BUTTE – Real Still

Buttte. I love this city. That’s all I have to say, but, just to let you know it’s a view on a remarkable industrial city. That was the biggest producer of copper in the world at one time. The mines and the head frames still exist, along with the neighborhoods that surround them. All the minds and head frames are pretty much documented, including the Belle Diamond, the Original, the Stewart, the Badger, the Granite Mountain Mine, the Kelly, mine along with my infrastructure on the surface like rail lines. Butte’s bars and shops – the M &M, Club 13 and the Grand Hotel are looked at. You can read the Introduction to Butte, here.

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The Bell Diamond Mine 11/89

The Bell Diamond headframe was constructed in 1898. Bought by Anaconda Copper in 1895. The Damond Mine itself was named for the configuration of the claim stakes in 1879. It eventually linked up with the Belle Line which was 1/10 of a mile away and all the order was brought up through a single shaft and head frame.

The mine, dug to the 3500 ft.level, shutdown in 1938

The East Side Mines & Neighborhoods on the Richest Hill on Earth

Headframes are surrounded by residential neighborhoods, with a rainbow and the continental divide in the distance. The elevation and northern location made it extremely cold during the winter months. However, the minds were always warm.

The small head frame in the background where the rainbow touches, is part of the Kelly Mine is one of the oldest head frames, built in 1916, and, by far is the smallest headframe in Butte.

The Kelly Mine, Headframe & City

The Kelly was the last mine to be developed in Butte. It was built in 1949 and closed in 1980.

Cornelius Francis Kelley came to Butte, MT from Mineral Hill, NV in 1883 at the age of eight. He worked as a water boy on the Butte Hill and part time as a nipper–essentially, a delivery boy of machinery to the miners–underground at the Anaconda Mine.

It wasn’t long before he worked in the engineering department and worked his way up the corporate ladder. In 1918, Kelley got the name from the President for the Anaconda Copper Mining Company.

By 1949, Cornelius opened the Kelley mine when the demand for copper increased after World War II. He saw this as the adaptive solution to the economic conditions at the time. Towards the end of its life, it was the last underground mine still in operation before closing its shafts in 1974.

The mines main production was Lead, Copper, Silver, and Zinc, but does not disclude the countless other mineral mixtures that can also be found. It is also famous for the rare variety of blue smithsonite that can only be found here in Kelly. The history is as rich as the variety of material discoverable here.

The Kelley has three shafts and two headframes, the larger the tallest on the hill. Even the mining process itself took on new proportions with block-caving mining techniques, which increased production to over 15,000 tons a day.

The first Kelly head frame is still on site. It is quite small and was erected in 1906.

Leachate

Copper leacahate combines with water at the surface. Until the late 1990s, basically, nothing organic could grow on the Hill, even the neighborhoods.

The Hill was devoid of green for over a century.

Home & Apartment Building, East Granite Street

Much of the east side of Butte was sacrificed for the huge open pit mine that began in the 1950s. This landscape shows the edge of the pit behind the homes. Obviously, it became an area of low real estate values, but true to the Butte character, people remained after the complete closure of all the mining operations in 1983. The photograph was taken in 1989.