Butte: A painted, old trollop waking up after a wild night

Despite 'gray mine dumps with faded cottages,' she's a Butte-y

From a chapter called "Shacks, Shanties and Mansions" from a book titled Copper Camp (Riverbend Publishing), the reader can get a better sense of Butte, Montana, in the early 1900s.

The Chamber of Commerce's promotional folder stated: "Butte is not one, but really two cities, one above and one below ground. ... Beautiful by night and unique by day. Butte is literally a city set upon a hill which cannot be hid."

The story goes that "... two miners of the Marcus Daly-era aptly described Butte when on their way to work early one morning they paused on the top of Anaconda Road and gazed down over the awakening camp.

"'Butte's a great old town,' reflected one of them. 'There's none better. But, do you know, I've never looked down on her in the sun's light that, she doesn't remind me of a painted, old trollop waking up after a wild night.'

"'Aye,' agreed the other, 'a painted, old trollop –– but with a heart as big as a mountain.'

"The barren, gray mine dumps with faded cottages in clusters at their feet; the huge steel and wooden gallows frames of the mines; the smoke-belching stacks; the crooked, crazy dirt roads and crumbling sidewalks leading up the hill to the mines, the rickety, unpainted, bulging and leaning brick and frame buildings –– all look as if they had been there for generations. Yet Butte is relatively young. To quote an old-timer: 'If you had lived as hard and excitin' a life as old Butte has, you'd be a bit prematurely aged yourself.' That is Butte –– prematurely aged, but tough and defiant."

"Night or day, there are crowds on the streets. If the times are good and the mines are working to capacity, the stores will be packed and jammed. The silver dollar is king in Butte, and paper money is hard to find. Saloons dot the shopping district. They will be found next door to anything but a church or school, and usually they are crowded, with two or three bartenders behind every bar. The 'lounges' as many of them are now called, though ultramodern in equipment with stainless steel and chrome fronts, still present the old camaraderie of their sawdust-floored predecessors. Good fellowship predominates.

"Tell almost any resident there isn't beauty in the town, and he most probably will answer: 'Sure there's beauty –– have you ever piped more beautiful girls than walk our streets? ... Speaking of beauty of other types, he most likely would interrupt: 'Oh, you mean flowers and trees and things. Certainly, plenty of them.  Have you been out to the West Side or the Flat? Have you been out to Columbia Gardens?'" (pp. 19-21)