We visited Butte and the Big Pit last month. It’s a must-see for folks who believe EVs–electric vehicles–should be the future.
I first visited Butte and the Big Pit 30 years ago with my parents and children.
My father read about the Anaconda Copper Mine and wanted to get a feel for how big it really was.
Huge then, smaller now–but only because the water has risen in the last 30 years.
It’s called the Berkeley Pit.
What is this Big Pit?
An “open pit copper mine,” the Berkeley Pit is one mile long, by one-half mile wide, with an approximate depth of 1,780 feet.
It sits in the hillside above Butte, Montana–where extensive mining began after the American Civil War.
The Anaconda Copper Mining Company opened the pit in 1955. Purchased by ARCO, it closed in 1982. At that time, Arco turned off nearby water pumps, 3800 feet below the surface, which enabled groundwater to fill the pit.
Unfortunately, as the pit filled–about a foot a month for many years–heavy metals and dissolved metals leached from the rock.
Among the metals are traces of copper, arsenic, cadmium, zinc, and sulfuric acid.
When the water’s acid pH level reached between 4.1 and 4.5 pH, the US federal government declared it a Superfund site in 1987.
Butte’s Big Pit boasts a viewing platform. Just as my family stood on the platform in 1993, my husband and I walked through a tunnel and took in the site.
Staring at Butte’s Big Pit 31 years later, I wondered if we Americans realize the amount of digging required to build EVs and batteries.
My husband, an energy expert, didn’t say a word. He just stared.
What do Butte’s Big Pit and other mines have to do with EVs?
Journalists remind Americans that if they want an electric vehicle, someone needs to dig the necessary ore.
It’s in the ground, yes, but it requires a lot of energy to get the minerals out of the ground.
Most of that intensive mining work is done far from typical American towns.
A great deal of mining is done in other nations. In some parts of the world, children dig up ore with their bare hands.
Visiting a mine
After viewing Butte’s Big Pit on the surface, we wandered over to the World Museum of Mining.
The Orphan Girl Mine is all underground.
We descended with a small group, 100 feet into the Orphan Girl Mine to see the original shaft station.
It’s always curious to travel deep into the ground, trying not to think about how much rock is above my head!
Using lights on our helmets, we saw one of the few exposed veins in America that visitors can approach.
We saw physical and cardboard signs indicating where the miners dug during the years Butte’s big pit mining areas were open.
Men from around the world flocked to Butte to work in the Orphan Girl Mine. They spoke 30 languages and dug copper.
Later, silver ore veins paid the bills.
The Orphan Girl Mine closed in 1955.
But mining operations continue in a small way. Students from Montana Tech University still go down the mine to dig.
Thoughts on Butte’s Big Pit and Mining
I honor and appreciate the courage and strength it took for so many men–few, if any, women worked as miners–to dig minerals out of the mines.
Watching the movie October Sky brings home the danger and filth such work requires.
The pictures I see, and stories I read about copper mining in other parts of the world trouble me.
I took the above photo at a natural history museum in Australia. The number of different metals needed to create an iPhone shocked us.
(I took the photo with an iPhone).
The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D. C. currently has a similar exhibit.
They call it “Cellphone: Unseen Connections.“
I don’t have answers for any of this.
Photos of child miners like the one on the right, however, trouble me.
Tweetables
Where is the copper ore coming from for modern life? Click to Tweet
Visiting a mine in Butte, Montana–and a Big Pit. Click to Tweet
Thoughts? Reactions? Lurker?