The history of the Chinese migrants in Butte is documented in the Mai Wah Museum. The business owners fought back by suing the unions and winning. There was anti-Chinese sentiment in the 1870s and onwards due to racism on the part of the white settlers, exacerbated by economic depression, and in 1895, the chamber of commerce and labor unions started a boycott of Chinese owned businesses. The Chinese migrations stopped in 1882 with the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act. īutte courthouse and additional buildings, 1885Īmong the migrants were many Chinese who set up businesses that created a Chinatown in Butte. In the ethnic neighborhoods, young men formed gangs to protect their territory and socialize into adult life, including the Irish of Dublin Gulch, the Eastern Europeans of the McQueen Addition, and the Italians of Meaderville. The mines attracted workers from Cornwall (England), Ireland, Wales, Lebanon, Canada, Finland, Austria, Italy, China, Montenegro, Mexico, and more. Farlin founded the Asteroid Mine (subsequently known as the Travona) Farlin's founding of the Asteroid Mine attracted a significant number of prospectors seeking gold and silver. The city is located in the Silver Bow Creek Valley (or Summit Valley), a natural bowl sitting high in the Rockies straddling the Continental Divide, positioned on the southwestern side of a large mass of granite known as the Boulder Batholith, which dates to the Cretaceous era.
Prior to Butte's formal establishment in 1864, the area consisted of a mining camp that had developed in the early 1860s. Main article: History of Butte, Montana Early history and immigrants The city is also home to Montana Technological University, a public engineering and technical university. The city's Uptown Historic District, on the National Register of Historic Places, is one of the largest National Historic Landmark Districts in the United States, containing nearly 6,000 contributing properties. In the 21st century, efforts at interpreting and preserving Butte's heritage are addressing both the town's historical significance and the continuing importance of mining to its economy and culture. In the late-twentieth century, cleanup efforts from the EPA were instated, and the Butte Citizens Technical Environmental Committee was established in 1984. Over the course of its history, Butte's mining and smelting operations generated in excess of $48 billion worth of ore, but also resulted in numerous environmental implications for the city: The upper Clark Fork River, with headwaters at Butte, is the largest Superfund site in the United States, and the city is also home to the Berkeley Pit. Other major events in the city's history include the 1917 Speculator Mine disaster, the largest hard rock mining disaster in world history. Despite the dominance of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, Butte was never a company town. īutte was also the site of various historical events involving its mining industry and active labor unions and Socialist politics, the most famous of which was the labor riot of 1914. Employment opportunities in the mines attracted surges of Asian and European immigrants, particularly the Irish as of 2017, Butte has the largest population of Irish Americans per capita of any city in the United States. In its heyday between the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, it was one of the largest copper boomtowns in the American West.
The city used to be home to many mines, especially copper, mines, such as the Anaconda Copper Mine.Įstablished in 1864 as a mining camp in the northern Rocky Mountains on the Continental Divide, Butte experienced rapid development in the late-nineteenth century, and was Montana's first major industrial city.
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It is served by Bert Mooney Airport with airport code BTM. The city covers 718 square miles (1,860 km 2), and, according to the 2010 census, has a population of 33,503, making it Montana's fifth largest city. In 1977, the city and county governments consolidated to form the sole entity of Butte-Silver Bow. Butte is the county seat of Silver Bow County, Montana, United States.