Butte MT is a  friendly community rich in ethnic and trade union culture.   Irish immigrants left their mark - Butte still hosts the biggest St Patrick's Day celebrations in the Rockies, with an estimated 40,000 customers passing through the famous old M&M Bar every March 17. Thanks to the miners from Cornwall; the traditional meat-and-potato pasty (PAST-ee) is still served in many cafe's.  The Chinese miners brought their rich culture and 100yrs later, the Pekin Noodle is still serving food in uptown Butte. At the other end of the cultural spectrum is the Dumas Brothel Museum. The Dumas was built in 1890 and stayed in business until 1982. It's the only surviving building in what was once a thriving red-light district during Butte's heyday.
 
Butte had a rough & rocky history.  As the mines expanded, residents were often burned out if they refused to sell their homes. The  World Museum of Mining is packed with fascinating memorabilia from the boom years.  The 35-building Hell Roarin' Gulch re-creates a mining camp, complete with saloon, bordello, church, schoolhouse and Chinese laundry. Above it all looms the blackened head frame of the 3200-foot-deep Orphan Girl mineshaft.    At night, the 90 ft tall Our Lady of the Rockies statue is illuminated by floodlights. Built entirely by voluntary labor,  it was set in place on top of the Continental Divide, some 3500ft above Butte, by helicopter.
 

 Marcus Daly, an Irish Emigrant from Co Cavan, is 1 of the 3 Copper Kings. Daly emigrated at the age of 15 and worked many odd jobs, before meeting the Walker Brothers in Utah.  In 1876, they sent Daly to Butte MT to look at the silver producing Alice Mine which the Walkers later bought.  Daly hired on to manage the Alice mine, and maintained a 1/5 interest for himself,  but he continued to keep an eye out for other money making ventures. In 1881 he sold his share in the Alice mine and purchased the Anaconda mining claim.
    
Initially the Anaconda was a silver mine until a huge vein of copper 300 feet deep and 100 feet wide was discovered. Fortunately for Marcus, copper was just coming into use for telegraph wire and electricity. Thomas Edison had just built the world's first electric power plant in New York city and the use of the telegraph was exploding. Copper was selling for twenty three cents a pound but smelting costs were high because the ore had to be shipped to smelters in Swansea, Wales. Daly recognized a business opportunity if he could reduce the cost of smelting. With the backing of Hearst( father of William Randolph Heast),  and Tevis, he built his smelter twenty eight miles west of Butte. To accommodate the smelter workers, Daly built the town of Anaconda. By 1890, the copper mines were producing over seventeen million dollars worth of copper a year and Marcus Daly was a very rich man.  In 1980, his Anaconda smelter was eventually shut down and the town still suffers from the economic loss. 
  
After 100yrs of mining for copper and molybdenum in uptown Butte,  today the Berkeley open pit stands idle and is filling with water as acidic as vinegar and heavy laden with copper.  A statue of Marcus Daly stands at the entrance to Montana Tech of the University of Montana (formerly the Montana School of Mines) at the west end of Park Street in Butte.  Marcus Daly's summer home is still open to visitors and is filled with Irish crystal and copper forged in his time.