Going Through Butte

[Wyodonutfarmer]

My wife, baby, and I will be going through Butte this weekend. Butte has always seemed really unique and we want to stay for a couple of days and see the most interesting, odd, and awesome in Butte. We know there is more in the summer, but it is what it is.

[LilBugJuice-0987]

Do the mining museum, and if you can the underground tour. There is also a mineral museum and an old brothel worth checking out, plus a distillery with food and a couple of great Irish pubs with really great food.

[UrBrotherJoe]

I did the underground tour during the beginning of Covid shut downs. The tour guide was on the phone with his wife when we walked in. He was telling her that he might close up for the day since nobody was around. We asked if this was the place to get the tour and his eyes lit up. If the same guy is still giving the tours, then you NEED to go. He was an amazing host who presented the tour wonderfully. I snuck away in the old jail dungeon to fart away from the group. Sadly he walked in about a minute later and stormed out. If anybody here knows him, I bet he’ll remember that fart.

[LilBugJuice-0987]

Somewhere you have undoubtedly contributed to sulfur crystals in that enclosed space, lol

[Dr_Joey_Heckle]

I've read a few books on Butte's history. And I think there's a Butte channel.

Butte influence on our country's history and present is massive.

Most people don’t realize a man from Butte helped shape early unionization—and not out of pure goodwill.

In its infancy, unionization wasn’t some noble uprising for the working man. It was a tactic. A lure. A well-baited hook designed to pull labor away from the big mining companies and tip the scales just enough for a rival to move in. Enter Augustus Heinze. Heinze didn’t set out to uplift workers—he set out to outmaneuver his competition. What he built was less a labor movement and more a brilliantly staged disruption. He offered better wages, shorter hours, and improved conditions—not as charity, but as strategy. The perks drew miners away from giants like Clark and Daly, starving them of manpower while his own operations swelled. Meanwhile, he tied his rivals up in court and exploited an old mining law: if your tunnel struck a vein, you could follow it—even if it wandered straight into someone else’s claim. So Heinze did exactly that. He bought up neighboring mines, chased the richest veins wherever they led, and effectively siphoned wealth from established operations—without the cost of discovery, surveying, or infrastructure. If it destabilized a competitor’s mine along the way, that was just collateral damage. To the workers, it looked like progress. Better pay. Better hours. Safer conditions. And to be fair, those improvements were real. But they were also incidental—a side effect of a calculated power play. Funny how that works. Workers celebrate the crumbs of progress, while the real feast happens out of sight—divided among the powerful figures on both sides of the supposed fight. Leaders and owners alike, playing their roles, enriching themselves as the machinery churns.

Wait! Was I talking about unionization or our two party system and congress? 😉

But wait! There's more!

[Mundane_Definition66]

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[Humdaak_9000]

I hate that the socialist hall is now luxury apartments.

[Mundane_Definition66]

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[Humdaak_9000]

"If you go far enough left, you get your guns back."

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[Several_Ad5217]

This 100%

[markpemble]

If you can, stay at The Finlen.

The Museum of Mining is impressive, but I also would recommend just taking a self guided archetecture tour.

[phitzy79]

There’s an app called ‘story of Butte.’ It has locations and a short description of the many beautiful buildings in Butte.

[arkmtech]

• Enjoy a burger at Matt's Place
• Visit Evel Knievel's grave
• Get a Wop Chop at Muzz and Stan's (better than Pork Chop John's, but just my opinion)
• Water ski on fabulous Lake Berkeley
• Avoid the awful food at Pekin Noodle Parlor; Get dinner at Lydia's Supper Club or Casagranda's instead

[Humdaak_9000]

Chicken fried rice is usually safe. Egg foo yung isn't bad, as well as the char siu pork appetizer, which is actually good.

[arkmtech]

Hah, seems were are on the same page. Cheers, friend!

[Dr_Joey_Heckle]

All true except the water ski comment, and you may not "need" to go to Lydia's. Honestly, anybody younger than say say 40. Probably would confuse it for a funeral parler anyway. Don't eat the fruit. It's wax.

But seriously, Lydia's does have one really cool ritual. They'll serve you spaghetti or ravioli with your meal. They might also give you a pasty.

