Southwest Neighborhood

Butte's Southwest Neighborhood is a large residential neighborhood spanning Missoula Gulch, and occupying the southwestern-most corner of the Butte-Anaconda Historic District. The oldest settled portion of Southwest Butte lies east of Missoula Gulch, within the Original Townsite, where residences date to the late nineteenth and first decade of the twentieth century. However, neighborhood development took off between 1912 and 1920, during Butte's 1910s "building boom." Since the area's original platting. Southwest Butte has emerged as a middle-class neighborhood without clear ethnic associations.

Copper was a primary component in warships, ammunition casing, and tanks. No wonder Butte’s economy boomed during World War I. The city’s population more than doubled between 1910 and 1918, and real estate developers scrambled to meet the demand for housing, building over 700 residences between…
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