First published in 1981, The Battle for Butte has remained the best treatment of the influence of copper in the political history of Montana. "Fine history: rich in detail, full of finely drawn people, masterfully clear where the subject matter is most complex, constructed to preserve something of the tone and atmosphere of the age."-American Historical Review
The author of the #1 New York Times bestseller, The Revenant -- basis for the award-winning motion picture starring Leonardo DiCaprio -- tells the remarkable story of the worst hard-rock mining disaster in American history. A half-hour before midnight on June 8, 1917, a fire broke out in the North Butte Mining Company's Granite Mountain shaft. Sparked more than two thousand feet below ground, the fire spewed flames, smoke, and poisonous gas through a labyrinth of underground tunnels. Within an hour, more than four hundred men would be locked in a battle to survive. Within three days, one hundred and sixty-four of them would be dead. Fire and Brimstone recounts the remarkable stories of both the men below ground and their families above, focusing on two groups of miners who made the incredible decision to entomb themselves to escape the gas. While the disaster is compelling in its own right, Fire and Brimstone also tells a far broader story striking in its contemporary relevance. Butte, Montana, on the eve of the North Butte disaster, was a volatile jumble of antiwar protest, an abusive corporate master, seething labor unrest, divisive ethnic tension, and radicalism both left and right. It was a powder keg lacking only a spark, and the mine fire would ignite strikes, murder, ethnic and political witch hunts, occupation by federal troops, and ultimately a battle over presidential power.
From the stately Queen Anne mansions of the West Side to the hastily constructed shanties of Cabbage Patch, Lost Butte, Montana traces the citys history through its architectural heritage. This book includes such highlights as the Grand Opera House, once graced by entertainers and cultural icons like Charlie Chaplin, Sarah Bernhardt and Mark Twain; the infamous brothels protested by reformer Carrie Nation, wielding her hatchet and sharp tongue; and the Columbia Gardens, built by copper king William Clark as a respite from the smoke and toil of the mines and later destroyed by fire. Through the stories of these structures, lost to the march of time and urban renewal, historian Richard Gibson recalls the boom and bust of Butte, once a mining metropolis and now part of the largest National Historic Landmark District.
The steadfast and sturdy Continental Op has been summoned to the town of Personville—known as Poisonville—a dusty mining community splintered by competing factions of gangsters and petty criminals. The Op has been hired by Donald Willsson, publisher of the local newspaper, who gave little indication about the reason for the visit. No sooner does the Op arrive, than the body count begins to climb . . . starting with his client. With this last honest citizen of Poisonville murdered, the Op decides to stay on and force a reckoning—even if that means taking on an entire town. Red Harvest is more than a superb crime novel: it is a classic exploration of corruption and violence in the American grain.
Smoke Wars traces the campaign against air pollution in southwestern Montana from the fight to abolish open-heap roasting--a process that created dense clouds of low-lying, noxious smoke and caused death rates in Butte to exceed those of New York City--to the battle against toxic emissions released from the great stacks of the Anaconda Reduction Works. This landmark environmental study raises issues of corporate responsibility, the rights of citizens, and the costs of industrialization, issues still hotly contested today.
For years people have said, “Someone should do the real Butte story.” Actually, many books about Butte have been done. Some deal with the less inhibited and sometimes violent old Butte. Some dramatically describe the war of the copper kings. Novels have been backgrounded against the Montana city sprawled upon the “richest hill on earth.” Although these books and many shorter pieces contribute to the history, some critics still lament that none has caught that elusive real Butte story.