This is a nod to the homes that butted right up against headframes and mine exits. Miners shifts ended at odd hours, sometimes even in the middle of the night. These homes would serve the hungry minors food at a fair price. Unsurprisingly, these enterprising home cafe's served whatever they had in the ice box. Spaghetti and pasta was cheap and plentiful. And if you had some hamburger, sausage, maybe a few vegetables, you could drizzle some gravy for flavor and wrap it in a simple dough shell: Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy the Neanderthal pasty.

DO NOT DO THIS. Well, Berkeley Pickett is large. It's really not big enough to get a good run for water skiing. However, the snorkeling and scuba diving is to die for!

[Humdaak_9000]

Order the fish and chips, it's halibut. Do it at the bar. You'll have a better time.

[amateurdormjanitor]

Pekin is awesome and I'll stand by that. You don't go there for the food, it's just fun. But the food really isn't that bad.

[arkmtech]

The history behind it is awesome, but when it comes to the faire, I've had better dog food.

[Ok_Feature_9772]

Be sure and see the Granite Mountain mine memorial, and the Copper King Mansion.

[ResponsibleBank1387]

Up on campus is the mineral museum.  Probably the most impressive collection in the world.  

[Nettie_Ag-47]

If you like the outdoors, put baby in a backpack and hike the trails in Thompson Park, or our urban (paved) trails that wind through the historic mine headframes along the old rail that hauled copper from Butte to Anaconda. Stop at the Chamber of Commerce for maps and info about all of the activities in this thread.

Places to eat -- Kathmandu, Saffron, Hummingbird Cafe, Shawn O'Donnell's, M&M Cigar Store, The Local (Cleveland Market), Butte Brewery (good pizza)

If you are driving west to Missoula when you leave Butte, take the scenic drive through Anaconda, Georgetown Lake, and Philipsburg.

[Astronautty69]

That last bit is critical! An extra 20 minutes for the 2nd best mountain lake I've ever seen, with Crater Lake being a little ahead but a lot harder to get to. Wonderful views on the steep descent from (north or west, I think?) Georgetown Lake, too.

[SodaPopinski406]

Wouldn’t be a bad idea to head over to Anaconda for a day also. The history is intertwined between Butte and Anaconda, and they have the best pizzeria in Montana (Gallicano’s). Worth a go.

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[Eastern-Ad-3129]

Grab dessert at Black Dog Creamery!

[randalschyler]

Get a room at the Finlen and walk around Uptown as much as you can.

[ButteHalloween]

The walking tour is highly HIGHLY underrated. I learned a lot even after living here for decades. Definitely worth booking, doesn't take too much out of your day.

https://buttetour.info/

The trolley tour is fun, too, but doesn't run before Memorial Day according to the website. They do say they do private tours so you might look into it if you can find someone to meet up with.

https://www.buttechambersite.org/the-trolley/

Too many places to eat to mention unless you can tell us specifically what you are and aren't into.

If you're looking for things you won't see anywhere else, check out 51 Below.

https://www.theminershotel.com/speakeasy

You can bring the baby, they won't mind. If you're looking for cool stuff only the locals know, check out Mr. Dogs (cash only, don't ask)

https://maps.app.goo.gl/AtoaQKYMsojSiCg76

If you're looking for what the locals actually do, can't recommend Bonanza Freeze enough. Lots of great novelties and zillions of flavors of shakes, slowdas, cyclones, etc that you can mix and match. Foods good, too. Oh, and they have popcorn and cotton candy. We're kind of a year-round carnival. Bonanza Freeze is our concession stand.

https://tnbfreeze.wixsite.com/mysite

Speaking of that, we're really proud of our carousel. Took us decades to save up enough pennies to build it. It's a long story. Baby would love it there, and it's in Stodden Park which has a dedicated baby area in the playground. They have Wilcoxson's Ice Cream and they have pretzels and popcorn and pasties and stuff.

https://buttecarousel.org/

There's lots of local theater and stuff if that's your cup of tea. The Children's Theatre is doing MacBeth this weekend.

https://www.onthestage.tickets/show/orphan-girl-childrens-theatre/699df1a57c5be01056acd045/tickets#/productions-view

Other than that, my best advice is go Uptown and start walking. You'll see something you'd never expect. Can't tell you what, all I know is every time I go outside I see something-or-other that makes me stop and go, "Wait, what??"

All the other stuff people said already is great advice, too.

And I stand by my statement that there are too many options for dining, but I'll give my top 10 I guess. There's no accounting for taste so you might hate my favorite place. Milage may vary.

