Mining Technologies

12 Locations | Curated by Fred Quivik

Humans in North America have been extracting minerals, chemicals, and metals from the Earth—including flint, pipestone, salt, and copper—for thousands of years. For most of that time, they used relatively rudimentary tools made of wood, antler, and stone. Mining technologies changed radically when Europeans arrived, bringing iron tools and, within a few centuries, steam power. Those two technologies, along with coal, launched the Industrial Revolution. Butte emerged as one of the great mining centers in the world as the United States was entering what’s often called the Second Industrial Revolution, when advancements in current technologies, applied science, and advancements in corporate management, coupled with electrification, made huge increases in production possible in nearly all aspects of the economy, extending from the factory to the household and entertainment. Small-scale mining in Butte began in the mid-1860s, underground mining in Butte began in earnest in the mid-1870s, and by 1887, Butte had risen to the lead position in the world’s copper production, even as other copper producers were also adopting the latest in mining technologies. Butte would retain that pre-eminence in copper production until after the First World War.

Mining technologies advanced on two fronts: improvements to individual machines and methods, and the development of complex, large-scale technological systems. Examples of the former abound in Butte, as miners and mining companies adopted improved drills, explosives, hoisting equipment, and transportation devices. The latter became a reality early in the twentieth century when nearly all the mines of Butte were consolidated under the control of Anaconda Copper Mining Company (ACM), at which point ACM was able to operate the entire Butte Hill—indeed its whole array of mines, concentrators, smelters, refineries, transportation networks, and supplies of energy and equipment—as a single integrated system of production. This transition is best illustrated by ACM’s introduction of compressed-air hoisting after consolidation of the Butte Hill in 1910.

Marcus Daly is often considered the founder of ACM. He understood the systemic nature of the mining enterprise he was developing. In the early 1890s, Daly’s Anaconda enterprise consisted of mines at Butte and concentrators and smelters at Anaconda, but he still depended on an outside entity, the Montana Union Railroad (jointly owned by the Northern Pacific and Union Pacific railroads) to haul ore from Butte to Anaconda. In 1892, he decided to build the Butte, Anaconda & Pacific Railway so he could also control the transportation facet of his technological system. Describing the need for such a railroad in 1890, he wrote, "The road from the Butte Mines to the smelter is as much a part and parcel of the works as the Bruckner furnaces or the jigs in the Concentrator."

The sites on this tour include both representatives of individual pieces of equipment and embodiments of the complex, large-scale technological system that Butte and Anaconda became. The map locations for each story have been chosen as the most publicly accessible example of each technology, with photographs of other sites representing important technological innovations.

Mines in Butte employed a wide variety of hoisting mechanisms over the decades. By the 1930s, the most common hoisting engine was powered by an electric motor. The electric hoist at the Orphan Girl mine, World Museum of Mining, is the most easily accessible hoisting engine on the Butte Hill.
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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.
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Some mine workings on the Butte Hill passed through stable rock, and some passed through unstable ground that needed to be supported by mine timbers. Shafts also needed to be timbered to support the guides for the cages and skips used for hoisting men and ore.
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Two of the most important technologies that industrialization brought to the mining industry, at about the time Butte mining entered the scene, were mechanized drilling and high explosives.
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Old Lexington Gardens is a recent landscape feature installed on the west side of a rise where the old Washington School was once located, between Broadway and Granite, just east of Arizona Street.
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The first couple decades of Butte’s mining boom were based on the technological advancements of the Industrial Revolution: burning coal, using steam to generate mechanical power, the linking of urban markets to remote regions like Butte by means of the railroad.
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One of the most effective means of transmitting and storing power is compressed air, which was a major factor in mechanizing many facets of mining in Butte.
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In addition to supplying the necessary oxygen for miners to breathe, ventilation must maintain adequate temperature and humidity and must carry away the dust and gases created during blasting. Mines were wet, so evaporation increased humidity underground. The deeper a mine gets, the closer it is to…
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Robert Peele’s 1916 Mining Engineering Handbook defines ore: “An ore is a metal-bearing mineral, or aggregate of such minerals, mixed with barren matter, called ‘gangue,’ and capable of being mined at a profit.”
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