# Leaves of Knowledge/Chapter 9

BUTTE AND ANACONDA
CHAPTER IX.
Butte and Anaconda.
Many people were first attracted to Butte in the sixties, on account of its placer mines; then in 1875 it became noted for its quartz mines of gold and silver, and with increasing depth the mines developed valuable copper deposits. They are now producing 13,000 tons per day, and furnish employment to about 15,000 men, with a payroll of over one million and a half dollars a month.
People are surprised on visiting Butte, expecting to find a mining camp; instead they find a metropolitan city, with well-paved streets and massive steel business structures. You will find as well equipped stores here as in New York City. I will not attempt to lead you through the beautiful fields of ​waving wheat, or let you moisten your lips with the delicious growing fruit, or view the shade trees. But take the electric car and go four miles to Columbia Gardens, where the atmosphere is highly purified, joyous and clear. Surrounded by this unseen influence the cares of life press less heavily upon the brain, and the severest toil or exposure finds increased capacity to bear it. This is not only a most delightful park, with a fine museum, but includes all kinds of sports, band concerts, baseball and numerous other amusements. There is also a large dancing hall, with shade trees and flowers galore. Between here and the city are the horse racing and coursing tracks.
The prosperity of Butte is under the city proper and its suburbs, Centerville, Walkerville, Meaderville and South Butte. The greater quantites of ​ore are taken out below the level of a thousand feet, the supply seeming inexhaustible. The production of the mines, with their smelters and reduction works, support not only this vast city, but in shipping their ores for treatment to the extensive plants, send out prosperity to Great Falls, Basin and Anaconda. In addition to the amount of coal and wood used at the mines and smelters, an immense quantity of manufactured lumber is used for timbering to support the works of the mines, extending its prosperous influence through the whole state.
The students of the State School of Mines here acquire a practical as well as a theoretical education.
Anaconda, twenty-six miles from Butte, has the great Washoe Smelters, the largest copper smelting and refining works in the world, employing eighteen ​hundred men and treating five thousand tons of ore daily. The ore is sent to the concentrator, where it is reduced to concentrates, then separated from the waste. From there it is taken to the calcine plant, where the sulphur is removed. The mass is smelted in the reverberatory and the silica and iron are taken out as slag, the remaining matte is run through the concentrator and casting house, where it is cast into bullion bars of gold, silver and copper, then sent to the refinery.
The people of the city of Anaconda have reason to be proud of its extensive library, fine opera house and its magnificent hotel, the "Montana." I again made a trip westward over the Oregon Short Line from Butte, changing cars at Pocatello. I remained over one day at Nampa, Idaho, and then went on to Portland and down the Columbia river to Astoria, Oregon.