Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Toxic Tourism: Promoting The Berkeley Pit And Industrial Heritage In Butte, Montana, Bridget R. Barry

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Butte, Montana’s Berkeley Pit and its deadly water are a part of the country’s largest Superfund site. In 1994 the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a Record of Decision designating Butte, along with the neighboring town and mining site of Anaconda (twenty-five miles northwest of Butte), and 120 miles of Montana’s Clark Fork River as a single Superfund complex. The vast mining operations undertaken in the area, including five hundred underground mines and four open pit mines, have resulted in hazardous concentrations of metals in groundwater, surface water, and soils.

Butte’s mines once extracted more tons of copper …