What Were Those Low-Flying Helicopters Over Council This Fall Looking For?
The helicopters running tight parallel lines over the hills west of Council this fall were mapping rock. The U.S. Geological Survey and the Idaho Geological Survey scheduled low-level flights over western Idaho for October and early November. The aircraft were based at Council Municipal Airport and covered part of the Hitt Mountains, Cuddy Mountain and Horse Mountain. The USGS release lists the metals that historic mining records show in the survey area: antimony, copper, gold, lead, manganese, molybdenum, silver and zinc.
That list is a short history of Council. People have been staking claims in those mountains since the 1870s, and Council became a real town largely because it was where the ore came down to meet the train. This fall the town played that role again. This time the staging point was the airport instead of the rail yard, and what came out of the mountains was data.
The flights belong to the USGS Earth Mapping Resources Initiative, known as Earth MRI, a national program to update maps of geology and mineral resources and to identify energy, groundwater and natural hazards. The USGS media alert explains why the helicopters looked and sounded the way they did:
In its Oct. 28 story, The Record Reporter said the flights were already underway from Council's airport and described them as flying "in a conspicuous grid pattern." Anyone who saw the same helicopter pass the same ridge several times in an afternoon was watching it work through that grid.
Council Municipal Airport, identifier U82, was the closest airfield to the survey area, and the town had a busy fall there. At the Oct. 22 city council meeting, City Clerk Ashley Scott reported that the airport's fuel system upgrades were finished the week of Oct. 5. Kathy Hughes of the airport commission said the airport had sold 5,152 gallons of fuel to date. That is the most it has ever sold, and it brought the city $3,471 in net revenue. The same meeting covered a donated 24-by-23-foot carport for two vehicles and the airport courtesy car, with local contractor Matt Clayton giving his time to build it. The council also set hangar spacing at 20 to 30 feet, at the engineer's discretion.
Council has handled this kind of traffic before. The Council Valley Museum's history of Adams County says the railroad reached Weiser in 1882, Council's town square started taking shape in 1891, and "Council Valley" was shortened to "Council" in 1896. Work on the line up the Weiser River set off a boom in 1898, and the tracks reached Council in March 1901. Copper ore from the Seven Devils mines had been hauled more than 100 miles to Weiser. After 1901 it was loaded onto rail cars in Council.
According to the Idaho State Historical Society's Seven Devils report, the Pacific & Idaho Northern line never got all the way to the Seven Devils mines. Its grade moved toward them, and that made Council the rail shipping point for their copper. The mountains had the metal, and Council was where it reached a way out. A survey crew looking for an airstrip close to Cuddy and the Hitt Mountains ended up in the same town for the same reason.
The metals in the USGS release line up with the districts that grew up around Council. Here is what the historical record shows for each:
| District or camp | Early activity | What was mined | What's there now |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seven Devils, including Helena and Cuprum | Peacock claim traced to Levi Allen's 1862 prospecting party; Cuprum post office opened Dec. 1, 1897 | Copper from the Peacock and Blue Jacket | Cuprum described as a surviving mining and resort center; Landore largely a ghost town |
| Heath district, Cuddy Mountain | T.J. Heath and James Ruth located deposits near Brownlee Creek in October 1874 | Lead-silver and copper | Intermittent mining continued after 1920 |
| Mineral district, Hitt Mountains | Silver found at Mineral City in 1870; district organized in 1881 | Silver | No buildings remain; the cemetery headstones are what's left |
The Seven Devils story is mostly about getting ore out. The state historical society's report says high-grade Blue Jacket copper went by packhorse to Bear Creek and was shipped to Anaconda in 1887. Albert Kleinschmidt started road work in 1890, a Helena post office opened near the Peacock Mine, and the 22-mile grade from Helena down to Ballard's Landing was declared finished on July 31, 1891. Cuprum's peak came in the summer of 1898, when freight wagons hauled Peacock and Blue Jacket ore.
Mineral, in the Hitt Mountains, followed a similar pattern on a smaller scale. Washington County's 2022 historic preservation plan says John James and Jim Peck filed claims along Dennett Creek in the summer of 1880. The district was organized the next year, and two small smelters were built there in 1890 and 1893. Today the town has no buildings left. The Idaho Geological Survey still lists a 1925 reconnaissance report on the Mineral and Cuddy Mountain districts in its publications catalog, and the maps in that report are among the older geology records for the same ground the helicopters just flew.
Cuddy Mountain stands out because exploration there keeps coming back. Pulling the Council Valley Museum's history pages together with a mining company's recent releases gives a timeline running from the 1870s to last year:
In its June 2026 announcement, which was about claims in Butte County, Zeus still listed Cuddy Mountain among its properties.
Every name on that timeline belonged to someone reading Cuddy Mountain for themselves, from a prospector with a pick to a company running its own geophysics. The 2024 surveys Zeus describes were private work for a private claim block.
The Earth MRI survey works differently. USGS says the data will be posted for free on its ScienceBase catalog, and the agency says it can serve mineral exploration as well as later studies of geologic hazards and groundwater. The magnetic and radiometric picture of Cuddy, Horse and the Hitt Mountains collected from Council's runway will be available to a geology student, a groundwater researcher or a curious neighbor in the same form an exploration company gets.
State Geologist Claudio Berti, director of the Idaho Geological Survey, gave the reason for focusing on this part of the state. The Record Reporter quoted him from the release:
"The opportunity to focus USGS resources in western Idaho, in an area of renewed interest from the mineral industry, will significantly advance our understanding of the regional geology in this complex part of the state."
Jamey Jones, the Earth MRI science coordinator, said in the same release that the Idaho Geological Survey is "adding to state knowledge crucial to water resources, hazards and the resource economy." This survey also extends earlier Earth MRI work across Idaho aimed at the state's critical mineral resources.
The newest survey of the Heath district above Brownlee Creek and the old silver camp at Mineral started this fall from Council's runway, the same town where Seven Devils ore was loaded onto rail cars in 1901.
At Sadie Noah Real Estate Group, we follow the history and land records behind West Central Idaho acreage as closely as the listings themselves. If you own land around Council or are considering a parcel near Cuddy Mountain or the Hitt Mountains, ask Sadie Noah for a personalized market plan or a property tour, and we'll go through that ground with you.
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