Early history and immigrants Before Butte's formal establishment in 1864, the area consisted of a mining camp that had developed in the early 1860s. The city is in the Silver Bow Creek Valley (or Summit Valley), a natural bowl sitting high in the Rockies straddling the
Continental Divide, positioned on the southwestern side of a large mass of
granite known as the
Boulder Batholith, which dates to the
Cretaceous era. The mines attracted workers from
Cornwall (England), Ireland, Wales, Lebanon, Canada, Finland, Austria, Italy, China,
Montenegro, Mexico, and more. In the ethnic neighborhoods, young men formed gangs to protect their territory and socialize into adult life, including the Irish of Dublin Gulch, the Eastern Europeans of the McQueen Addition, and the Italians of Meaderville. Among the migrants were many Chinese who set up businesses that created a Chinatown in Butte. The influx of miners gave Butte a reputation as a wide-open town where any vice was obtainable. The city's saloon and red-light district, called the "Line" or "The Copper Block", centered on Mercury Street, where the elegant
bordellos included the famous
Dumas Brothel. Commercial breweries first opened in Butte in the 1870s, and were a staple of the city's early economy; they were usually run by German immigrants, including Leopold Schmidt, Henry Mueller, and Henry Muntzer. The breweries were always staffed by union workers. Most ethnic groups in Butte, from Germans and Irish to Italians and various Eastern Europeans, including children, enjoyed the locally brewed lagers, bocks, and other types of beer.
Industrial expansion In the late 19th century, copper was in great demand because of new technologies such as electric power that required the use of copper. Industrial magnates fought for control of Butte's mining wealth. These "
Copper Kings" were
William A. Clark,
Marcus Daly,
James Andrew Murray and
F. Augustus Heinze. Between 1884 and 1888, W. A. Clark constructed the
Copper King Mansion in Butte, which became his second residence from his home in
New York City. In 1899, he also purchased the
Columbia Gardens, a small park he developed into an
amusement park, featuring a pavilion, roller coaster, and a lake for swimming and canoeing. Clark's expansion of the park was intended to "provide a place where children and families could get away from the polluted air of the Butte mining industry." The city's rapid expansion was noted in an 1889 frontier survey: "Butte, Montana, fifteen years ago a small placer-mining village clinging to the mountain side, has now risen to the rank of the first mining camp of the world... [It] is now the most populous city of Montana, numbering twenty-five thousand active, enterprising, prosperous inhabitants." In 1888 alone, mining operations in Butte generated an "almost inconceivable" output of $23 million () worth of ore. In May 1893, about 40 delegates from northern hard-rock mining camps met in Butte and established the
Western Federation of Miners (WFM), which sought to organize miners throughout the West. The Butte Miners' Union became Local Number One of the new WFM. The WFM
won a strike in
Cripple Creek, Colorado, the following year, but in 1896–97
lost another violent strike in
Leadville, Colorado, prompting the Montana State Trades and Labor Council to issue
a proclamation to organize a new Western labor federation along
industrial lines.
Anaconda Copper and civil unrest , an
IWW organizer who was lynched in Butte in 1917 In 1899, Daly,
William Rockefeller,
Henry H. Rogers, and
Thomas W. Lawson organized the Amalgamated Copper Mining Company. Not long after, the company changed its name to
Anaconda Copper Mining Company (ACM). Over the years, Anaconda was owned by assorted larger corporations. In the 1920s, it had a virtual monopoly over the mines in and around Butte. Between approximately 1900 and 1917, Butte also had a strong streak of
Socialist politics, even electing Mayor
Lewis J. Duncan on the Socialist ticket in 1911, and again in 1913; Duncan was impeached in 1914 for neglecting duties after a bombing in the city's miners' hall in 1914. Butte also established itself as "one of the most solid union cities in America." After 1905, it became a hotbed of
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, or the "Wobblies") organizing. Rivalry between IWW supporters and the WFM locals culminated in the
Butte, Montana labor riots of 1914, and resulted in the loss of union recognition by the mine owners. After the dissolution of the Miners' Union, the Anaconda Company attempted to inaugurate programs aimed at enticing employees. A number of clashes between laborers, labor organizers, and the Anaconda Company ensued, including the 1917 lynching of IWW executive board officer
Frank Little. In 1920, company mine guards gunned down strikers in the
Anaconda Road Massacre. Seventeen were shot in the back as they tried to flee, and one man died. Sparked by a tragic accident more than below the ground on June 8, 1917, a fire in the
Granite Mountain mine
shaft spewed flames, smoke, and poisonous gas through the labyrinth of tunnels including the connected Speculator Mine. A rescue effort commenced, but
carbon monoxide was contaminating the air supply. Several men barricaded themselves against
bulkheads to save their lives, but many others died in a panic to try to escape. The Granite Mountain Memorial in Butte commemorates those who died in the accident. Protests and strikes began after the Speculator Mine disaster, as well as the establishment of the Metal Mine Workers Union; about 15,000 workers abandoned their jobs in the disaster's wake. Between 1914 and 1920, the
U.S. National Guard occupied Butte six times to restore civility. In 1917, copper production from the Butte mines peaked and steadily declined thereafter. By WWII, copper production from the ACM's holdings in
Chuquicamata, Chile, far exceeded Butte's production. In 1919, women's rights activist
Margaret Jane Steele Rozsa became a food inspector for Butte, and immediately began pressing for change to questionable practices by several county commissioners who had been keeping the community's cost of living artificially high by, among other things, allowing carloads of perishable foods to rot on unloaded trains at the railroad station. She also "was instrumental in getting senate bill No. 19 through the legislature" that year to ensure that 199 tubercular soldiers who had served in
World War I would be given "preference of entry to the Galen hospital", and that the legislature would authorize $20,000 to build additional dormitories at the hospital to make that care possible since hospital admissions were already at capacity. In 1921, she became the first female prohibition inspector in the city.
