Butte is a city in southwestern Montana established as a mining camp in the 1860s in the northern Rocky Mountains straddling the Continental Divide. Butte became a hotbed for silver and gold mining in its early stages, and grew exponentially upon the advent of electricity in the late-nineteenth century due to the land's large natural stores of copper. In 1888 alone, mining operations in Butte had generated an output of $23 million. The arrival of several magnates in the area around this time, later known as the "Copper Kings," marked the beginning of Butte's establishment as a boomtown.
The city was also the site of various political events relating to is industrial roots and expansive workforce, and was home to strong labor activism and Socialist movements in the early-twentieth century. After numerous mining-related disasters (including the 1917 Speculator Mine disaster the largest hard rock mining disaster in world history), and a steady decline in copper demand, Butte's Anaconda Copper company shifted to open-pit mining in the mid-twentieth century. Over several decades, mining took place at the Berkeley Pit before operations were ceased in 1983. Post-millennium economic forces in Butte have largely centered on technology and the health industry, as well as efforts to preserve the city's historic buildings and cultural sites. In 2002, Butte was one of only twelve towns in America to be named a Distinctive Destination by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
History Prehistoric era and native history The land on which Butte was established is positioned in the Silver Bow Creek Valley (or Summit Valley), a natural bowl sitting high in the Rocky Mountains straddling the Continental Divide. The southwestern side of the bowl is made of a large mass of granite known as the Boulder Batholith, which dates to the Cretaceous era.
The land surrounding Butte around Silver Bow Creek was a hunting and fishing area for the local Interior Salish peoples who had settlements to the northwest, near Missoula. The creek's name originates from the Salish "Sin-tahp-kay-Sntapqey" ( Place Where Something is Shot in the Head).
1860–1888: Establishment and immigration
Butte began as a mining camp in the 1860s. Early map drawings of Butte sometimes referred to the settlement as "Butte City." In 1874, William L. Farlin staked the Asteroid Mine (later known as the Travona), and was followed by an influx of additional miners seeking gold and silver. The mines attracted workers from Cornwall (United Kingdom), Ireland, Wales, Lebanon, Canada, Finland, Austria, Serbia, Italy, China, Syria, Croatia, Montenegro, Mexico, and all areas of the United States. The legacy of the immigrants lives on in the form of the Cornish pasty which was popularized by mine workers who needed something easy to eat in the mines, the povitica—a Slavic nut bread pastry which is a holiday favorite sold in many supermarkets and bakeries in Butte—and the boneless porkchop sandwich. These, along with huckleberry products and Scandinavian lefse have arguably become Montana's symbolic foods, known and enjoyed throughout Montana. 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 (Butte's Irish Catholic community has been notably longstanding: As of 2017, the city has the highest percentage of Irish Americans per capita of any city in the United States).
Among the migrants, many Chinese workers moved in, and amongst them set up businesses that led to the creation of a Chinatown in Butte. The Chinese migrations stopped in 1882 with the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act. There was anti-Chinese sentiment in the 1870s and onwards due to racism on the part of the white settlers, exacerbated by economic depression, and in 1895, the chamber of commerce and labor unions started a boycott of Chinese owned businesses. The business owners fought back by suing the unions and winning. The history of the Chinese migrants in Butte is documented in the Mai Wah Museum.
The influx of miners gave Butte a reputation as a wide-open town where any vice was obtainable. The city's famous saloon and red-light district, called the "Line" or "The Copper Block", was centered on Mercury Street, where the elegant bordellos included the famous Dumas Brothel. Behind the brothel was the equally famous Venus Alley, where women plied their trade in small cubicles called "cribs". The red-light district brought miners and other men from all over the region and was open until 1982 as one of the last such urban districts in the United States. Commercial breweries first opened in Butte in the 1870s, and were a large 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.
1889–1899: Industrial expansion and unionism
In the late nineteenth century, copper was in great demand because of new technologies such as electric power that required the use of copper. Three industrial magnates fought for control of Butte's mining wealth. These three "Copper Kings" were William A. Clark, Marcus Daly, and F. Augustus Heinze. Between 1884 and 1888, Clark constructed the Copper King Mansion in Butte, which became his second residence from his home in New York City. He also, in 1899, purchased the Columbia Gardens, a small park which he developed into a full amusement park, featuring a pavilion, rollercoaster, 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." Further cultural developments in the city at this time included the emergence of the Boston and Montana Band, a local marching band that formed on December 22, 1887 by Boston investors Adolph and Leonard Lewisohn and miner Charles X. Larrabee. 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 had generated an "almost inconceivable" output of $23 million () worth of ore.
Around the turn of the twentieth century, prosperous mining had generated considerable wealth in Butte, and at the time was the largest city between Chicago and San Francisco. Copper ore mined from the Butte mining district in 1910 alone totaled , making it the largest producer of copper in North America and second only to South Africa in world production of metals. The same year, an excess of of silver and of gold were also discovered. The amount of ore produced in the city earned it the nickname "The Richest Hill on Earth." With its large workforce of miners performing in physically dangerous conditions, Butte was the site of active labor union movements, and came to be known as "the Gibraltar of Unionism."
By 1885, there were about 1,800 dues-paying members of a general union in Butte. That year the union reorganized as the Butte Miners' Union (BMU), spinning off all non-miners to separate craft unions. Some of these joined the Knights of Labor, and by 1886 the separate organizations came together to form the Silver Bow Trades and Labor Assembly, with 34 separate unions representing nearly all of the 6,000 workers around Butte. The BMU established branch unions in mining towns like Barker, Castle, Champion, Granite, and Neihart, and extended support to other mining camps hundreds of miles away. In 1892 there was a violent strike in Coeur d'Alene.Roughneck: The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood, Peter Carlson, 1983, p. 50. Although the BMU was experiencing relatively friendly relations with local management, the events in Idaho were disturbing. The BMU not only sent thousands of dollars to support the Idaho miners, they mortgaged their buildings to send more.
There was a growing concern that local unions were vulnerable to the power of Mine Owners' Associations like the one in Coeur d'Alene. In May 1893, about forty 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 then 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. In 1899, Daly joined with William Rockefeller, Henry H. Rogers, and Thomas W. Lawson to organize the Amalgamated Copper Mining Company. Not long after, the company changed its name to Anaconda Copper Mining Company (ACM).
On the evening of January 15, 1895, an explosion occurred at the Kenyon-Connell Warehouse, which killed a total of 57 people (13 of whom were city firefighters) as well as numerous horses and livestock. The explosion was later determined to have been caused by dynamite. A funeral procession of 3,000 people took place for the deceased on January 18, 1895.
1900–1945: Union activity and civil unrest
In 1900, Butte opened its first institution of higher education, the Montana School of Mines, which is contemporarily Montana Tech of the University of Montana. Between approximately 1900 and 1917, Butte had a strong streak of Socialist politics, even electing a Mayor on the Socialist ticket in 1914. It had also established itself as "one of the most solid union cities in America." After 1905, Butte 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. However, a number of clashes between laborers, labor organizers, and the Anaconda Company ensued, including the 1917 lynching of IWW executive board officer Frank Little.