The History of Butte, Montana

Perched on the Continental Divide in the rugged Rockies, Butte grew from a scrappy placer camp into one of America’s great industrial boom towns — and then into one of its most complicated environmental and labor legacies. Over roughly a century and a half, the “Richest Hill on Earth” created fortunes, political power, fierce unions, tight-knit ethnic neighborhoods, spectacular disasters, and a toxic lake that keeps scientists and regulators busy to this day. This article traces that story: the founding and mining boom, the Copper Kings and their conflicts, the immigrant and union culture that defined the town, the environmental aftermath, and the preservation efforts that give Butte its modern identity. 

From placer gold to the copper boom (1864–1900)

Butte’s story begins in 1864, when prospectors working the headwaters of Silver Bow Creek found placer gold. The camp that grew up around that discovery was formally laid out in the 1860s and for a time followed the typical boom–bust rhythm of mining towns. Placer and later silver activity dominated early years, but the arrival of railroads and the electrification era reshaped the game: copper — needed in vast new quantities for wiring and industrial machines — became king by the 1880s and pushed Butte into global significance. The town was officially platted in the 1880s and soon transformed from tents and shafts to brick buildings, banks, and saloons. 

That switch to large-scale copper extraction changed everything. Underground hard-rock mining replaced small-scale panning; deep shafts, elaborate hoisting systems, and concentration mills multiplied production. By the early 20th century, the Butte mining district was producing a substantial share of the world’s copper — a resource that literally wired modern America. 

The Copper Kings, Anaconda, and industrial power

A few men loomed especially large in Butte’s rise. Marcus Daly — an Irish-born prospector turned industrialist — bought the Anaconda mine and helped build the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, creating the vertical chain of mine, smelter (in nearby Anaconda), railroad, and capital that dominated the region. Rival tycoons (including William A. Clark and F. Augustus Heinze) created the famous era of the “Copper Kings,” a Gilded Age drama of wealth, political influence, corporate consolidation, and bitter competition. The Anaconda company eventually became a titan of American mining and metallurgy, directing huge flows of capital and employment for decades. 

The Anaconda complex and the Butte mining district were not just economic engines — they were political ones. Copper money built mansions, funded newspapers and politicians, and shaped Montana’s state politics for generations. At the same time, the concentrated ownership of mines created the tensions that fed militant unionism and recurrent strikes. 

A mosaic of immigrants, neighborhoods, and cultures

The mines drew labor from around the world. In waves across the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Irish, Cornish, Finnish, Eastern European, Italian, Serbian, and other immigrant groups arrived, drawn by steady wages and work underground. Butte’s population was unusually diverse for an inland mountain city: it had one of the largest Irish communities in the U.S., a significant Cornish mining presence (bringing pasties and mining know-how), and a once-thriving Chinese quarter among other enclaves. That mix made Butte cosmopolitan in its way — a complex patchwork of clubs, churches, mutual aid societies, and ethnic businesses that softened life’s hazards while also shaping political loyalties. 

The city’s physical layout reflected social divisions: “uptown” brick storefronts and mansions; “the Hill” of boarding houses, sloped streets and mine entrances; and Walkerville and Anaconda as allied industrial towns connected by rail. Churches, benefit societies, and cultural halls anchored each group. 

Labor, strikes, and the “Gibraltar of Unionism”

If industry made the town, labor defined it. Butte’s mining workforce was heavily organized from early on: the Butte Miners’ Union and later the Western Federation of Miners (WFM, formed in Butte in 1893) helped build an unusually dense ecosystem of trade unions. Observers dubbed Butte the “Gibraltar of Unionism” because of the sheer number, size, and militancy of its unions. The unions fought for wages, safety, and recognition — and they repeatedly clashed with company power, local politics, and, eventually, national wartime pressures. 

