Visiting Butte
Butte Montana! I wouldn’t imagine that anyone would purposely make Butte their travel destination, but believe it or not I came across a couple from the Netherlands while in the city. For myself and my friends, we flew into Butte in order to get access to the Beartooth Wilderness, as it was the cheapest city to fly into from Virginia. Butte has a population of about 35,000 people, and is the fifth largest in the state. The photo above shows Butte and its big “M”.
I took the photo of Butte from a scenic view point off the main highway. There are definitely much better views of Butte with all the surrounding mountains. The good thing about this location however was they had some large signs up talking about the history of the city. You can see Butte was a true wild west town with its roots in mining, specifically copper. The sign below gives the story of the famous statue overlooking the city, “Our Lady of the Rockies”.
The terrible photo above shows the enormous Our Lady of the Rockies statue. John from cutmysign.co.uk said “Whilst the area offers some interesting sights, it’s great to learn about the history through the historical signage.” While the sign states that the statue was built to honor women, a local girl in town gave me a different story. Her version was that a man’s wife was dying of cancer that was supposedly incurable. He had prayed and told God that if his wife was cured he would build a giant statue of the Virgin Mary overlooking Butte. After his wife’s miraculous recovery he kept his word. I’ll believe the official sign’s story over a random one I heard in the streets of Butte, but I have to admit the local version sounded more interesting. As far as visiting the statue, the only way is by an official two hour tour from the city center. I missed it, and on our attempt to drive up to the statue on our own we were politely turned around at a large gate. The statue is pretty large, and stands at 89 feet (27 meters)!
One self guided tour I did do was the Berkeley Pit. This pit is one of the largest copper pits in the world. On another one of my crazy overseas trips, I passed through some jungle and up Carstensz Pyramid in West Papua and viewed the largest gold and copper mine on earth. I’m not sure how the Berkeley Pit compares in size! The photo above shows the entrance to the pit, which takes you through the small tunnel below. Since the pit is open, I’m completely confused for the need or existence of the tunnel.
The photo above shows the remains of the Berkeley Pit. The pit is an incredible 1,780 feet (540 meters) deep. Mining began in 1955 and stopped in 1982. As you can see, it’s filled with water which has been slowly rising each year. The Berkeley Pit is actually an enormous environmental challenge. The water you see is extremely poisonous, and has acidic levels that match soda products. To put things in perspective, in 1995 a flock of snow geese decided to enjoy a rest in the pit, and soon after 342 dead birds were recovered. The problem with the pit is that the water is so toxic and as it continues to rise, it will eventually reach a critical level and seep into ground water. This won’t happen until around 2020, but as that’s not so far away anymore, environmental engineers are struggling with ways to prevent a catastrophe.
Many mining rigs still exist throughout Butte. As a matter of fact these guys are covered in bright red lights at night and it was the very first thing I noticed from my flight as we were landing in the city. I wish I had taken a night shot of one of these, but they are still impressive in the day time! Some of the rigs are even the location for annual events, like the Montana Folk Festival here in Butte; a free outdoor concert held each July.
Downtown Butte didn’t seem to have too much going on. The night before we had gone out to a local bar and got to experience Butte after hours. In the middle of a weekday it felt more like Sunday morning to us while we explored the city. There are some older buildings here with a few bars and restaurants. The photo above I took from my car as I entered downtown Butte. Below is another shot of some of the older buildings in the center.
I just happened to come across what I thought was a large church in Butte and took this photo above. It wasn’t until later on that I learned this was the First Presbyterian Church of Butte, and was founded in 1896. I’m not sure when the church stopped its services, but at some point it got converted from the First Presbyterian Church of Butte and into the Covelitte Theatre. The theater also was eventually closed down in 2007, but a recent interest by some local entrepreneurs are planning to reopen it soon.
My best friend who traveled to me seemed to think Butte wasn’t in great shape. I felt more neutral about it, especially when I compared it to some places in the southeast of the United States. This car however was clearly in bad shape and was parked along a main street. With jumper cables ready to go and having the hood secured by rope, there is no way this thing would be street legal where I lived!
Something I was surprised to find in Butte were several of these “Marijuana Companies” that owned commercial real estate and were trying to legalize marijuana. We pulled into the parking lot to take a photo and seriously could smell marijuana from there! I’d have expected Butte to have been more of a conservative city so seeing several of these businesses surprised me.
As once claiming to have the richest hill in the world, I’m not sure where all the wealth went in modern times. Like almost all cities however, there are neighborhoods of older houses and then those with nice ones like these guys above. Coming from the Washington DC area, I’d bet a million dollars that any one of these houses above is much cheaper than a studio condo back home! These houses are in the same neighborhood as the Covellite Theatre, in an area known as Uptown.
The very last thing we did in Butte before our flight was taking up seats at this excellent coffee shop for breakfast. We stayed here for a couple hours trying to catch up on things on the internet while eating breakfast and sipping on alcoholic coffee. They had a drink called the “Butte Breakfast” which was made of coffee and spiked with Jameson and other liquor. I think in any other circumstance we wouldn’t have ordered it, but being that it was our last morning in Butte we all felt obligated to have one!