Open-pit mining era '' at the American Theater, December 25, 1920 Disputes between miners' unions and companies continued through the 1920s and 1930s, with several strikes and protests, one of which lasted for ten months in 1921. On New Year's Eve 1922, protestors attempted to detonate the Hibernian Hall on Main Street with
dynamite. Further industrial expansions included the arrival of the first mail plane in 1928, and in 1937, the city's
streetcar system was dismantled and replaced by bus lines. a debate over whether to relocate the city's historic business district, a new civic leadership, and the end of copper mining in 1983. In response, Butte looked for ways to diversify the economy and provide employment. The legacy of over a century of
environmental degradation has, for example, produced some jobs. Environmental cleanup in Butte, designated a Superfund site, has employed hundreds of people. Thousands of homes were destroyed in the Meaderville suburb and surrounding areas, McQueen and East Butte, to excavate the
Berkeley Pit, which
Anaconda Copper opened in 1954. It grew until it began encroaching on the Columbia Gardens. After the Gardens caught fire and burned to the ground in November 1973, the Continental Pit was excavated on the former park site. In 1977, the
ARCO (Atlantic Richfield Company) purchased Anaconda, and three years later started shutting down mines due to lower metal prices. In 1983, all mining in the Berkeley Pit was suspended. The same year, an organization of low-income and unemployed Butte residents formed to fight for jobs and
environmental justice; the Butte Community Union produced a detailed plan for community revitalization and won substantial benefits, including a
Montana Supreme Court victory striking down as unconstitutional state elimination of welfare benefits. After mining ceased at the Berkeley Pit, water pumps in nearby mines were also shut down, which resulted in highly acidic water laced with toxic heavy metals filling up the pit. The company ceased mining in 2000, but resumed in 2003. From 1880 through 2005, the mines of the Butte district produced more than 9.6 million metric tons of copper, 2.1 million metric tons of zinc, 1.6 million metric tons of manganese, 381,000 metric tons of lead, 87,000 metric tons of molybdenum, of silver, and of gold.
21st century Fourteen
headframes still remain over mine shafts in Butte, and the city still contains thousands of historic commercial and residential buildings from the boom times, which, especially in Uptown, give it an old-fashioned appearance, with many commercial buildings not fully occupied; according to a 2016 estimate, there were "hundreds" of unoccupied buildings in Butte, resulting in an ordinance to keep record of owners. Preservation efforts of the city's historic buildings began in the late 1990s. As with many industrial cities, tourism and services, especially health care (Butte's St. James Hospital has Southwest Montana's only major trauma center), are rising as primary employers, as well as industrial-sector private companies. which expanded in 2006 to include parts of
Anaconda and is one of the largest
National Historic Landmark Districts in the U.S., with 5,991 contributing properties. A century after the era of intensive mining and smelting, environmental issues remain in areas around the city.
Arsenic and heavy metals such as
lead are found in high concentrations in some spots affected by old mining, and for a period of time in the 1990s the tap water was unsafe to drink due to poor filtration and decades-old wooden supply pipes. Efforts to improve the water supply have taken place in the early 2000s, with millions of dollars invested to upgrade water lines and repair infrastructure. Environmental research and cleanup efforts have contributed to the diversification of the local economy and signs of vitality, including the introduction of a multimillion-dollar polysilicon manufacturing plant nearby in the 1990s. In the late 1990s, Butte was recognized as an
All-America City and as one of the National Trust for Historic Preservation's Dozen Distinctive Destinations in 2002. ==Geography==