Side Dish: The Butte, Montana Experience 8/14/12

On June 8, 1917, through the usual combination of incompetence, poor safety standards, and the perils of going to work in a dark, flammable hole, 168 miners lost their lives in what remains the deadliest event in the history of American hard-rock mining. Then and now, it is known as the Granite Mountain/Speculator Mine Disaster, and it came to define the ever-widening gap between management and labor in these United States. More specifically, it stands tall as a shining, pitifully sad example of what Butte, Montana is all about, and how through decades of dangerous, often thankless effort, America powered itself on the backs and bones of the working man. Now, before I launch into a particularly off-key version of The Internationale, let it be said that while we came to this bizarre, historically rich town to pay our respects to the grit and grime of the nameless and the faceless, we also came to have fun; at least as much fun as one can have while safely above ground and not choking to death on toxic fumes. And while we couldn't possibly explore every last corner of Butte, we'd spend a good part of our morning within earshot of what made this community hum and buzz for the better part of a century.

To be fair, a full accounting of Butte, Montana would have to include a semi-conscious bar crawl, sleeping with a prostitute, gambling away the rent, a tour of the Copper King Mansion, taking a bus up the Continental Divide to visit North America's largest Madonna, a ghost tour, and the punching of at least one Irishman. With only a few hours left to us on a hazy August morning, however, we had to be selective, so we stuck closely to the mining theme. This means, of course, a visit to the World Museum of Mining, which we had suspicions would be less about the controversies of labor conflicts and more a testament to the equipment and vigor of happy workers. On this score, we were not disappointed. For an admission price we couldn't help but think was a week's pay back in the day, we started off with the site's Hell Roarin' Gulch, the expected Potemkin village of recreations, diversions, and mind-numbing evasions. As we walked stupidly along the worn planks and dusty "streets", we encountered a tack shop, saloon, bath house, dentist, jail, and city hall, among other standard mining town facilities. Stripped of the pain and violence surrounding any and all camps of the time, the air was instead punctured by the giggles of young girls, all of whom were deeply immersed in panning for garnets, which one must assume were just this side of phony.

And while the actor portraying a fire-spitting labor radical calling for assorted heads was conspicuous by his absence, we did appreciate the inclusion of some standard mine imagery, which here amounted to a headframe (100-feet high!), ore bins, flat rope hoist, and a randomly placed pick-axe. No one was around to provide any context, but that's part of the museum's charm. If we had a guide, we might wonder why the focus was on process rather than the ever-present spectre of death. Thankfully, the village did include a Vietnam Wall of its own, a tribute to the 2,500+ lives lost to mining (in the Butte area alone!), making one wonder how we'd react if, say, white collar management ever carried this degree of daily risk. Here, though, is a living tribute to the Orphan Girl Mine (aptly named, I'd expect, given that few ladies could hope to have a living father in Butte), which operated from 1875 until 1956, producing as much as 7.5 million ounces of silver. It, like all other mines, ran 24/7, unless of course production had to stop while corpses were removed from the vicinity of treasure, or some uppity foreigner had the cheek to demand a living wage.

So while we learned precious little concerning labor activism and all-American exploitation, the museum did see fit to carry on a quite public doll fetish, which might have provided unintentional insight as to how the money interests viewed their employees. The faux town was littered with dolls - some broken, all filthy - most standing in for actual human beings that might scare away the tourists with their incessant coughing and assorted illnesses. Then, as if to flirt that much more with inexplicable randomness, there sat a room teeming with more dolls per square foot than any other spot in America. Sure, they had the standard varieties, but what the hell....why is that entire shelf filled with Star Trek characters? Or Planet of the Apes? And is that the doomed captain from the Titanic? The collection is impressive to be sure, but unless these things are to be sold at auction and the proceeds donated to some miner's medical bills, why the hell are they at a museum dedicated to working people? Anything, I suppose, to keep us from knowing that Butte was defined by alcoholism, VD, and murder for most of its history. What's that? Dead fathers and brothers? Look over there! The dolls! Ain't they cute?

From there, it's all about the historic town center, complete with roads so steep one wonders how anyone survives a single winter. The steepest, most extreme angle of all, though, was the road leading to the Memorial. While I have no proof, I must believe that the town fathers fought the inclusion of this "scar", if only because it contains reminders that Butte was founded on the union ideal, and that people as noble as Omar Bradley once stood shoulder to shoulder with those who fought against the working man. The Memorial, again, is a somber, heartbreaking piece of history, and while few remember the victims, it bears repeating that most were freshly scrubbed immigrants, much like those who do so much of our current work in the shadows - encouraged and supported in private, while damned and marginalized in the light of day. It is here, more than any musty museum, where the sacrifices of our true heroes are driven home, and just once, I'd like to see the same amount of country-first, patriotic gush surrounding Labor Day as we now devote to military veterans. Unless, of course, we also want to be reminded that the same soldiers we now pander to on a daily basis were often wielding the rifles that gunned down strikers, guilty only of wanting to feed their families.

After a much-needed commemoration, why not wrap it up with a poisonous pit? More specifically, the Berkeley Pit, an open wound of toxicity that threatens to envelop all of Butte in its murderous embrace. Just a quick drive from the Memorial, Berkeley Pit is what remains of the now-retired mining operations that took place from 1955 until 1982. Now, instead of extracting mineral riches, the hole is being pumped full of water not exactly ready for Deep Rock or Dasani. A combination of Horseshoe Bend drainage, stormwater flow, undergound mine workings, as well as the souls of the damned, the pit has the soothing appearance of a boat-ready reservoir, when in fact it might possibly kill on contact. No one seems to be willing to go on record with potential dangers and pitfalls, but for the $2 admission fee, one should expect some degree of candor. Maybe not. The pit itself is 1,780 feet deep (the water depth itself around 1,000 feet), with a width of 1.25 miles. There are over 40 billion gallons of water in the pit, adding 2.6 million gallons per day. At this rate, the damn thing will overflow its banks some time in the near future, thereby contaminating the area's ground water, but no one seems to be overly alarmed. Even when a migrating flock of snow geese landed on the water and died soon after in 1995, excuses were made and the town kept its promise to sell the pit as a loving ode to the mining industry. Though it remains a Superfund site (the water is a delightful mix of copper and cadmium, with an arsenic chaser), it's a source of great humor that Butte itself is not embarrassed by its presence.

Okay, so I didn't get blown in some back alley by Butte's oldest living madam. So we didn't eat bad food with bad people as dense smoke filled the air. And no, we didn't go into an actual copper mine (having done so in Bisbee, AZ, why spend the extra cash?). So why, then, come to Butte? Once one accepts American history as a largely untold story of men behaving badly, places like Butte take on a grandeur they otherwise would not deserve. Butte is, speaking frankly, a hateful town: a dirty, nasty, blood-soaked setting of sin and savagery that reflects the worst in our natures. Is it any wonder it's also the birthplace of Evel Knievel, our nation's most obnoxious, fists-first showman? So by all means, after you've tasted death and denial and all that comes with being a predatory city on a hill, wrap it up with a gravesite. Evel's gravesite, if you must know. He's Butte's favorite son, and also its most typical. He died as he lived, full of piss and plunder, out loud and in pieces. If he had to exist at all, it's best his blood ran red with the stink of his Montana ancestors. Tough, unyielding men, who knew all about the big con, and gave it their all in spite of the inevitable heartbreak.