Speculator Mining Disaster
The Granite Mountain Speculator Mine Memorial
Perched in the hills north of Butte, the Granite Mountain Speculator Mine Memorial offers a stunning panorama of the Richest Hill on Earth. The East Ridge, Highland, and Boulder Mountains tower around, the city sprawls below, and the surreal landscape of orange and red and gray marks the Berkeley Pit to the southeast. The Memorial is the perfect vantage to get a sense of Butte and its surroundings.
It is also an ideal place to get a sense of the history of the town and pay homage to the miners and families who built the city. The Granite Mountain Speculator Mine Memorial stands in memory of the worst hardrock mining disaster in United States history and pays tribute to the 168 men who lost their lives in the mine in 1917.
The Copper Boom
Butte in the 1910s was booming. World War I created huge demand for copper, and mining production in Butte peaked during the decade. The massive wartime demand and massive production led to increasingly dangerous conditions in the mines. To further the deteriorating conditions, miners had lost protection from the unions in 1914. By 1917, Butte had a population of around 91,000 people speaking at least 30 different languages, with something like 14,500 men working in the mines.
The Anaconda Copper Mining Company had established a monopoly on copper mining in Butte and controlled a good chunk of Montana (by the 1920s, Anaconda was the fourth-largest company in the world). Like many mining towns, Butte had a strong Socialist tradition, with a Socialist mayor from 1911-1914, as well as Union activity. When the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) formed in 1893 to protect workers in mining camps across the west, the Butte branch was local number one. This made it a hotbed for international labor politics as well—the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) started organizing in Butte in 1905. But tensions increased between the two unions over the next decade, culminating in riots and the mine owners rejecting the unions in 1914. As a result, miners were left to push for safety concerns on their own.
The Worst Disaster in US Mining History
Disaster struck in June 1917. The company was installing electric cables in the mine (as part of a fire suppression system) when one of the coil of cables fell down the main shaft. The lead sheeting of the cable was damaged, exposing the oil-soaked fabric beneath. When a foreman went to inspect the damage, his carbide lamp ignited the oil-soaked fabric and the fire sped up the cable, burning the timber frames of the shaft and consuming all the oxygen.
The fire soon extended to adjoining mines. It took firefighters five full days to control the blaze and another three days to rescue all the miners trapped underground. In the end, 168 miners lost their lives in the disaster. Many had managed to protect themselves from the flames by barricading themselves behind bulkheads, but the inferno sucked the oxygen out of the mine, and most died from asphyxiation or gas inhalation.
Behind the bulkheads, many of the men wrote letters to loved ones. Some of these letters can be read at the Granite Mountain Speculator Mine memorial, and on the memorial’s website. They give a haunting voice to the tragedy.
While the wives and children of some miners received compensation, the company didn’t provide any support for miner’s elderly parents or families living abroad, and only 39 families received non-funerary compensation.
The Strike and the Murder of Frank Little
The catastrophe reverberated throughout the city, and brought mining to a standstill. In the wake of the disaster, the miners quickly organized the Metal Workers Union and went on strike demanding better conditions. Famed IWW organizer Frank Little came to Butte and joined the fray in July 1917. He coordinated cooperation between the different trade unions and organized pickets at the mines. Less than a month after his arrival in the city, Little was abducted from his boarding house room by a gang of masked men and brutally lynched. Around 10,000 people lined the route of Little’s funeral procession, making it the largest in Butte history. Though the Anaconda Company was largely suspected, no one was ever prosecuted for his murder.
The strike eventually ended in December (the National Guard had been called in to quash unrest). The Speculator Mine disaster and the murder of Frank Little marked a long period of tension between the Anaconda Company and the miners’ unions, including the 1920 Anaconda Road massacre that saw mine guards firing on fleeing strikers.
The Miner’s Memorial
In 1917 the city council unanimously agreed to create a memorial to the victims of the Speculator Mine fire, but the memorial was never created. It wasn’t until the 1990s that a local committee formed to push for the memorial, which was unveiled and dedicated in 1996. Today the memorial stands in tribute not just to the 168 victims of the Speculator Mine disaster, but also to the 2,500 men who lost their lives in the mines between 1870 and 1983.
Over the years, many artist have also sought to commemorate the disaster. The Decemberists’ “Rox in the Box” tells the story of the Speculator Mine fire, as does the “The Miners” by the Elders. In 2017, Nick Spear helped commemorate the centenary of the event with his song “Tap ‘Er Light“.
