The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Butte (Montana)

BUTTE, būt, Mont., city and county-seat of Silverbow County, on the Great Northern, the Northern Pacific, the Chicago, Milwaukee and Saint Paul and other railroads. It is on the high plateau between the Rocky Mountains and the Bitter Root Mountains, 5,800 feet above the sea-level. The city is well-built, the more imposing buildings being the city hall, court-house and jail, opera-house, the Federal building and a fine public high school, completed at a cost of $125,000. The Montana State School of Mines is located here. It has several fine theatres and a good public library. The Columbia Gardens also deserve mention. The public school system is excellent, and there is a public library of more than 35,000 volumes. Butte is the largest mining town in the world, employing thousands of persons in this industry alone. Copper is the chief production, although there are valuable deposits of gold and silver, lead and zinc. The Great Anaconda Copper mine is here, and many other valuable mining properties are within a radius of a few miles of the city. The copper production alone is about 25 per cent that of the United States and 13 per cent that of the world, and the total annual mineral output is estimated at more than $60,000,000. Probably no city of equal size in the country is so exclusively given over to a single industry. It has also manufactories of candy, cigars, mattresses and other minor industrial interests. In 1914 there were 108 establishments with $2,393,000 capital, emptying 904 persons. The salaries and wages amounted to $890,000. The products were valued at $2,907,000 and were made from materials costing $1,317,000.

Butte is the trade and jobbing centre for southern and western Montana; has an extensive trolley system; gas and electric lights; national and other banks; and several daily and weekly newspapers. Butte is governed by a mayor, elected biennially, and a city council. It spends annually about $200,000 for schools, and about $50,000 each for the fire, police and street-cleaning departments. Butte was settled as a gold-placer camp in 1863, laid out as a town in 1866, and grew rapidly after the successful opening up of quartz mining in 1875. It was incorporated by the territorial legislature in 1879, and reincorporated in 1888. In 1881 it was made the county-seat of Silverbow County. Pop. in 1870 about 300; (1880) 3,363; (1890) 10,723; (1900) 30,470; (1910) 39,165; (1918) about 75,000, if suburbs are included. Consult Davenport, ‘Butte and Montana beneath the X-ray’ (Butte 1909); Freeman, ‘A Brief History of Butte’ (Chicago 1900).