From Mining Camp to Famous Hill

Butte began in the 1860s as a small mining camp in the Silver Bow Creek valley, where prospectors searched for gold and silver.

Early miners did find gold, but they also ran into rocks rich in silver and other metals that made it hard to recover the gold with simple tools.

In 1866 Butte was still just a cluster of cabins with a few hundred miners, some saloons, and very few stores. Investors such as A. J. Davis bought groups of mines and a small quartz mill, trying to make silver mining profitable, but early silver efforts often failed and properties changed hands.

During the 1870s and 1880s, better mining and milling methods turned Butte into one of the most important silver-producing areas in the United States. At the same time, geologists and miners were beginning to realize that the dark “black” ores around Butte actually held large amounts of copper.

This mixture of gold, silver, and copper is one reason Butte became known as the “Richest Hill on Earth.”

Electricity and the Copper Kings

Until the late 1800s, copper was used mostly for pots, roofing, and decorations. When electric lights, telegraphs, and telephones spread across the world, demand for copper exploded because copper wire conducts electricity very well.

In the early 1880s, Marcus Daly, an experienced miner, bought the Anaconda mine near Butte and helped discover huge copper deposits in the Butte Hill. Some early ore from Butte was extremely rich, and later writers described very high copper grades in certain spots, though most ore was lower grade overall.

By the 1890s, Butte’s mines were producing so much metal that the hill around town truly earned its nickname. Some accounts say Butte provided a large share of the world’s copper and remained one of the top copper producers for decades.

The huge profits and intense competition among three powerful mine owners — Marcus Daly, William A. Clark, and F. Augustus Heinze — led people to call them the “Copper Kings.”

Anaconda, Smelters, and a Melting-Pot City

Marcus Daly did not just mine copper; he also built an entire industrial system to process it. In the 1880s he founded the smelter town of Anaconda about 25-30 miles from Butte and built rail lines to haul ore from the mines to the smelter.

Over time, Daly’s company, later known as Anaconda Copper, became one of the world’s biggest mining corporations.

Butte itself grew from a rough camp into a busy industrial city with newspapers, schools, libraries, churches, and many, many saloons. By around 1910, Butte was one of the largest cities in the Rocky Mountain region and a true “melting pot,” with immigrants from Ireland, Finland, Italy, the Balkans, China, and many other places.

Mines and smelters provided thousands of jobs, and some owners and investors became millionaires, while most miners did dangerous underground work for modest pay.

Hard Work, Danger, and Labor Struggles

Life in Butte’s mines was hard and often dangerous. Miners worked long shifts underground in hot, cramped spaces, dealing with dust, bad air, falling rock, and the risk of fire or explosions.

One of the worst disasters was the Speculator Mine fire in 1917, which killed 168 men and remains one of the deadliest hard-rock mining accidents in U.S. history.

Because of these dangers and low wages, Butte became an important center for labor unions and worker organizing. Strikes and conflicts between miners and mine owners were common in the early 1900s, and they shaped both local politics and national labor history.

Boom, Bust, and Environmental Costs

Copper prices rose and fell with wars, new inventions, and global demand. During World War I and World War II, Butte’s copper helped supply wire, bullets, and equipment for the Allied war effort.

In the 1920s and later in the 20th century, copper prices crashed or competition from other mines increased, and Butte went through painful “bust” periods with layoffs, mine closures, and population loss.

Today, scientists and historians also pay close attention to the environmental effects of Butte’s long mining history. For many decades, waste rock and mine tailings were dumped on hillsides and into nearby streams, and smelter smoke carried arsenic and heavy metals into the air.

The open-pit Berkeley Pit, begun in the 1950s after many underground mines closed, later filled with acidic, metal-rich water when pumping stopped, creating a large, toxic lake.

In the 1980s, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency named Butte, Anaconda, and over 100 miles of the Clark Fork River as part of one of the nation’s largest Superfund cleanup sites because of mining-related pollution.

Butte Today: History, Cleanup, and Community

Modern Butte is smaller than it was at its peak, but it remains an important center for Montana’s history and culture. Historic buildings, headframes (the towers above mine shafts), and ethnic neighborhoods remind visitors how mining shaped the city.

At the same time, local communities, tribes, companies, and government agencies are working together to treat contaminated water, cap or remove tailings, and restore streams and wildlife habitat in and around the Butte Hill and Silver Bow Creek.

For sixth-grade students, the Butte boom shows how one place can be at the center of world technology and wealth — and also how important it is to think about worker safety, fairness, and the long-term health of land and water.