Butte

Butte owes its existence to placer gold discovered on Silver Bow Creek in 1864. But the gold soon played out and it was demand for Butte’s copper that made it “the richest hill on Earth.” The hill produced over two billion dollars worth of gold, silver, copper and zinc. Drifts, winzes and stopes honeycombed the underground, creating a labyrinth that still extends beneath the city. There were over 3,000 miles of workings, and shafts, some reaching a depth of 4,000 feet. In 1955, the Anaconda Company opened the Berkley Pit to mine low-grade metals. The pit swallowed up Meaderville, McQueen, and copper king W. A. Clark’s famed Columbia Gardens amusement park. Butte has a cosmopolitan population derived from the four corners of the world. She was a bold, unashamed rootin’, tootin’, hell-roarin’ camp in days gone by and still drinks her liquor straight. At the heart of American unionism with a labor history second to none in the nation, the National Park Service recognized Butte as a National Historic Landmark (NHL) in 1961. In 2006, the Park Service extended the landmark to recognize Butte, Walkerville, and Anaconda as a labor corridor whose intertwined histories encompass nearly 10,000 acres. It is the largest NHL in the West.