Philipsburg's early fortunes rose and fell with mining. Silver was discovered south of here in 1864, and by 1867 Philipsburg, at an elevation of 5,270 feet, was growing at the "rate of one house per day," according to an area newspaper. That same year, the St. Louis and Montana Mining Company sent Philip Deideshimer, for whom the town was named, to help develop and manage its mines and stamp mills. Only two years later, the nearby Hope Mill shut down and Philipsburg was largely deserted. A revival of mining from the mid-1880s to the mid-1890s brought the town its greatest growth, as tens of millions of dollars in silver bullion, ore, and slag were shipped to out-of-state markets and the wooden false-front buildings on Broadway were replaced with masonry structures. When silver mining was curtailed in 1893, recently discovered sapphire deposits helped stabilize the local economy, and that same year Granite County was created with Philipsburg as its county seat. During World War I, Philipsburg became the largest supplier of domestic manganese, bringing another boom. After that, the town settled into a stable existence based on agriculture, government, logging, limited mining, and tourism, and its historic district preserved commercial, public, and private buildings from the late-nineteenth-century silver boom.