Written Sunday night --
I went to Butte Friday to do some training with a colleague who is also a friend. I spent the night, and Saturday we played tourist and took the trolley tour of Butte's historic sites, then headed uptown to the farmer's market and antique stores. I've been to Butte a dozen times now, but each visit still holds discoveries for me.
Whether due to foresight or economic depression, much of Butte remains as it was 30, 50, 100 years ago. Called "The Richest Hill on Earth," Butte was also referred to as the New York City of the West during the early 1900s, when it was home to some 100,000 people -- many of them millionaires. (Butte's population is now around 33,000.) The fancy brick mansions, hotels and theaters built during that time still stand, perhaps a little worse for the wear, but preserved in a way that few cities can boast. Butte, so rich in history and culture, is a revival waiting to happen.
This visit, I was particularly conscious of the town's mining economy and culture -- past and present. As a Utah community rallied in vain to save trapped miners a thousand feet underground, I pondered why men (it's usually men) brave this terribly risky occupation. My hosts were both children of miners, growing up in the northern Idaho mining towns of Wallace and Kellogg. I asked them: Why do miners do it? It's a good living, they said. It feeds families. And: Miners are a different breed of people. They're tough.
The first time I saw the Berkeley Pit, I was shocked, awed, outraged. I was also forced to confront my own hypocrisy, when I climbed back into my car -- made of hundreds of pounds of metal -- and admired my jewelry -- all of it mined.
My heritage includes some men who sought their fortune in mines. My paternal great-great-great-grandfather, William H. Stephens, went west during the Gold Rush. But in March 1850, he died of dysentery in a San Francisco boarding house, leaving his wife and seven children behind in Illinois. I lived and worked in San Francisco for seven years -- walking past the site of his death and burial untold hundreds of times -- before I learned that story.
Back here in Missoula, it's raining -- gloriously, blessedly, raining. The thick, nasty smoke of recent days blew out this afternoon with the winds that brought tonight's rain, and now the valley is clear under cloudy skies. It's just a light rain, but maybe enough to dampen flames. Certainly enough to lift spirits -- my own and those of the hundreds of firefighters and evacuees of the Black Cat Fire to the west of me.
I don't have anything to say, really, except this: Bless the firefighters and the miners. Bless them, and thank them, for they do the work that is dangerous and dirty and underappreciated, so that the rest of us don't have to.
4 Comments:
the berkeley pit is definitely amazing, but in a bad sort of way. beautiful to look at and impressive that men are able to make such a mark on the earth. but to think of the pollution, etc. i loved butte the one time we went. we toured the dumas brothel and i swear that place is haunted.
I loved seeing the pictures and reading your descriptions of Butte. My mother grew up there and we visited there in the mid-seventies when it was quite depressed. I'm glad to see it has some life!
I absolutely love Butte, and this post was just amazingly put together.
Maybe the universe owes it to itself to show you where to make your living so you can continue doing this.
Kbab: The Dumas Brothel is definitely haunted.
Barbara (Barb R., is that you?): Glad you liked the post. Thanks for commenting.
Granny: Thank you so much! Wouldn't that be lovely?
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