Older homes are still coated with soot from the smelters. The waters of Clark Ford contain copper, zinc, lead and arsenic and are part of the only dead aquifer in the United States . The showpiece for a Butte National Park would be the gaping Berkeley Pit , a nearly 900-foot deep open mining pit in the center of town. From the visitor's center, a corrugated tunnel through a mound leads to the scenic overlook. The contaminated water at its bottom grows by 3 million gallons a day.
Visitors find the Pit deceptively quiet, perhaps because everything near it is dead.
The alien planet aspects of Butte can be observed in odd places. Aside from it's purely toxic pleasures, the proposed National Park would feature historic homes and buildings, mostly abandoned, that have been designated as a National Historic Landmark since 1962. Butte was once owned by the Anaconda Copper Company, the visionaries that gave us the Big Stack , the largest freestanding brick structure in the world, in nearby Anaconda. The oil company ARCO inherited the mess in Butte and Anconda, and has been involved in cleanup efforts in both towns. The 585-foot tall Big Stack was part of the Washoe Smelter Complex, which was leveled in 1986.