Where is Copper Creek, Montana?

Driving through Darby.

Gwen Marcey lives in the fictional town of Copper Creek. In writing, the author either needs to be accurate about a location or make it up completely. I made it up. I chose the name of Copper Creek as a nod to Montana’s copper industry. At the turn of the last century, the Anaconda copper
mine was the largest copper producer in the world. I did a search on the Internet to be sure there really wasn’t a place in Montana with that name. I placed this fictional town in the very real location of Hamilton, south of Missoula on Highway 93. I liked the area and spent some time there doing a composite drawing on a triple homicide. Did I mention my cases influenced my
writing? Copper Creek looks more like Darby, a smaller town farther south of
Hamilton. Darby is a slice of the old west, and Rick and I were charmed by it in
our research travels.

I decided to place my series in Montana rather than Idaho because I was born in Missoula. How simple an explaination is that?


 Your turn. Where would you place a story?

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