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Lewis and Clark 200  >>  Montana  >>  Butte  >>  Community Interest  >>  Recreation Areas  >>  Butte City

Butte City Butte, Montana Location:    World Museum of Mining Butte 59701 406-723-3177 This web page has had 2224 unique visitors. BigSkyMontana.us Buy Patrick Clark posters online. Description: An insignificant gold camp in 1864, Butte became a ghost town as its shallow placers played out. But a few hardy prospectors stayed on, and in the early 1870’s Butte boomed again with the discovery of large deposits of silver ore. Marcus Daly came to Butte when the rich strikes of 1874 were reported. Instead of silver, he found the richest vein of copper known. The vein was 50 feet wide, and Daly became the head of one of the world’s most powerful monopolies, the Anaconda Copper Mining Company. By 1900, the Butte Hill and its huge copper deposits were known as ‘the richest hill on earth.’ In fact, at the turn-of-the-century, Butte was one of the largest cities west of the Mississippi. Montana’s modern mining city. Large scale open pit mining operations were seen from an observation platform on the rim of the Berkeley Pit at Butte. Rotary drills, electric shovels and fleets of big trucks, working around the clock, six days a week, removed approximately 140,000 tons of ore and waste in each 24-hour period. The ore was dumped into a giant crusher and then was carried at a rate of about 2,000 tons per hour on a conveyor belt system which passed beneath the highway to a stockpile or loading bins for shipment to the smelter at Anaconda.  After a worldwide slump in the copper market shut down mining operations in 1983, Butte citizens bounced back with a ‘can do’ attitude. Mining operations resumed in the East Pit in 1986. Today Butte is a city in transition to a more diversified economy, including energy research, medicine, tourism, environment cleanup and, in the future, manufacturing of computer parts. Butte’s colorful history can be seen in its ethnic neighborhoods, preserved Victorian uptown business district and stately mansions. Located virtually on the Continental Divide, surrounded by mountains, the Mile High City lies on some of the world’s riches mineral reserves. Its dominant feature is the Berkeley Pit, a huge open pit copper mine that consumed portions of the town as it grew to incredible size. The outlying area features numerous ghost towns and abandoned mines.For those interested in Montana mining history, a visit to Butte is a must. There is a visitor’s center at the Berkeley Pit (former open-pit mining operation), 200 Shields Avenue, 782-8117.A tour if historic Butte, including more than 30 buildings and a complete 1905 mining camp, is available at the world Museum of Mining and 1899 Mining Camp at West Park Street 723-7211).View the ‘lifestyles of the rich and famous’ at the Copper King Mansion (219 West Granite, 782-7580), the authentically preserved 3-story, 32-room mansion that was home of copper king/politican William A. Clark.The Mineral Museum on the Montana Tech campus features a display of 1,300 mineral specimens (West Park Street, 496-4414).Inquire at the Butte-Silver Bow Chamber of Commerce (1000 George Street, 723-3177) about Butte City, an earlier version of the famous mining city."