108 GUIDEBOOK OF THE WESTERN UNITED STATES. 
the city twinkling through the smoke and haze, but in the daylight 
all beauty disappears. 
en the smelters were pouring out their destructive fumes there 
was not a spear of grass nor a green leaf visibie, but now most of the 
ore is smelted at Anaconda and Great Falls, and the valley is gradually 
recovering some of its vegetation. Of the city itself perhaps no 
better description can be given than that contained in ‘Along the 
scenic highway,’’ a pamphlet issued by the Northern Pacific Co.: 
Butte is unique among the cities of the world, * * possessing all the united 
- wealth of its tremendous copper deposits, with thousands of well- paid miners. With 
a large and growing trade in commercial lines, it is an odd and interesting combina- 
tion of frontier mining camp and modern city, smoke-begrimed manufacturing point, 
and an orderly, well-kept residential center. Itisa city of glaring, violent contrasts, 
where money seems quite the easiest thing to obtain, where men work furiously and 
spend the proceeds of their labor with open hand, where the fine instincts of modern 
city life struggle constantly with the old order of things, and where the mining camp 
and twentieth-century municipality have been mixed into one rugged mass but have 
not yet quite blended. Butte boasts with reason 2m it is the greatest mining camp 
in the world and may with equal reason boast of its achieve rm city. 
The positions of the famous copper mines are indicated by the 
great shaft buildings and tall smokestacks in and about the town. 
Underground the rocks are honeycombed with workings, and day 
and night, without sage the work goes on at depths which in 
some of the mines reach 3,000 feet. Up to the present time the 
value of the metal aE: of the district has reached the enormous 
us of over $1,000,000,000. The ore is found in the granite, jor: 
he highly | mineralized rocks are confined to an area only a 
oa miles in extent. The mining conditions are described te 
by B.S. Butler.’ 
' Butte was at first a placer camp, and 
the district was named the Summit Val- 
ley district on account of its nearness to 
the Continental Divide. This is still the 
official name of what is commonly called 
the Butte district. iscovered 
time Marcus Daly arrived in the district 
and began operations in the Alice mine. 
The camp developed rapidly, and for 
— years these two gun Lenks <e 
The district continued to be a las pro- 
in gravel near the present site of Main 
Street in 1864, and in the next few years 
the district produced gold to the value 
of about $1,500,000. i 
were being operated, efforts were made 
to work the quartz veins for silver, but 
peostie snecee.” About 1875, however, 
tS tO 
panes the Dexter 10-stamp mill was erected. 
but important production did not begin 
till 1876, when the mill was completed 
by W. A. Clark, later — States Sen- 
ator from Montana. t the same 
ducer of silver ore until the decrease in 
price of that metal in 1893 caused many 
companies in Butte, as elsewhere in the 
West, to cease operations. 
The presence of copper minerals was 
noted in the district probably as rath as 
placer gold or the silver veins, but un 
existing conditions there was little in- 
ducement for 
attempts to smelt the copper ores were 
made in 1866, and early in the seventies 
some copper ore was hauled 400 miles to 