Tensions exploded at moments. The Speculator (Granite Mountain) Mine disaster of June 8, 1917 — a fire and collapse that suffocated 168 miners — remains the deadliest single underground hard-rock mining accident in U.S. history and a grim index of the hazards miners faced. The wartime period also saw violent confrontations between the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), company-hired agents, and local enforcement. In August 1917, IWW organizer Frank Little was kidnapped and lynched in Butte, a notorious episode that underscored how fraught labor organizing could become when mixed with patriotism, corporate pressure, and local factionalism. The 1917 miners’ strike and its aftermath were pivotal in shaping modern labor relations in the region. 

The environmental cost: Berkeley Pit and the Superfund era

Decades of extraction left an unmistakable environmental bill. The most visible remnant is the Berkeley Pit — a massive open-pit copper mine that, when active, was one of the world’s great engineered scars. When pumps keeping groundwater out were shut off in 1982, the pit began to fill with water that leached heavy metals and acid from exposed rock. The Berkeley Pit and the broader Silver Bow Creek–Butte mining district were eventually listed as part of a major Superfund cleanup (the national priority list) in the 1980s; the cleanup and monitoring continue today because the water chemistry remains hazardous to life and the surrounding ecosystems. Scientists, regulators, and community groups have worked for decades to stabilize risks (including bird-protection programs and a water treatment system), but the Pit remains a potent symbol of the costs of industrial-scale mining. 

The environmental story is not only technical but social: Superfund cleanup involves complicated questions about who pays, how remediation affects local identity and economy, and how a community with deep ties to mining balances heritage with health. In Butte, cleanup projects intersect with efforts to preserve historic buildings and promote tourism, making the town a test case for post-industrial restoration. 

Decline, consolidation, and the late 20th century

After the mid-20th century, the mining industry in Butte gradually consolidated and then contracted. World markets, ore depletion, corporate mergers, and technological change reduced local employment. The Anaconda Copper Company, once dominant, declined and ultimately left the region’s economy altered. By the early 1980s the cessation of large-scale underground pumping caused groundwater to rebound — creating the Berkeley Pit crisis — and the last major mine closures in the 1980s dramatically shrank the population and employment base. Butte’s fortunes were no longer tied to megamine payrolls; the community had to reimagine its economic base while wrestling with its legacy infrastructure and pollution. 

Preservation, tourism, and memory

Rather than vanish, Butte leaned into its past. The Butte–Anaconda Historic District is one of the most extensive National Historic Landmark districts in the United States, recognized for its extraordinary concentration of mining, industrial, and labor-related sites. The city has preserved mansions, union halls, churches, Chinatown remnants, and mining artifacts; institutions like the Butte-Silver Bow archives, the Clark Chateau, the Mai Wah Museum (which interprets Chinese-American history), and guided tours interpret the city’s layered past for visitors and scholars. That preservation ethic — and the town’s willingness to tell both the heroic and the tragic parts of its story — has turned Butte into a destination for heritage tourism, labor historians, and students of industrial transformation. 

Today you can ride a trolley through Uptown Butte, tour mine sites, visit the Berkeley Pit observation plaza, and attend cultural festivals that celebrate the city’s Irish, Cornish, Slavic, and other heritages. The result is a community that embraces a complicated identity: proud of its industrial past, realistic about its environmental burdens, and creative in finding ways to reuse and reframe its built environment. 

Why Butte matters

Butte’s arc — rapid extraction-based growth, corporate and political power, militant unionism, industrial disaster, environmental degradation, and contested preservation — compresses many themes of American modernity into a single place. It illuminates how natural resources drive economic development, how labor and capital shape lives and laws, and how communities navigate the aftermath of industry. Butte remains both a cautionary tale and a living laboratory for ideas about remediation, historical memory, and economic reinvention. 

Selected sources and further reading

Britannica — Butte, Montana overview. Encyclopedia Britannica

National Park Service — Butte–Anaconda Historic District and labor history resources. National Park Service

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — Background on the Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund site. US EPA

Marcus Daly biography / Anaconda history (Britannica). Encyclopedia Britannica

Butte-Silver Bow official history & cultural pages. 

PitWatch / Berkeley Pit community resources and education. 

Story of Butte / university theses and archival materials on the 1917 strike and labor movement.