, it "never turned a wheel".

At the Basin Reduction Works, Corliss steam engines, driven by the coal-fired boilers, provided power to run the mine hoists and the mill machinery, and an electric generator powered by a water wheel made electricity for factory lights and the arc lights at Basin's street intersections.

Among the town's businesses were a hardware store, a bakery, livery stables, several "units of harlotry", a blacksmith shop, a brewery specializing in Basin Beer, a sawmill, and a dairy barn from which "milk was delivered in five-pound buckets", sometimes with covers.

[12] Max Atwater, a mining engineer who had worked for Butte and Superior, obtained a license for the process and ran a smaller zinc-extraction plant in Basin from 1914 through 1918.

His wife, Mary Meigs Atwater, described Basin as "a mining camp, subject to recurring periods of boom and bust... A tiny telephone office and a drugstore died with the end of our era of boom... Just above the town were the headframe of our mine, and the old mill, and the never-quite-finished skeleton of a projected smelter.

[18] In 1999, the Environmental Protection Agency added the Basin mining area to the Superfund National Priorities List because of mining-waste problems in and near town.

[15] July and August are typically the warmest months in Boulder, approximately 9 miles (14 km) east of Basin, while December and January are the coldest.

The nonprofit organization offered artist residencies in two historic buildings, a former bank and meeting hall and a former dry goods store converted to apartment and studio space.

[25] All types of artists, including potters, painters, musicians, dancers, singers, weavers, and writers, had residencies in Basin.

[31] A low-power radio station, KBAS-LP, 98.3 FM, owned by Jefferson County Disaster and Emergency Services, broadcasts from Basin.