Filed Under Mining History

Headframes

By Fred Quivik
The headframe at the Diamond mine stands as a 100-foot-tall sentinel atop the Butte Hill.
The headframe at the Diamond mine stands as a 100-foot-tall sentinel atop the Butte Hill. It is visible from many distant vantage points as well as more closely from the Granite Mountain Memorial. Built in 1899 for ACM by the Gillette Herzog Manufacturing Company of Minneapolis, it is an exact replica of the headframe ACM built at the same time at the High Ore mine. Source: Photo by Fred Quivik, July 2024.

One of the most distinctive features of the Butte-Anaconda National Historic Landmark District is the collection of thirteen historic steel headframes that punctuate the skyline of the Butte Hill.

The first headframes in Butte were built of wood. Anaconda Copper Mining Company (ACM) built Butte’s first steel headframe in 1897 at its St. Lawrence mine. It was 97 feet tall. Numerous other mines followed, including the West Colusa, Anaconda, High Ore, Steward (a smaller headframe than the 1902 headframe currently standing at the Steward), Diamond, Neversweat, and Leonard. As the Butte mines went deeper, the size of hoisting engines with their double drums grew, and the mines’ productive capacity increased. The configuration of the shafts changed as well, from a single compartment to multiple compartments. A two-compartment shaft had side-by-side compartments, each with its own set of guides that would allow a skip or cage in one compartment to descend into the mine while the other was hoisted up. A three-compartment shaft had a third compartment next to the two producing compartments that would allow an auxiliary (or “chippy”) hoist to operate independently of the two main compartments. That would allow skips in the two main compartments to hoist ore throughout a shift without being interrupted by men or materials being lowered into the mine during the shift.

Important components of a steel headframe are its four legs, sheave wheels at the top, and vertical guides which extend down into the shaft. The two legs adjacent to the shaft are vertical to support the sheave wheels and the weight of the cable and loads of the skips extending down into the shaft. The two legs between the shaft and the hoist house are diagonal to brace the headframe against the lateral load created by the hoisting engine that is drawing a cable in with a load of ore on the other end. One can tell how many compartments are in the shaft by the number of sheave wheels at the top of a headframe. A two-compartment shaft will have two sheave wheels, and a three-compartment shaft will have three, with the third often off to one side. The vertical guides extend from deep in the shaft to near the top of the headframe, because the skips had to be raised to a level high enough to dump ore or waste into chutes and bins.

The Headframes of Butte tour shows the locations of the thirteen steel headframes that survive in Butte. The headframe at the Orphan Girl mine is open to the public for the fee of admission to the World Museum of Mining. The headframe at the Original mine stands at the heart of Historic Uptown Butte, a short distance from the Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives. The Original mineyard is open to the public during the Montana Folk Festival and other events. Other headframes that are easily viewed from public thoroughfares include the Anselmo, Steward, Mountain Con, Lexington, Diamond, and Belmont.

Images

The headframe at the Diamond mine stands as a 100-foot-tall sentinel atop the Butte Hill.
The headframe at the Diamond mine stands as a 100-foot-tall sentinel atop the Butte Hill. It is visible from many distant vantage points as well as more closely from the Granite Mountain Memorial. Built in 1899 for ACM by the Gillette Herzog Manufacturing Company of Minneapolis, it is an exact replica of the headframe ACM built at the same time at the High Ore mine. Source: Photo by Fred Quivik, July 2024.
Wood headframe at the Buffalo mine, view to the east.
Wood headframe at the Buffalo mine, view to the east. The Buffalo was one of ACM’s smaller mines. Its underground workings were connected to those of the Mountain Con, visible to the east in the background of this photo. The shaft house of the Mountain Con #2 shaft is visible in the background at the right edge of the photo, and the old wood headframe of the Mountain Con’s main shaft stands behind the north end of the #2 shaft house. Source: Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives, Photo Collection, PH510.047.
Shaft house of the Gagnon mine, ca. 1895, view to the southeast.
Shaft house of the Gagnon mine, ca. 1895, view to the southeast. Prior to the late 1890s, when mining companies began building steel headframes, most large wood headframes, such as the Gagnon, were enclosed in a shaft house, which sheltered boilers, the hoisting engine, and all the surface area around the collar of the shaft. The shaft house of the Original mine, which preceded the current steel headframe, is visible in this view behind and to the left of Gagnon shaft house. Source: Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives, Photo Collection, Smithers Collection, 40.064.01.
Steel headframe at the West Colusa mine.
Steel headframe at the West Colusa mine. Built by the Boston & Montana Consolidated Copper & Silver Mining Company in 1897, this was the second steel headframe (after the St. Lawrence) built in Butte. With a height of 70 feet, the headframe was said to vibrate somewhat when in service, leading engineers to design subsequent Butte headframes with heavier steel sections. Note that, while the headframe is not enclosed, the area around the collar of the shaft is sheltered by an industrial building, a holdover from the period when headframes and shafts were enclosed, as was the case at the Gagnon. Note also the substantial piles of mine timbers staged to be lowered into the mine workings. Source: Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives, Photo Collection, Smithers Collection, 40.051.01.
Wood and steel headframes at the Anselmo mine, 1936.
Wood and steel headframes at the Anselmo mine, 1936. ACM acquired the Anselmo mine in the late 1920s and then replaced its wood headframe with a steel headframe in 1936. This photo, taken in September 1936, shows the steel headframe nearly completed, while the wood headframe still stands, allowing miners to continue operating in the underground workings. Source: World Museum of Mining, Photo no. 03229.
Miners, skips, and cages at a Butte mine.
Miners, skips, and cages at a Butte mine. A headframe stands directly over the mineshaft, allowing the cables from the hoisting engine to lower skips and cages directly down the shaft. During a shift, skips in the main compartments hoisted ore from the working levels, while cages in the auxiliary compartment made it possible to lower men and materials into the shaft without disrupting the hoisting of ore. This photo, of an unidentified Butte mine, shows two skips suspended from the cables over both main compartments of the shaft to the left, and several cages suspended from the cable over the auxiliary compartment at the center. Two other sets of cages hang off to the right. At the end of a shift, these cages would replace the skips in the main compartments to facilitate the rapid hoisting of men of that shift from the mine and the lowering of the next shift into the mine. Source: Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives, Photo Collection, Smithers Collection, 40.053.02.
Original Mine
Original Mine The headframe at the Original mine serves as the Main Stage for the Montana Folk Festival and other events, and so it is a headframe that is often accessible to the public. It also stands near Butte’s Uptown business district and so is easily viewed by visitors shopping in the Uptown, conducting business at the Butte-Silver Bow Courthouse, or visiting Butte’s various cultural attractions, including the Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives. Another headframe that is readily available to the public is the Orphan Girl at the World Museum of Mining. Source: Photo by Fred Quivik, July 2024.

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Related Resources

  1. Headframes of Butte 

Citation Info

Fred Quivik, “Headframes,” Story of Butte, accessed October 2, 2026, https://storyofbutte.org/items/show/3506.

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