Copper Mines and other Butte adventures

I apologize for the lack of blogging. My job keeps me pretty busy now seven days a week so I'm also slacking in my New Year's resolution to explore more of Montana. But sometimes my job is a pretty good adventure in itself. In the past month without even leaving Butte I've seen some crazy stuff and learned some crazy stuff too.

Butte is a big mining town. Has a long history of it and still does it today with open pit mining. I went into the active mine for a story. They've got some verrrrry large equipment in that mine.

The tires on these trucks are bigger than a large SUV. And in the next picture the white piece of equipment is called a shovel.

To me a shovel has always been a very small thing that people use to dig up some dirt or when you're a kid you have a nice neon colored plastic one to play in the sand with at the beach. So needless to say I learned something haha. And I even got to go into the shovel and watch it in action. Video here.

So my job that day was a very big adventure. Another recent adventure, taking a historic walking town of Uptown Butte. For those who don't know, Butte is the largest Historic District in the country. The tours have been around since 2004 and take you to a speakeasy from prohibition years, an old jail, barbershop and more.

Inside this jail the guide talked about how the city county of Butte-Silver Bow actually has the most fallen law enforcement officers of any other county in Montana. Interesting, especially since a day before a statewide parade honoring the 119 fallen Montana officers was held in Butte. So I learned that fact during the parade and also learned that while the area has the most fallen officers, it hasn't lost one since 1937. Basically Butte was a pretty rough town early on haha.


But anyways, the jail and everything else is underground because the population of Butte used to be 100,000 plus so they had to utilize all the space they could, even underground. Well, the owner of the tour company was clearing out a basement in one of the old buildings and found a ton of stuff that led to even more discoveries. Including a room where what he calls "ladies of the night" would take men back in the 1800's to do ummm ladies of the night stuff. He says it looks like no one has been in the room for 100 years, especially since the staircase to get to it no longer existed and he had to build a staircase to get to the room. 1800's wallpaper still hangs on the walls.

So while I haven't had the chance to get out of Butte much to really explore I've had several chances to explore the mining city.