We arrived in Butte Montana and found our KOA RV Park is located right next door to the Visitor Information Center and it’s an easy walk from our camp site through some bushes. This turned out to be convenient because we signed up for Trolley Tour of Butte to start the day and all we had to do was walk there from our RV.
Tour of Butte, Mt in Trolley
It turned out the 22 people on this tour was us, another couple who lives 6 months in Venice, Florida and six months in Michigan, and 18 people having a family reunion. You can imagine we were a lively group.
We had no idea, but Butte is basically all about mining and has been since 1880’s which is very reminiscent of Houghton, Michigan in the UP that we visited last year. Butte took over in copper production as Houghton was ebbing its production, using its open pit mining technique became safer and was used until 1982. At its peak, Butte was a city of over 100,000 people including mine workers, families and all the ancillary services needed. Today, Butte has a population of around 33,000.
Landscape of Butte from hill near Berkeley Pit Mine
We started our tour at the Berkley Pit which was originally an underground mine that converted after WWII to open pit and functioned until 1982. This was once the largest truck-operated open pit copper mine in the US. After the underground pumps were shut off, the pit began to fill up creating this lake.
There are stories of wealth, power and corruption during the early 1900’s and big beautiful mansions that were built during that era but my favorite sight on the tour was the World Museum of Mining with over 50 structures including the 100 foot headframe of the Orphan Girl Mine and a re-creation of a mining camp. We were able to walk to the top of the headframe, or gallows as they are sometime called and actually see how the ore got out of the mine and how the men and supplies got in and out. There are 7 of these headframes around the city as a reminder of the town’s background. Our tour guide told us that this symbol is used on T-shirts, jewelry and some people actually use it as a tattoo, which seems like a bit much to me, but oh well.
Re-creation of a mining town in Montana at the turn of the century
Gallows of Orphan Mine
Cars that were used to transport, ore and supplies into mines
Skips & Chips carried men into mines
The museum sits on the campus of Montana Tech of the University of Montana where Engineering, Science and Mathematics are its main focus with an emphasis on mining. Years back some students, after some beers I suspect, decided to go up to the highest mountain peak near the school and created a large “M” in rocks and then whitewashed them so they could be seen from the city. Later students used their knowledge to illuminate the “M” so it could be seen at night and even put in the mechanism to only illuminate the “V” in the middle when their team wins. We got this picture of the “M” from out campsite at night.
Just as we left the museum and campus, it started to rain with significant winds so we decided to call it day.
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