Fire and Brimstone: The North Butte Mining Disaster of 1917. Michael Punke

      FIRE AND BRIMSTONE

      The North Butte Mining Disaster of 1917

      Michael Punke

       Copyright

      Published by The Borough Press

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by The Borough Press 2016

      Originally published in 2006 by Hyperion Books

      Source for diagram on here:

      Bureau of Mines, ‘Lessons from the Granite Mountain Shaft Fire, Butte’, 1922

      Copyright © Michael Punke 2006

      Michael Punke asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016

      Cover photographs © C. Owen Smithers Collection Butte-Silver Bow Public Archive (front); Shutterstock.com (fire and landscape)

      A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780008189310

      Ebook Edition © February 2016 ISBN: 9780008189327

      Version: 2016-02-11

       Dedication

       Dedicated to the people of Butte, Montana

       Epigraph

       Tell her we done the best we could, but the cards were against us.

      —J.D. MOORE,

      JUNE 9, 1917

      CONTENTS

       Cover

       Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

One: “THERE IS A SIGN”

Two : “LIKE A GIGNTIC TORCH”

Three: “THE RICHEST HILL ON EARTH”

Four: “WHAT MEN WILL DO”

Five: “SWEETENED CORRUPTION”

Six: “HELMET MEN BRAVING DEATH”

Seven: “STANDARD OIL COFFINS”

Eight: “THEN WE MET DUGGAN”

       Nine: “HEY JACK, WHAT THE HELL”

       Ten: “IF THE WORST COMES”

       Eleven: “DREADING TO LOOK”

       Twelve : “NOW IS THE TIME”

       Thirteen: “MEN ALIVE!”

       Fourteen: “BAMBOOZELING OR ABUSE”

       Fifteen: “TOO GOOD MINERS”

       Sixteen: “ IN THE DARK”

       Seventeen: “WE’RE DYING IN HERE”

       Eighteen: “POINT OF ERUPTION”

       Nineteen: “FOR YOU AND THE CHILD”

       Twenty: “DUPES AND CATSPAWS”

       Twenty-one: “OTHERS TAKE NOTICE”

       Twenty-two: “SPY FEVER”

       Twenty-three: “WHAT WILL BECOME OF THEM”

       Twenty-four: “SOME LITTLE BODY OF MEN”

       Twenty-five: “DOWN DEEP”

       Epilogue: “NORMAL FOR ITS TIME”

       Notes