Big Sky Fishing Gallery - Butte Panorama

Looking East from hills at Montana Tech.

Butte is located in the southwestern quadrant of Montana, at the junction between Interstate Highways 15 and 90. Helena, the State Capital, lies 106 km to the north, and Dillon, Montana, 91 km to the south. Spokane, Washington, the nearest major metropolitan center, is 490 km to the west.

Butte is situated in the Summit Valley, an intermontane valley at an elevation of 1,800 meters (5,400 feet), flanked by the Continental Divide 6 km to the northeast. The area is drained by Silver Bow Creek, which flows west into the Warm Springs Ponds where, together with other tributaries, it forms the headwaters of the Clark Fork River. The Clark Fork, in turn, drains into the Columbia River.

Although the surrounding mountains are heavily timbered, the immediate city area is rather bleak and desolate. Fumes from smelter operations 100 years ago destroyed much of the local natural vegetation. It is still recovering. The climate is mild and pleasant during the summer months. Winters can be long and bitterly cold. Temperatures as low as -49 deg F have been recorded. Snowfall is moderate compared to that in the adjacent mountains.

Butte, a community of about 30,000, sprawls over the flats below and across the south-facing slope of a large, bare hill called Butte Hill. Not so very long ago, mines like the Emma, Original, and others actually operated within the uptown area. City dwellers went to sleep to the screech of sheave wheels and the roar of broken ore falling into bins. Trains of the Butte, Anaconda, and Pacific Railroad rumbled through town 24 hours a day, delivering ore to the concentrators and smelters at Anaconda and Great Falls. The suburb of Walkerville, northwest of Butte, lies around and near the silver mines of the Rainbow vein system. Some old specimen labels still bear that name. Another suburb called Meaderville, northeast of the city, was largely eradicated by the growth of the Berkeley Pit (Kearney, 1998; Watkins, 2000; Marcus, 2000).

The business and exploits of Butte have always centered on mining and, particularly, on the mining of one metal-copper. But things did not begin that way. Butte effectively began in 1864 as a gold camp and then a silver camp long before its miners gave serious thought to the red metal.