It’s difficult to know how to describe Butte, Montana, other than ‘a bit weird’. The population has gone down from around 100,000 in its heyday to currently 30,000. And it shows. Even at rush hour (actually there was no rush hour), the roads were quieter than Santa Clarita during lockdown. Think zombie apocalypse without the zombies.
Nope, not a Halloween thing, this is August.
Let’s face it, unlike most other places we’ve been, Butte is not a destination in itself. The area has a rich, diverse mining history, indeed it was once known as the richest hill on earth. Since then, other mining areas went on to steal that crown and by the 1980s, mining had largely come to a halt. But boy, does Butte still play the mining card, not yet ready to depart from its roots. And why not.
Just walking around, we saw the Mine bank building, the Miners hotel, Metals bank, Metals Sports Bar, Quarry Brewing and Copper City Casino. And there are mines or remnants of mines everywhere. I even saw what looked like an outdoor wedding ceremony or the post-wedding photo shoot positioned right under one of the mine structures.
along with the decor in the co-working space
Another unique aspect is that uptown historic Butte does not have your average high street. Maybe somewhere there’s a downtown Butte, hip and kicking, and we just never found it. The Butte we did encounter was a bit light on bars and restaurants, big name fashion stores and well, just ‘normal’ shops. Instead there was a Senior Center, a Community Counseling Center, an Affordable Housing Network, an Imagine Butte Resource Center and a Chemical Dependency Center. Starting to get the picture?
Shop-wise, there was an abundance of ‘lightly used’ clothing stores, not to mention a pawn shop, a tin shop (where else can you find a tin shop?), and a taxidermy (I kid you not).
Despite the ghost town feel of the place, it had some really awesome buildings. It nostalgically reminded me of an industrial northern town in England. A lot of red brick, with outer walls bearing huge painted signs and faded advertisements. It’s just so begging to be renovated.
Surrounding the town itself, there are mountains. Granted not Frisco in terms of scenic beauty but still picturesque. Point being, this town could be really great again. It would just take something other than mining to generate investment and attract people to live here again. Maybe I’m one step closer to understanding why Trump’s Make America Great Again campaign took such hold.
At the co-working space itself, we had a whole spacious, airy conference room to ourselves. Actually, let’s face it, we had the whole place to ourselves. Is it still valid to call it a co-working office if we’re the only people there? Other than walking through what felt like the wardrobe in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe to get to our office (literally a Mr Ben style clothes shop with random racks of used clothes angled like an obstacle course), the workspace served us well. Of course, it was decked out with all the mining history memorabilia you could ever want.
Once we could see past all this, we actually had a really cool week here :-). There was the morning walk on the old railway line. What better excuse for Darren to get the drone out. Albeit a six miler put us under pressure to make it to work on time, had to seriously pick up the pace.
And slap bang in the middle of Butte is the M trail up Big Butte. Great views of the expanse of the town from the air.
We also paid a visit to the two breweries in town (the third was boarded up and out of business sadly). After the deserted streets and tumbleweed, we finally found where all the people were – at the breweries! Even with COVID, people will find a way to socialize in small bubbles and drink good beer outdoors. Cheers Butte!
