Butte (mllg)

My favorite city in Montana is Butte, an old copper mining town that has seen better days but has left some notable landmarks. It reminds us of Calumet, Michigan where Dina Barsanti landed from Lucca in 1909, married Louis Procissi (who was born in Calumet) just after he graduated from engineering school at the Houghton School of Mines and had Estelle, Florence and Dorothy.

There was a large Italian population in Butte along with Irish, Brits, Chinese etc. and a strong labor union tradition. The Irish were predominant because the owner of the mines was an Irishman.

During the labor strife in Calumet in 1913, the Butte unions stood in solidarity with the Calumet unions and eventually became much more radical.

There was a lot of labor exchange between the two mining locations, with Calumet miners moving to Butte in 1906-7 for better wages and again in 1911. This migration was possible because of the N. Pacific Railroad line ran from Milwaukee and Chicago to Butte.

This same railroad line brought homesteaders to Ismay and Mildred (see earlier posting).

Most of the miners returned to Calumet where working conditions were better, the air was cleaner (Calumet copper had no sulfur compounds to pollute the air) and the housing, schooling and community life was more family oriented (Warning, some of the pictures may require parental guidance).