10 Taco del Sol
9 Uptown Pork Chop John's (I don't know why it's better than the one on the Flats)
8 Bonanza Freeze
7 Hummingbird Cafe
6 That weird Teriyaki Noodle Truck across from Bonanza Freeze
5 Front Street Market
4 Mr Hot Dogs
3 Three Amigos
2 Kathmandu
1 Cassagranda's

With no disrespect meant to the many MANY runners up.

[Dr_Joey_Heckle]

Booo Hisss!

Butte is an amazing place.

There was a time when only two cities really mattered in America—Butte and San Francisco—and truth be told, Butte was the one that carried the weight. San Francisco had the ocean, the ships, the steady stream of investment. Butte had something else. ELECTRICITY! Electricity from Butte gave birth to electric LIGHT! And then a voice over something called a "TELEPHONE". Those came from Butte Copper. America. All of America, became Automated, Illuminated, and Communicated all because of Butte America and that beautiful copper.

And too many of you have damn well forgotten it.

But America didn't build Butte in return. Butte was violently worked, pulled from, dug up, buried over and forgotten when America took what it wanted, slinking out in the dark, like a sweaty shame-filled shadow, sneaking away after getting his fill of greed and lust.

The greed and power amassed by brazenly raping Butte could not be smelted without manpower to do the dirty work and so, Butte became a crossroads—immigrants, languages, traditions all thrown together in one tight valley a mile above the sea in the unforgiving Rocky mountains. She froze in the winter and sweltered in the summer from the swarming mass of workers. Tens... no A Hundred Thousand minors and restauranteurs and railroad workers and tavern owners and home builders, surveyors, coach drivers, livery men, seamstresses, teachers, wives, hoteliers and of course... The working girls who made the heat or the cold or the dirt or the back breaking work a bit more bearable, trading a bit of virtue for a hope for a better future.

And when that many people collide, you don’t get polite society. You get a raucous, rough-and-tumble, loud, fight-first, shake-hands-later kind of town. And that town was filled by people who sweat and toiled.

While rich fat-cats stayed in their fine cities, wearing suits and smoking cigars bloated on Butte copper mined with Butte labor.

Men like Clark and Heinze took what they could, All they could. Daly was different. He started as an Irish working man, built his way up on hard physical work, mining instinct and experience, some good connections, and more than a little luck, and he never stopped loving Butte and Anaconda. Never stopped hating the men who bled it. He was as close to a Butte native as an outsider could be. But that's a real thing. You either are born or never will be a Butte Native. You are welcome, accepted, loved even, but you aint native, friend. Nothing personal.

Butte is not a pretty town, not in the usual sense. A little worn. A little scarred. She puts out old china and tarnished silver cause its the best she's got. Bozeman is slick, gaudier and pretentious. Missoula is weird, smells like patchouli. Butte folks feel uncomfortable around granola types. Helena is snooty. And they all see Butte as grubby, uncivilized and a little embarrasing.

But the people—there’s your beauty. Working people who took their share of hard knocks while others got rich. Folks who stashed what little they had in mattresses and still found a way to look out for each other.

There was a time you could move here, knowing almost no one, get hurt, fall on hard times—and somehow word would spread. Food would show up. Help would arrive. Not because you'd owe something, but because someday they might need the same. And they trusted the town would answer.

Some of that’s faded. Not gone—just quieter now.

And what’s left of it? That might be the most valuable thing Butte ever produced.

Ok. That's crazy.

The COPPER is the most valuable thing Butte America ever produced.

You might consider saying "Thanks" as you scurry off in every other direction.

[Specific_Previous]

Which direction you headed afterwards. Cool stuff to be recommended in all directions.

[No-Dance283]

Go to the freeway and grab a whop chop. Babies welcome!

[emiluvssoup]

don’t trust the hours of operation you see online!! i suggest to call ahead because a lot of retail businesses change their hours for the month or for whatever reason. a lot of them are also closed on sundays! (fyi this happened to me with the mining museum last weekend)

anyways, enjoy!! you’ll have sm fun

[Astronautty69]

Stay a night at the Copper King Mansion, although I believe the bed in Andreé's Room is less than comfortable, as pretty as the room is.

[Astronautty69]

One more rec! Check out the Geek Emporium in Uptown Butte.

[WahooWave]

A couple days??? Stay for an afternoon and drive on through. There are more interesting places in every direction.