Into the Pit

This is the toughest, bawdiest town in America ... By night it has a certain inferno-like magnificence. By day it is one of the ugliest places I have ever seen.

Butte has changed a lot since the late John Gunther described Montana's mineral capital in his 1946 book Inside U.S.A. The gambling joints and the whorehouses that once lined "Venus Alley" have disappeared. But the ugliness remains. In the years following World War II, Butte had a raw look because it was a boom town. Today it is shabby because it is dying. For the past two decades, the Anaconda Company's immense Berkeley pit has been slowly nibbling away one section of the hilltop city after another. Now the pit, a gaping, terraced ulcer 7,200 ft. long, a mile wide and 1,500 ft. deep, has begun to eat into the town's business district. By 1985, say some resigned residents, Butte as a city could simply cease to exist.

Eminent Domain. Butte was originally settled by gold prospectors, but it owes its development--and recent decline--to copper. In 1882, a prospector named Marcus Daly found a 5-ft. vein of 30% pure copper ore while searching for silver. Daly's discovery touched off a wild scramble for the precious ore, which was eventually won by Anaconda. By 1910, the company owned the rights to the minerals underlying 90% of the city. It also held the right of eminent domain, which allows it to buy up any sur face property that stands in the way of its operations.

For years, mining brought prosperity to Butte. Employment was high, amenities abundant; because of the availability of copper wire, most houses in Butte had electricity by 1890. But the cost was high. Pollution fouled streams and scarred mountainsides. By the mid-1940s, Butte's high-grade ore thinned out, forcing the company to increasingly undermine the town in its search for copper. By 1955, when the decreasing quality of the ore made even those operations uneconomical, Anaconda turned to cheaper open-pit mining.

The huge machines used in open-pit operations replaced many miners. Then the machines began digging into Butte itself. First opened just to the south of the city, the ever-growing Berkeley pit has swallowed neighborhoods with names like Dublin Gulch and Sin Town; since 1970, it has devoured most of the city's residential McQueen section. Currently, it is chewing away at downtown Butte. Meanwhile, a second pit, begun in 1973, has destroyed the Columbia Gardens amusement center and the city's only sizable park. With the remaining ore reserves due to run out in a decade, the next step would be to dig into the rest of the mineral-rich hill on which the city stands. As yet, the company, which is itself facing financial problems and has actually been losing money on its Butte operations, has not decided the fate of the hill. Says Anaconda's Montana mining chief Leonard Powell: "We don't know yet if we'll want it. There are too many variables."

Meanwhile, the impact of the mine's encroachment continues to spread. Butte's population, which stood at 80,000 during the boom early in the century, has plummeted to 24,000 as many citizens fled in search of employment. More than 50 businesses have deserted the once-stylish uptown district since open-pit mining began. With the exception of one small bank building, no major construction has taken place in Butte since 1962. Arson has become common as people who are unable to sell their devalued buildings burn them for the insurance.

No Answer. Butte's few remaining boosters have not been able to come up with any realistic answer to the city's dilemma. If Anaconda were to abandon its operations in Butte and lay off its 3,000 employees there, the economic impact on the city would be devastating. Searching for a solution, the leaders of twelve Butte companies formed a nonprofit organization to look into the possibility of relocating the threatened business district, and even found three suitable sites on the flatlands south and west of the city. But they have been unable to figure out how to raise the $115 million or more that it will cost to make the move. "It's ironic," says Butte Retailer Dan O'Neill. "Mining created this town and mining is going to destroy it."

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