View Of Butte, Montana In 1890 Showing Extensive Copper Mining Activity

UNKNOWN PHOTOGRAPHER

Publication: Unknown photographer, n d (ca 1890), Butte

7 1/2" x 9.1/4" gelatin silver print on a slightly larger mount. Captioned "Butte, Mont." at lower right; verso blank. An excellent, sharp view of the city showing residences intermixed with numerous copper smelters, tailings piles, and other industrial activity. A train pulling cart of ore can be seen running through the center of town. The Colorado Smelting & Mining Company complex is in the foreground. Butte had undergone tremendous growth in the 1880s due to high demand for copper. According to Wikipedia, the city's rapid expansion was noted in an 1889 frontier survey: 'Butte, Montana, fifteen years ago a small placer-mining village clinging to the mountain side, has now risen to the rank of the first mining camp of the world... [It] is now the most populous city of Montana, numbering twenty-five thousand active, enterprising, prosperous inhabitants.' In 1888 alone, mining operations in Butte had generated an'"almost inconceivable' output of $23 million (equivalent to $662,485,185 in 2020) worth of ore. Very good.

Inventory Number: 48713