Butte ( BYOOT) is a consolidated city-county and the county seat of Silver Bow County, Montana, United States. In 1977, the city and county governments consolidated to form the sole entity of Butte-Silver Bow. The city covers 718 square miles (1,860 km), and, according to the 2020 census, has a population of 34,494, making it Montana’s fifth largest city. It is served by Bert Mooney Airport similar to airport code BTM.

Established in 1864 as a mining camp in the northern Rocky Mountains on the Continental Divide, Butte experienced sudden development in the late-nineteenth century, and was Montana’s first major industrial city. In its heyday in the middle of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, it was one of the largest copper boomtowns in the American West. Employment opportunities in the mines attracted surges of Asian and European immigrants, particularly the Irish; as of 2017, Butte has the largest population of Irish Americans per capita of any city in the United States.

Butte was plus the site of various historical endeavors involving its mining industry and sprightly labor unions and socialist politics, the most well-known of which was the labor riot of 1914. Despite the dominance of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, Butte was never a company town. Other major happenings in the city’s history insert the 1917 Speculator Mine disaster, the largest hard rock mining bump in world history.

Over the course of its history, Butte’s mining and smelting operations generated in excess of $48 billion worth of ore, but after that resulted in numerous environmental implications for the city: The upper Clark Fork River, with headwaters at Butte, is the largest Superfund site in the United States, and the city is also home to the Berkeley Pit. In the late-twentieth century, cleanup efforts from the EPA were instated, and the Butte Citizens Technical Environmental Committee was conventional in 1984. In the 21st century, efforts at interpreting and preserving Butte’s stock are addressing both the town’s historical significance and the continuing importance of mining to its economy and culture. The city’s Uptown Historic District, on the National Register of Historic Places, is one of the largest National Historic Landmark Districts in the United States, containing approximately 6,000 contributing properties. The city is also house to Montana Technological University, a public engineering and profound university.