BUTTE

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.

Scott Apartments & Original Mine Haadframe

Originally built to house miners, the building has been completely rehabilitated today. The shot was taken in 1989, six years after all the mines closed in a single day.

Main & Wollman Streets, Stewart Mine Headframe

West Woolman Street Home, Car & Stewart Mine

Railroad traffic as well as mine head frames dominated the hill. The shot was taken from underneath one of the underpasses of the railway, which would bring the R from the mine to the smelter which by 1916 went to Anaconda 14 miles away.

It's easy to imagine the noise which was a 24/7 symphony of whistles, bells, horns, ore being dumped, explosions in the mine underneath the neighborhood as notre tunnels and ore is blated.

A hard rock mining town like no other.

Kelly Mine and the Flats

At the base The Continental Divide and Butte Hill with Uptown and most of the population, on its slope, is a large area called The Flats. The airport is located here and newer housing along with shopping malls, now rivaling the population of Uptown. At one time the area has smelter for the oral big mind up the hill.

Badger State Headframe

Badger State Mine Hoist House - Winch & Depth Counter

The hoist man had a major responsibility and a challenge, manually reading the depth chart.

The picture taken in 1989 shows a little bit of graffiti, and also gives you a good idea of the primitive of nature of the elevator system hauling men in these minds. The operator was a very important worker.

Badger State Mine Hoist Motor

The shell of the motor still exists and all the copper has been stripped out of it, of course.

Badger State Mine Headframe in Moonlight

Granite Mountain Mine Headframe in Moonlight

This mine was where the worst mining disaster in the city's history took place. The mine fire that occurred in 1917 killed 168 men.

The ground directly around Granite Mountain was weakened from beneath. Over decades, it settled. So now the headframe stands halfway up its own little depression like a lighthouse that the sea eroded around.

The headframe was planted on solid, high ground, because that’s where the ore led them.

Then the earth got chewed up, creating a giant bowl with the mine headframe sitting in its own depression.

A hundred-plus years of underground voids, caving, subsidence, waste dumping, and later open-cut pushes re-shaped the whole damn hill.
Think of Butte Hill like a loaf of bread somebody mined from the inside — take enough slices out of the interior, the crust sinks, sags, slumps, pulls apart.

Granite Mountain Mine Headframe in Moonlight

Granite Mountain Mine Headframe in Moonlight

Granite Mountain Mine Elevator

The granite Mountain mine went down 3900 feet. These single person elevators were used mainly for maintenance and supply purposes.

The main hoisted cages for miners were large and could contain 6 to 20 individuals, or more. Although those were entirely scrapped.

Loading Platfrorm & Badger State Mine, Along the Butte, Anaconda & Pacific Short Line Rail Line Railroad in Moonlight

By the early 1900s this area of Montana was a well oiled mineral machine. The infrastructure lasted until 1983 and included. The Anaconda works, 14 miles away, is where, by 1916, all the ore went out on the railroads to the Washshoe Reduction Works in Anaconda.

Switch & Boulder, Along the Butte, Anaconda & Pacific Short Line Railroad in Moonlight

Abandoned Sluices on Top of the Hill in Moonlight

100 years before this picture was taken the mind. Head frames were basically on level land at the top of the hill. The hell itself became granite, Swiss cheese, and the combination of collapsing land, mine waist, and or production produced this sort of landscape that the moon exposure for 90 minutes might enhance.

Abandoned Hopper, Extreme Toxic Site

In the upper portion of the mining district, surrounded by abandoned head frames, is a particularly toxic zone with the usual leachates, but, also, with warning signs, PCBs, etc.

Transformers leaked PCB-laden oil into soil for decades

Pumps and generators were bathed in the same oils some hoist houses had PCB oils in hydraulic systems soil around electrical infrastructure got saturated, waste oil drums were dumped or punctured
Rain pulled everything downhill into the low areas.

Arsenic, copper tailings.
acidic mine drainage, residue
lead, old petroleum spill zones, oxidized sulfides that turn the ground into battery acid and mitigation slowly began in 1989 with Butte being declared a super fun site, meaning nothing had been done to mitigate toxins as the mines ran for over 150 years, finally closing for good in 1983.

The Bell Diamond Headframe, Approaching Fog in Moonlight

Well, into a 90 minute time exposure with moonlight fog came in from the north, over the Yankee Doodle Tailings area and down into the mining area at 3:00 am. Get to a place where we are not trusting what's happening.

Leachate Pond Above Berkley Pit

Leachate & Bell Diamond Headframe Reflectiom

Yankee Doodle Tailings Site, Above the Butte Hill Mining Area 1

Located north of the Berkeley Pit at the base of Rampart Mountain, the Yankee Doodle Tailings Pond is sometimes colloquially know as “Acid Lake”, which is something of a misnomer, as the pond is actually less acidic than wastewater from elsewhere on the Butte Hill due to differences in geochemistry. Tailings from current Montana Resources mining operations in Butte are discharged here. The pond was created through the construction of a rockfill dam on Yankee Doodle and Silver Bow Creeks, completed in 1972. At 174 meters (about 575 feet, and rising), the dam is the 10th highest in the U.S. - Wiki

Yankee Doodle Tailings Site, Above the Butte Hill Mining Area 2

In the upper portion of the mining district, another view of the tailings site - the debris left over from mining.

Butte is one of the most arsenic laden places in America and, it is home to arsenic trioxide, arcenopyrite, pyrite residue, and arsenic bound sulfites. But we cannot forget lead, copper, tailings, zinc, cadmium, mercury, sulfuric acid, soils, petroleum, and lubricant waste, PCBs, cyanide traces, asbestos, nitrate residue, radon, and uranium traces.

Fourplex Apartment Houses, South Idaho Street

The picture was taken in 1989 when Butte looked exactly like any Rus Beltl town. As we now know those cities never fully expired, and, during their downfall, half stayed.

Home & Apartment House, North Jackson Street

Midnight, January, 1989, - 10 degrees. During these times, Duke looked exactly like any rustbelt down back east, with abandonment and occupation, living side-by-side.

Homes, Dublin Gulch, Moonlit

One of the oldest neighborhoods in Butte, obviously Irish, has very few existing structures.

In Ireland when you were sent off, or you decided to migrate to Dublin Gulch, you were told to look for the seven stacks of the Neversweat, at the time the most dominant landmark in Butte. It's seven smokestacks spit out huge plumes of black smoke 24/7 over Dublin Gulch in particular.

Home & Burnt Apartment House, East Granite Street

A large part of the far east side of Butte was chewed up and replaced by the Berkeley pit. These two structures lie just below the pit where most of the homes, shops and bars began to disappear when the pit was built in the 1950s.