24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Boulder, MT

Boulder is an incorporated town and the county seat of Jefferson County, Montana, set on the north bank of the Boulder River between Butte and Helena, slightly east of the Continental Divide.

The town takes its name from the many large boulders scattered in the vicinity.

Boulder began in the early 1860s as Boulder Valley, a stagecoach station on the route between Fort Benton and Virginia City, and its name was shortened to Boulder in 1897.

The settlement grew into a regional trading center for nearby farms and ranches and for the Elkhorn, Comet, and Baltimore mining districts.

A Great Northern Railway branch line from Helena to Butte reached Boulder in 1888, tying it to both mining cities.

In the first round of Montana's 1892 capital referendum, Boulder was one of seven candidate cities for the new state capital, but it finished last with only 295 votes and did not advance to the 1894 runoff that Helena won.

State schools for the deaf, the blind, and people with developmental disabilities were established in Boulder in 1892, and institutions serving people with disabilities have shaped the town's life ever since.

The Montana Developmental Center, a state institution for people with developmental disabilities, employs about 300 people in Boulder, making it one of the town's largest employers.

Boulder sits above the Boulder Batholith, a granitic intrusion up to 10 miles thick and 100 miles across whose gold-bearing veins weathered into the placer gravels of the Boulder River valley.

Commercial 'health mines' in the Boulder area attract visitors who believe that breathing radon gas in the old mines eases arthritis and other autoimmune diseases, a practice that remains controversial because of the known risks of radiation.