Butte, Montana

Between 1890 and 1930, Butte achieved recognition as having the most ethnically diverse population in the intermountain West and being the largest city between Spokane, Minneapolis, and Salt Lake City. As of 1910, 70 percent of Butte's population claimed foreign heritage. These facts defy a common misperception of the American West as predominantly home to native-born cattle ranchers and homesteaders. The Butte city directory of 1888 trumpeted Butte's ascendancy in the world of mining and smelting, which would remain with the city far into the 20th century: “Butte is to-day beyond any question the greatest mining camp on earth.”

Shortly after 1887, when Butte was ranked as the leading producer of copper in the world (surpassing Michigan's Calumet & Hecla mining company and Spain's Rio Tinto), Butte promoters coined the moniker, “The richest hill on earth,” which stuck until the demise of the Anaconda Company in the 1970s. From the beginning, Butte's industrial economy attracted a wide range of immigrants. Butte began as a rather unsuccessful gold mining camp in 1864, reflected by population figures in the 1870 Montana census, which counts 98 Chinese out of a total of 241 persons (40 percent), a familiar statistic in western placer mining camps where Chinese miners were allowed to work the placer gravels after white miners had abandoned their claims.

Silver mining represented the next phase of Butte's industrial development, beginning with William Farlin's filing on the Asteroid claim and construction of the Dexter Mill with financial backing from William Andrews Clark, a Butte pioneer who parlayed early investments into a vast empire of mines, railroads, and real estate. The 1880 Montana census demonstrated the continual growth of a foreign-born population: Of a population numbering 5,374, there were 3,502 foreign-born residents, including 501 from England and Wales; 972 from Ireland; and 710 Chinese (these figures are for Deer Lodge County; there was no separate entry for Butte). Silver brought Irishman Marcus Daly to Butte in 1876 as an agent of the Walker Brothers of Utah to investigate the Alice Mine. Six years later, Daly discovered a rich vein of copper in the Anaconda Mine, launching the creation of the world's largest copper mining and metallurgical company. Daly's discovery would signal the beginning of a mass migration of European immigrants to Butte during the next 40 years.

By 1888, Butte claimed more than 300 operating mines, four smelters, and three transcontinental railroads that connected the mining city to world copper [Page 97]markets, goods from the nation and the world, and a labor force representing nations from all corners of the globe. Immigration patterns in the mining city mirrored those of the nation at large: Between 1860 and 1930, the United States absorbed approximately 35 million immigrants, with the largest numbers coming from the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Scandinavia, and finally southern and eastern Europe. By 1900, 26 percent of the Butte population claimed Irish ancestry, a higher percentage of Irish residents than any other American city. Two out of three working-class Irishmen worked in the mines of Butte. An examination of the Butte city directories for the years 1886–1914 points to County Cork as the most popular place of origin for Butte Irish, along with others from counties Kerry, Tipperary, Limerick, Galway, and Mayo. And the town of Castletownbere in western Cork, near the copper mines at Hungry Hill, dominated the place of origin for Butte miners. Marcus Daly, who left County Cavan, Ireland, in the 1850s for California and Nevada where he learned the mining trade, constituted a magnet for prospective Irish immigrants seeking a better life in America. The Daly mines including the Anaconda, the Neversweat, the St. Lawrence, and the Mountain Consolidated (Mountain Con) employed an exceptional number of Irish miners, and Daly constructed handball courts (a popular Irish sport) next to the miner's change house at the Mountain Con Mine and posted job notices in Gaelic. Word of Daly's preference for Irish miners, the well-established support system provided by Irish Catholic parishes in Butte and such fraternal organizations as the Hibernians or the Robert Emmet Literary Association, and the Butte Miners’ Union all encouraged Irish immigration to Butte.

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