The City that Ate Itself: A Social and Environmental History of Open-Pit Mining in Butte, Montana

摘要

Moving past the well-tread history of underground mining, this dissertation is the first study to examine the full social effects of the shift from underground to open pit mining, which occurred across the American West's hard rock industry. The basis for this dissertation is a case study of Butte, Montana, where the Anaconda Company performed this switch from the 1950s to the 1970s. Butte's Berkeley Pit was a safe and efficient way to mine copper, but the pit also consumed a number of old city neighborhoods, challenged mining's masculine work culture, lessened union power, strained residents' ethnic traditions, and damaged city leaders' attempts to plan for the future. Like community members, the Anaconda Company also had to adjust to the new form of mining. Facing community protests, Anaconda formed an effective property acquisition system and encouraged its engineers to manage the community's perceptions of open-pit hazards. Like other communities built on an unsustainable natural resource, Butte began to consume itself-- hollowing out the ground, the city center, and the economy. By the late 1970s, environmentalism, fiscal mismanagement, and international competition hit Anaconda at precisely the moment that it faced declining ore grades in Butte. By following Butte's story past the Berkeley Pit's closure in the 1980s, the dissertation therefore also covers the complex consequences of economic bust on western communities, a topic long overlooked in favor of natural resource booms. As the final chapters show, community members eventually made many, often-successful, attempts at environmental and social rebirth.