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

the unholy trinity of alcohol, gambling, and prostitutes. Gold might remain elusive for some miners, but the staples of vice seemed to spring up from the soil like weeds. In the vast literature about Butte, no description is repeated more often than “wide open.” The same eastern reporter who blanched at Butte’s walking arsenals had this description of early Butte entertainment: “Bronchos are ridden into public and private houses as it suits their drunken riders. Men, women, negroes, Chinese and Indians daily and nightly congregate in one common assemblage around the gaming tables with which the dissolute, hilarious camp abounds.”¹⁰

      If there is exaggeration in the reporter’s description, it most likely concerns the degree of tolerance it implies. Butte would become a melting pot of remarkable ethnic diversity, but “negroes, Chinese and Indians”—while certainly present—were not among those welcomed into the bubbling stew. Butte’s first hanging, for example, took place when a miner named Dan Haffie decided to lynch a Chinese “just for luck.”¹¹

      As in most placer camps, the presence of Butte’s easy gold did not last long. By 1870, Butte’s population had dwindled to 241 souls—98 of whom were Chinese. The high percentage of Chinese indicated the perceived poor quality of the workings. Throughout the West, Chinese often found opportunities in the abandoned claims of less patient miners.¹²

      Among those few who stayed in Butte, interest by the late 1860s had begun to shift from gold to another precious metal—silver. The presence of silver had long been obvious in Butte. Black “reefs” pushed through the surface in many places, a clear indication of the potential wealth below. Silver, though, required a different type of mining and a different type of miner. Unlike placer gold—which could be scooped up in pure form by a man with a pan—silver required considerable industry. Deep shafts had to be sunk in the rocky ground. Milling was necessary to crush the ore into a more workable form. And it took smelting to separate the silver from crushed ore. Butte’s silver, though plentiful, was notoriously “rebellious,” meaning the silver itself was difficult to extract from the surrounding rock. In short, the production of silver required technology and capital.¹³

      It was during these early days of Butte’s silver mining that the merchant-banker William A. Clark stepped back into the picture. By the early 1870s, the base of Clark’s burgeoning frontier enterprises was a bank in Deer Lodge, Montana, less than forty miles from Butte. When he visited the remnants of Butte in 1872, his remarkable eye for investment told him that there was great potential in the largely abandoned town. Clark bought four claims outright and would later begin financing the operations of other silver enthusiasts. Demonstrating an attribute that served him well throughout his life, Clark embraced change. With samples from his new Butte properties, he traveled to New York City and enrolled at the renowned Columbia University School of Mines. At age thirty-three, William Clark was about to launch a new career in silver mining.¹⁴

      Silver would bring Butte back to life. And with silver would come critical components of the later copper industry: capital, technology, and a stout Irishman who would soon lock horns with William Clark in one of the most dramatic feuds in American history.

      Marcus Daly was born in 1841 in Ballyjamesduff, County Cavan, Ireland. Like his enemy William Clark—in fact, to an even greater degree—Daly’s life story reads like a Horatio Alger tale. As a child, his family endured the hardships of the potato famine, and young Marcus watched his countrymen abandon the Emerald Isle by the drove.¹⁵

      At the age of fifteen, Marcus emigrated—alone and penniless—to New York City. In New York he worked for five years in a variety of jobs, including errand boy at a commission house, hostler in a livery stable, telegraph operator, and finally as a longshoreman on the Brooklyn docks. Perhaps through his connections on the docks, Daly in 1861 managed to gain passage on a ship to Panama. From there, he traversed the malarial isthmus and then continued by land up the coast to San Francisco.

      In California he worked for a time on ranches and farms but soon followed a friend into mining. For a while he tried his hand at placers, eventually gravitating toward work in established mines. By 1862, Daly landed at Nevada’s mighty Comstock—the greatest silver mine in history and the largest, most sophisticated operation of its day.

      It was at the Comstock that Daly truly learned the trade of mining: how to recognize fruitful veins; how to tunnel; how to timber; how to blast. His growing talent was rewarded with promotion to shift boss, and Daly would add to his skills the intangible quality of leadership. Throughout his career—in sharp contrast with his rival William Clark—Daly would be known as a miner’s miner, a benevolent dictator beloved by his men.¹⁶

      It was during his time in Nevada that Daly also forged important relationships—from his reporter friend Samuel Clemens (not yet writing under his later pen name of Mark Twain) to George Hearst, his eventual financier and partner. The West of the 1860s was a dynamic, booming place. Potential for a talented young man seemed boundless, and Daly made the most of every opportunity.

      By the time Daly left the Comstock in 1868, he was widely recognized as one of the West’s leading young miners. A new opportunity presented itself in 1870, when Daly’s reputation drew the interest of the Walker brothers—four powerful merchant-bankers out of Salt Lake City. The Walkers hired Daly to run their Emma silver mine, then their Ophir. Both properties boomed. Around this time, the Walkers began to catch wind of opportunities in a Montana town called Butte. In 1876, they sent Marcus Daly to scout it out.

      Daly, known for being able to “see farther into the ground than any other man,”¹⁷ liked what he found. He settled on a recommendation that the Walker brothers purchase a silver mine called the Alice. The Walkers agreed, giving Daly an equity share to move to Butte and run the mine. The Alice—purchased for $25,000—would ultimately produce millions in silver for its owners. The mine would also launch Daly, and most significantly, signal the true takeoff of Butte’s silver boom.¹⁸

      Daly superintended the Alice for five years and in the process became a wealthy man. For Daly, though, the object was not wealth, but empire. In 1880, he sold his share in the Alice for “a rumored $100,000” and began searching Butte for another property.¹⁹ What he found would surpass his wildest dreams, for nothing like it had ever existed before.

      In 1875, a former Union soldier named Michael Hickey staked a claim on the Butte Hill, hoping to catch the swelling wave of silver. As an infantryman in McClellan’s Army of the Potomac, Hickey had fought in Richmond and Petersburg. Before the battle for Richmond, he read a Horace Greeley editorial in the New York Tribune. “Grant will encircle Lee’s forces …” predicted Greeley, “… and crush them like a giant anaconda.”²⁰

      The image of an “anaconda” would stick with Hickey, and when it came time to name his new claim, “That word struck me as a might good one.”²¹ In the five years following its establishment, the Anaconda was no better than a middling prospect in a town where scores of companies had staked their claims. But Marcus Daly turned the tide. According to Butte lore, Daly met Michael Hickey one day while taking a walk. Hickey told Daly about the progress at his mine. “I’ve sunk a forty-five-foot shaft on my Anaconda claim and I’ve sure got silver ore but I’ve got to go deeper to make it pay,” he said. “If you’ll deepen the shaft, we can make a deal.”²²

      Daly would ultimately pay $30,000 for outright ownership of Hickey’s property. He had taken the first step toward his future empire, but it was only the first step. As Daly knew better than anyone, to transform the Anaconda into a profitable silver mine would require money. Money to sink and timber the shaft. Money to excavate the ore. Money to crush. Money to smelt. Money far beyond his own not insubstantial means.²³

      There are conflicting stories as to why Daly did not stick with the Walker brothers of Salt Lake. By one account, he offered the Walkers an option on the Anaconda “but they could not be induced.”²⁴ By another account “Daly froze them out.” Even as he ran the Alice for the Walkers, Daly corresponded with his old friends from the Comstock—George Hearst and the partners in his syndicate. In 1881, Daly traveled to San Francisco to present his plans.²⁵

      George Hearst—father