For over a century, the mines, mills, and smelters of Butte and Anaconda, Montana supplied a large part of the copper required for the electrification of the nation and for the two World Wars.  Gold prospectors discovered the minerals in the 1860s.  Copper mining began in earnest in the 1880s after railroads had reached this remote region.  For most of its history, mining was confined to the high-grade underground veins of ore which crisscrossed Butte Hill.  What started as the rough-and-tumble miners’ camp of Butte City grew into the large, modern city of Butte.  Marcus Daley, one of the legendary copper magnates of Butte, established the city of Anaconda when he built a smelter there in 1883.  The company owned Butte, Anaconda, and Pacific Railroad was created to haul the ore from the mines, 26 miles away, to the smelter.  By the 1930s, the Anaconda smelting works had grown into the largest metal processing complex in the world.  In addition to the copper, lead, zinc, silver, and gold were produced in large quantities, along with smaller amounts of a host of minor metals as byproducts and coproducts.

Thousands of immigrants migrated to Butte from all over the planet.  They established a network of distinctly ethnic neighborhoods.  The many mines and their operating companies eventually were consolidated to form the Anaconda Copper Mining Company. After years of periodic labor unrest, strong trade unions were established which set a standard for many other mining districts throughout the West.

After World War II, as the rich ores began to be depleted, the Anaconda company switched to bulk mining of lower grade ores.  Eventually all underground mining stopped and production came from the gigantic Berkeley Pit.  The ultra-modern Anaconda Concentrator was constructed adjacent to the pit to process the ore.  In 1982, Anaconda closed its Butte and Anaconda, Montana operations.  Mining continues in the area but on a much smaller scale than Butte’s heyday.  Montana Resources operates its Continental Mine, east of the now flooded Berkeley Pit, and processes its ore in the Anaconda Concentrator.

There is so much to see in what is now the Butte-Anaconda National Historic District that this virtual tour provides just an overview.  Photo Galleries 3 and 4 contain photos taken during the MHA conference in Butte in 2001.  Few other photos have survived.  To show some of the additional areas visited during that conference, most of the photos in Galleries 1 and 2 were taken in 2011 at the time of the Dillon, Montana conference.  More information about the History of Butte and Anaconda is available on the web pages for the 2001 Mining History Association Annual Conference.