{"id":3534,"featured":1,"modified":"2026-04-17 19:58:11","latitude":46.00210116513320457443114719353616237640380859375,"longitude":-112.602104186880751512944698333740234375,"title":"Rocker","subtitle":"","fullsize":"https://storyofbutte.org/files/fullsize/2b8ce868c8f2c658ce319fbdfe5cc03e.jpg","address":"","all_locations":[],"zoom":16,"creator":["Dale Martin"],"description":"The 1920 federal census reported 271 people living in the precinct of Rocker; thirty years later it had 205 residents. Through most of the twentieth century, four railroads operated trains through Rocker on closely spaced tracks on the valley floor.<br />\r\n<br />\r\nFor the Butte, Anaconda &amp; Pacific, Rocker was the busiest place between Butte and Anaconda. It was the junction of two lines to the east: the upper Butte Hill line and the lower main line through Butte’s warehouse district to a switchyard east of South Arizona Street shared with the Great Northern Railway. An array of steel cables spanned the switchyard, from which were suspended the high-voltage copper wires over all ten tracks. The switchmen in the yard worked under those wires, which included riding on loaded ore cars to assemble trains bound for Anaconda. An industrial folk tale conveys the nature of work in that environment. If a switchman riding on one car in a string of loaded hopper cars needed to be several cars away, in the direction opposite of the cars’ movement, he jumped up and grabbed the overhead wire. Below him the cars rolled by. He let go to land on the car on where he needed to be.<br />\r\n<br />\r\nThe BA&amp;P’s properties at Rocker included a depot with telegraph office, a three-stall engine house, a base with a bunkhouse for maintenance-of-way and track, a yard office that oversaw switching operations, a switchyard, a spur track to Anaconda’s timber framing mill, and scale house and scale for weighing loaded freight cars. In the early twentieth century, when many people lived within walking distance of their work, those who worked on trains, in the switchyard, in offices, and on track crews lived in houses north of the BA&amp;P tracks. Beginning in the 1960s, changes in mining and ore milling resulted in diminished importance and variety of railway functions at Rocker. Currently, the surviving structures—close to the public parking lot—are the station, a badly damaged shed for track maintenance equipment, and the car scale and scale house. Farther west is the yard office. The switchyard is used to store freight cars.","sponsor":"Superfund Advisory and Redevelopment Trust Authority and The Foundation for Montana History","accessinfo":"","lede":"The small unincorporated former railroad community of Rocker is located four miles west of uptown Butte, in a narrow part of the Silver Bow Creek valley. For over a half-century, Rocker exemplified the physical complexity of railway electrification.","website":"","related_resources":[],"factoids":[],"files":{"https://storyofbutte.org/files/fullsize/2b8ce868c8f2c658ce319fbdfe5cc03e.jpg":{"id":5807,"mime-type":"image/jpeg","title":"Rocker","description":"From the east, looking west over the town and switchyard.  | Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives","thumbnail":"https://storyofbutte.org/files/square_thumbnails/2b8ce868c8f2c658ce319fbdfe5cc03e.jpg"},"https://storyofbutte.org/files/fullsize/4bb93780ba7492bc41760f0124576edf.jpg":{"id":5808,"mime-type":"image/jpeg","title":"Rocker Yard","description":"Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives","thumbnail":"https://storyofbutte.org/files/square_thumbnails/4bb93780ba7492bc41760f0124576edf.jpg"}}}