Community History, Neighborhoods & Cultural Legacy
High in the Rocky Mountains along the Continental Divide lies Butte, Montana, celebrated in labor history as “The Richest Hill on Earth”. In the late nineteenth century, the vast copper deposits beneath Butte powered the electrical wiring of modern America.
Marcus Daly, an Irish immigrant from County Cavan, rose to become one of the three “Copper Kings” of Butte. Daly sent word back to Ireland that there was always a job for an Irishman in his mines. Miners from County Cork (especially the Beara Peninsula) and County Donegal poured into Butte, making it the most intensely Irish city per capita in the United States.
Neighborhoods like Dublin Gulch were completely Irish, and the miners established the Butte Miners’ Union, one of the most powerful and militant labor unions in American history.