Biohazard Cleanup Near North Libby Libby, MT

Libby is a city in far northwestern Montana and the county seat of Lincoln County, set at the confluence of Libby Creek and the Kootenai River.

Miners flocked to Libby Creek in an 1867 gold rush, but the camp faded, and the town moved downstream and shortened its name from Libbysville to Libby when the Great Northern Railway arrived in 1892.

The 2020 census counted 2,775 residents in Libby, the largest community in Lincoln County.

The 2020 census counted 1,297 households in Libby.

Libby sits within the Kootenai National Forest between the Cabinet Mountains to the south and the Purcell Mountains to the north, where U.S. Route 2 meets Montana Highway 37.

The Libby Dam, one of the Columbia River Treaty dams, was completed in 1975 on the Kootenai River about 17 miles upstream from Libby and created Lake Koocanusa, which stretches north into British Columbia.

The vermiculite mine above town, begun by the Zonolite Company in 1919 and run by W. R. Grace from 1963 until it closed in 1990, at its peak produced roughly 80 percent of the world's vermiculite.

The Libby vermiculite deposit was laced with a toxic form of asbestos, and asbestos-related disease killed an estimated 400 local people and sickened more than 2,000 others.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency placed Libby on its National Priorities List of Superfund sites in 2002 and in 2009 declared a public health emergency there, the first such declaration in the agency's history.

Libby bills itself as the "City of Eagles," and large eagle sculptures, including 60-foot eagles, greet travelers at both ends of town.