Marysville grew up beside the Drumlummon Mine, whose development by miner Tommy Cruse and purchase by the British-owned Montana Mining Company in 1883 brought expansion, a large ore processing mill, and an influx of miners, families, and businesses to the nearby camp. Log shacks soon gave way to substantial wood-frame and brick buildings, and within a few years the town had genteel residences around a lively commercial district with grocery stores, hotels, mercantiles, restaurants, churches, fraternal societies, an orchestra, a substantial schoolhouse, a brewery, and 27 saloons. In 1892, one writer predicted that Helena would become a suburb of Marysville within a dozen years, but by 1895 a severe national depression and the mining company's legal troubles had begun a slow decline. A fire devastated the commercial district in 1910, and the Northern Pacific Railway abandoned its line to Marysville in 1925 as the ore and business ran out, though the town endures and remains proud of its heritage.