Greetings! A dear friend from the East Coast sent me an email a week or so ago, with this subject line: MONTANA next week!
My friend was headed to Helena and Missoula for some work, and she wondered if I’d be in the area. Montana is not exactly in the neighborhood, but it’s also only a day’s drive away from Portland. I’m often on my way through the state for book-related reasons, so it wasn’t a weird ask. I rearranged some things and decided to just hit the road. If you can go see a friend in Montana, why not?!
We met up in Bozeman, in the middle of one of those sneaky late October snowstorms that sometimes sweep through Montana before the leaves have had a chance to fully fall.
I decided to base myself in Butte for a few days, before reuniting with my friend at the end of the week. Even with my family ties to Montana and at least 10 drives across the state, I’d never been to Butte. All I knew of it were my father’s stories about driving down into its infamous Berkeley open-pit copper mine in the mid-1960s, while on a field trip with a geology class at Montana State University. There’s now a 1,800-foot deep crater there, filled with water that accrued after the mine ceased operations in 1982. The pit—and some of the surrounding area—is part of what may be one of the biggest Superfund sites in the country. The day we visited, we could hear air canons being blasted intermittently to scare birds away from landing on the toxic, acidic water.
Butte flourished in the late 1800s and early 1900s, a time of rapid electrification that boosted demand for copper wiring. At one point, Butte was the source of nearly a third of the world's copper, according to the National Park Service. It also was at the center of the U.S. labor movement, and had a vibrant Chinese-American community. And, of course, a thriving red light district. One brothel, the Dumas, operated from 1890 to 1982.
Butte now is one of the largest designated historic districts in America. Many of the buildings of its Uptown central business district “retain their historic integrity,” according to the Park Service, although not all of them are in pristine condition. The layers of history persist “not from a direct effort to preserve them, but from the lack of sufficient funding or will to remove them as the community naturally evolved, or devolved, over time,” the Western Planner wrote. Butte’s population most likely peaked in 1920 at 60,000 people. The population has been at about 34,000 for the past 30 years.
In Butte, you can wander the streets and imagine the place at its heyday, a time when cities were beginning to be electrified, and when the streets bustled with activity and commerce. You’ll also see 14 headframes around town, the gallows-like structures that once lowered miners to work—and hoisted up copper ore.
There’s evidence all over Butte of the origins and evolution of the western mining economy—and its poisonous tailings. (One copper mine remains open.) It was the perfect place to consider the boom-and-bust themes at the heart of my work, including my film project, which I’m currently reworking with a grant from the Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation.
These days, Butte is hosting the filming of 1923, a spinoff of the Yellowstone television show. The show is set in Bozeman, but current downtown Butte looks more like Bozeman did in the 1920s than Bozeman does now. In many ways, the architecture of Butte is stuck in that time, thanks in part to the historic designation and stagnation. Maybe Taylor Sheridan, the creator of Yellowstone, oughta consider making a show solely about Butte! All the elements of good storytelling are there—the rich copper barons, the union resistance, the under-considered Chinatown history, the brothels…and the perfect historic set, of course. I am available to help write it!
For the television show, crews painted all these fake signs on the old storefronts. Because Butte is stuck in time, it was hard to tell if they were legit old storefronts or fake ones. The magic of set dressing! Wouldn’t it be cool if some of that effort and talent could actually be spent on restoration?
We stayed at the Finlen Hotel, which opened in 1924. The building has been lovingly maintained since then. Even now, you can wander through and imagine yourself in 1920s Montana. I will definitely be back.
From Butte with love,
Erika
THE NEWS
All the links…
Mark your calendars! On Tuesday, Jan. 17, I’ll be doing a book launch event for Windfall in Portland at Powell’s City of Books. (I have to say, as a kid from Oregon, I’m beyond thrilled my name will be on the legendary marquee above the store’s Burnside entrance!) Stay tuned for info about additional events in January and early February in Seattle, Tacoma, Boise and Sisters and Bend, Oregon.
Road trip reading. On my drive to and from Montana, I listened to The Ministry of the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. Climate fiction with a hopeful ending! At Country Bookshelf in Bozeman, I purchased Fire and Brimstone, a book about the Butte Mining Disaster of 1917. And at Second Edition Books, a glorious used bookstore in Butte, I picked up a copy of The War on Powder River. Honestly, I bought it mostly because of these lines on the opening page: “Sam Clover was a horseback correspondent…he was also the kind of smart reporter who always manages to be there when the story breaks.”
Death in the West. A terrific podcast about Butte’s mining and labor history.
Tree huggers unite! A beautiful piece introducing the idea of chronodiversity, the idea that we need tree specimens of various ages in our forests for them to survive climate change. Loved this sentence on the value of trees: “They engage our deepest faculties: to revere, analyze and meditate.”
Savoring Oregon’s Wine Country, No Driving Required I love how the writer of this piece took the bus to McMinnville and experienced the area on foot and by bike.
Be a croissant and not a bagel when it comes to meeting new people or networking.
These emails normally go out on Sundays. Apologies for the delay.