When San Francisco threw the switch in the 1880s that lit up its streets and powered its cable cars, copper miners in Butte, Montana were working overtime to meet the nation’s growing demand for electrical wiring.
San Francisco’s ties to Butte, Montana however, weren’t limited to wiring. George Hearst, the father of William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper millionaire, helped finance Butte’s Anaconda Copper mines, which turned the ramshackle mining camp into a vibrant industrial city overnight, attracting miners, gamblers and prostitutes from all corners of the globe. It became known as “the town that plumbed and electrified America”.
When documentary maker Pamela Robert decided to do a film on Butte, she found access to the miner’s community through writer Edwin Dobb, a fourth generation descendant of Butte miners who had delved into that history for a 1996 Harper’s Magazine piece, Pennies from Hell. In the end, Dobb, who also teaches at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, co-wrote and co-produced the documentary Butte, America, which recounts the rise and fall of the mining community through the eyes of the miners. It will screen at the Victoria Theatre this Saturday at 8pm.
Dobb said that one of the biggest challenges lay in telling the story of mine closings in the 1980s, as it was, not in how some imagined it to be. “Many miners were great storytellers,” Dobb said, but from the start they decided not to buy into their tall tales. “Butte is not the story of universal brotherhood. The ethnic diverse group of miners facing the daily dangers underground were forced to work together.” This created a strong sense of community. “But,” he adds “Butte was a dark place– terrible things happened. We wanted to show that.”
The community lived through, the 1917 Granite Mountain fire that killed 168 men, one of the worst rock mining disasters in U.S. History. Violent labor disputes broke over working conditions in the early part of the 20th century and in the 1980s when Anaconda Copper closed down, it left behind unemployment and an environmental problem of staggering proportions.
“Butte, America” recounts the story shared by many other industries in America. “The copper industry benefited the whole of America, but the local community continues to pay a steep price for it,” Dobb said. In the heart of the town now lies the flooded Berkeley Pit, the toxic legacy of 130 years of mining history.
“Butte, America: The Saga of a Hard Rock Mining Town,” will be shown 8 p.m. Nov. 6 at the Victoria Theatre
