The Mine That Ate a Town

At one point in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries Butte Montana, high in the Rocky Mountains, was one of the wealthiest cities in America, thanks to the rich resources of copper buried beneath the surface. Rapacious mining, first deep shaft, then open pit literally gobbled up parts of the town and now that the mines have played out and the mining companies have moved on, the toxic wastes left behind have turned the town and the surrounding environment into the nation’s largest and most intractable Superfund pollution sites. These images were made in the early 2000s and my intention is to return to Butte to see what has become of the community and what lies ahead.