THE NORTHERN PACIFIC ROUTE, 
109 
In the early days Butte, like the other mining camps of Montana, 
suffered greatly from the lack of transportation facilities, as the 
only way to get supplies was to have them brought up the Missouri 
or Yellowstone River as far as steamboats could come and then by 
team over the mountains to the camp, and the metals produced had 
Corinne, Utah, whence it was shipped 
y rail to smelters in other parts of the 
country, 
The first successful smelter in this dis- 
trict was put into operation about 1880 
by the Colorado & Montana Smelting 
Co., and this was followed by a rapid de- 
plants were near Butte, but in 1883 the 
Anaconda Co. began the construction at 
Anaconda, in Deer Lodge Valley, about 
27 miles from Butte, of a plant which has 
become one of the largest copper smelters 
in the world, its capacity being 12,500 
tons of orea day. It was rebuilt in 1902 
at a cost of $7,500,000. About 1892 oe 
Great Falls, where the water power of the 
Missouri is available. At present there 
is but one smelter near Butte, that of the 
as led 
concentration, and the mill of the Butte 
Superior Co. has successfully demon- 
cigs the economic importance of these 
"The efforts to apply to the complex 
and enormously valuable veins oy Butte 
that provision of our w which 
permits the owner of the pee part 
(apex) of a vein to follow his ore under 
costly litigation, to an extent probably 
unequaled in the history of mining in 
other parts of the world. 
The Butte district has yielded more 
copper than any other district in the 
world, the total output to the close of 
_ 1913 being 6,154,196,000 pounds, or about 
one-third of the total copper output of the 
United States. It has produced also 
6,268,500 in gold, 275,119,000 ounces of 
silver, 11,300,000 pounds of lead, and 
181,540,000 pounds of zinc. The values 
of these"metals are as follows: 
Gold $26, 268, 500 
Silver. 191, 765, 300 
Copper 865, 794, 300 
Lea 513, 500 
Zine 12, 093, 600 
1, 096, 435, 200 
A large part of the output has come 
from an area of but a few square miles, 
which so far as value is concerned, has 
undoubtedly been the most productive 
metalliferous area of its size in the world. 
small quantities of the rarer metals have 
h Ce ers E 1 Pie, Baers cw: 
of the copper. 
The metallic deposits at Butte occur 
near the western border of an area of the 
been intruded by dikes of light-colored 
siliceous rocks known as aplite and rhyo- 
lite. The Big Butte and a large area 
northwest of it are composed of rhyolite 
that has risen thr 
The rocks in the vicinity of Butte have 
been broken by many faults and fissures, 
the greatest of which is the Continental 
fault, described on page Long before 
the break of the Continental fault and 
soon after the intrusion and solidification 
of the granite, the rocks were broken by 
one series eather asics cpu on 
general northwesterly d an 
direction. Water i in 
ment of the rock adjacent to the fissures. 
