Butte's Underground Mines

By editor

Butte, Silver Bow County, Montana

Now, if you ever find yourself in Butte, Montana, which is quite likely if you have any taste for copper, calamity, or contradiction, you might be told that the underground mines here comprise the most extensive network of mine workings per square mile anywhere in the whole wide world. And that, strange as it sounds, is true. More than 10,000 miles of tunnels, shafts, drifts, crosscuts, and raises lie beneath a single hill -- a web of passageways so vast that if you laid them end-to-end, they'd stretch across the United States twice over. That’s not a boast; that’s a fact that makes your head spin faster than a compressed-air drill in a mining tunnel.

The hill itself is only about seven square miles, but what it lacks in surface area, it makes up in depth. Some of these underground workings run down more than 5,000 feet below the surface. To put that in perspective, the shaft of the Mountain Con Mine -- you can see its black headframe if you look up the hill just to your left -- is over a mile deep. So Butte is sometimes called a city "a mile high and a mile deep," a phrase that delights geologists and gives vertigo to the faint of heart.

The copper veins in this hill were so rich that the copper alone, if melted and cast, could pave a four-lane highway from Butte to a point 25 miles south of Salt Lake City with a four-inch layer of solid copper. Think about that the next time you drive on asphalt. And all of this came from an area scarcely larger than a small town. Over $51 billion in mineral wealth was extracted here, though the bulk of that figure comes from copper, the metal that wired the world and wired Butte itself into the fabric of modern industry and war.

There were at least 512 individual mines carved out of this hill, each with its own maze of tunnels and shafts. The vertical shafts alone stretched over 49 miles. At the peak of Butte’s mining days, the entire hill was a labyrinth alive with the sound of drills, the clatter of ore carts, and the murmur of men who came from every corner of the globe. The miners were a human patchwork quilt -- Cornishmen, Irish, Finns, Serbs, Croatians, Italians, and many others -- all drawn by the lure of copper and the hope of a better life. They worked eight- or ten-hour shifts in the sweltering heat of the deep tunnels, where temperatures could climb to 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the air thick and dripping with water. The drills hissed ceaselessly, powered by compressed air that rattled the bones and drowned out all but the loudest voices.

But the work was no picnic. The miners were paid by the day, not by the ton, which meant the mining companies wanted to keep them busy every minute, squeezing as much labor out of their wages as possible. It was a system that encouraged long hours and little rest, a fact that contributed to the staggering death toll. Over 2,300 men died instantly or within days from accidents in these mines, not counting the thousands more who succumbed to chronic illnesses caused by dust and toxic fumes, or those killed in related industries like milling, smelting, and railroad work.

One tragedy stands above all others for sheer heartbreak and horror: the Speculator Mine disaster on June 8, 1917. It was the worst hard-rock mining disaster in American history. A fire started in the main shaft of the Speculator Mine, and despite desperate efforts, it spread rapidly through the tunnels. Men were trapped deep underground. Some survived by sealing themselves into bulkheads, airtight compartments designed to keep out smoke and poisonous gases while they waited for rescue teams. Others were not so fortunate and were overcome by carbon monoxide before help could reach them. The final death toll was 163 men, many of them recent immigrants who had journeyed thousands of miles with the hope of a better life and found only death in a dark hole.

Local newspapers of the time carried chilling accounts. The Butte Miner reported, "The flames swept through the shafts with such fury that rescue efforts were hampered at every turn. Men below fought to the bitter end, stoic in the face of unimaginable terror." The disaster exposed the dangerous working conditions and led to increased calls for mine safety reforms, though such reforms came slowly and often too late for many.

Despite these dangers, the mines powered on through two world wars. During both, Butte’s copper mines were vital to the Allied war effort -- supplying the wire for electrical grids, shell casings for artillery, and the communications equipment that kept armies coordinated on foreign battlefields. The hill that had been so deadly was also, paradoxically, a wellspring of the materials that shaped the 20th century.

By the mid-20th century, the nature of mining in Butte began to change. Underground mining gradually gave way to open-pit mining, which was considered safer and more economical. The Berkeley Pit, an enormous open-pit copper mine, began operations in 1955 and eventually consumed much of the old underground workings. The pit grew so large that it became one of the largest human-made holes in the world. However, the closure of the underground mines and the eventual shutdown of the Berkeley Pit in 1982 marked the end of an era. The pit soon filled with toxic water, turning into an environmental hazard that remains a challenge decades later.

The story of Butte’s underground mines is not just one of riches and industry but also a tale of the men who risked and often lost their lives beneath the earth. It is a story of human endurance, of the grinding forces of capitalism, and of the relentless pursuit of wealth buried deep in the Montana hills. As one mining engineer put it, "Butte is a place where the earth gives up its treasures only at a terrible price." The hill yielded its copper, but it also exacted a heavy toll in blood and sweat.

So if you visit Butte today and gaze at the old headframes silhouetted against the sky, remember that beneath your feet lies a sprawling city of tunnels, a subterranean world where thousands toiled in silence, where fortunes were made and lives were lost, and where the relentless chase for copper carved a mile-high and a mile-deep mark on American history.

See also

• Butte's Underground Mines at Butte, Silver Bow County
• Butte Mining Through the Years at Butte, Silver Bow County
• Organized Labor at Butte, Silver Bow County