FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Chris Cauble
406-449-0200
BUTTE, Montana—Has there ever been a mining town like Butte? Not according to the classic Montana book, Copper Camp, which is available again for the first time in 25 years.
Copper Camp is the “lusty story of Butte, Montana, the richest hill on earth” during the copper boom of the late 1800s and early 1900s when Butte was high, wide, and wide-open. Written by the WPA in the 1930s, Copper Camp was first published in 1943 but has been out of print since 1976. Riverbend Publishing in Helena, Montana, has just published a new edition, including 25 historical photos.
“The stories in this book remind me of John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, except that Copper Camp isn’t fiction,” said Riverbend president Chris Cauble. “The stories are almost unbelievable. It’s a great book for people who want to understand Butte, and it’s a wonderful book for anyone who likes to be taken to a totally different time and place.”
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Copper
Camp press release, page 2
“The characters are fascinating and the quality of writing is exceptional,” Cauble said. “The writers were fully aware that Butte was a special place—a wonderful, never-to-be-duplicated kind of place—and they loved the town, all of it, the good, the bad, and the eccentric.”
There are hundreds of stories and anecdotes within the book’s 36 chapters. Most of the stories are about the common citizens, not the Copper Kings. According to the book’s introduction, “Here are the kids and characters, ministers, miners, mothers, girls from the line, bankers, and barkeeps. Of such stuff as strikes, parades, politics and people—above all, of rawboned, lively, honest-to-God people—is a mining camp composed; and Butte, in the opinion of many experts, is the mining camp.”
Copper Camp is a 336-page paperback book. It sells for $19.95 and is available at local bookstores.
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Quotes from Copper Camp, possible sidebar on the stories
“The miners worked like slaves, and they played like kings; they asked no quarter, and no quarter did they give; they took their whiskey straight, and they took it often.”
“Butte is different from all the cities of the world. There is only one Butte—there will never be another. Those who know her, love her, and wouldn’t trade her for the most beautiful city on earth.”
“(In Butte) they don’t ask who you are, but what can you do.”
“Its beauty is within—the big-hearted spirit and unequalled neighborliness of the town and its people.”
Doors of hundreds of saloons were built without locks, because they never closed.
A riot took place at a miner’s picnic over a tug-of-war match. It was reported that during the free-for-all the afternoon sun was obscured by hundreds of flying beer bottles.
The miracle of the dead voting on Election Day was beheld for many years.
Two professional boxers stopped fighting to watch a sudden, wild melee in the audience, where two-thirds of the spectators were engaged in hand-to-hand combat inspired by political differences.
On election day a Democratic “committee man” made frequent rounds of the polling places with jugs of whiskey, and, in that way, “kept the Republican officials…in a more or less comatose state, which greatly simplified the counting of ballots later in the evening.”
For the fun of it, a gang of kids climbed aboard a railroad flatcar loaded with steel rails, released the brakes and rode it, yelling and whooping, as it careened down a mountain at sixty miles an hour.
For Halloween, some kids used a heavy rope and a passing ore train to uproot a cabin and drag it down the street, with the owner inside.
Mules in the mines developed a fondness for chewing tobacco.
Kelly the Ghost, a pure white cat that roamed mine shafts hundreds of feet below the surface, scared the wits out of miners who saw its luminous green eyes glowing in the dark tunnels.
A third of the population answered to some sort of nickname, such as Long Distance Mike, Shoestring Annie, Chicken Liz, Filthy McNabb, Crying George, Jere the Wise, Blasphemous Brown, Callahan the Bum, Fat Jack, Lousy Pete, Paddy the Ghoul, Mary the Ghost, Telephone Tshaikowsky, Con the Horse, Mike the Mule, and Paddy the Pig.
Neighborhoods were called Nanny Goat Hill, Seldom Seen, Dogtown, Cabbage Patch, and Chicken Flats.
Saloons were called The Alley Cat, Open-All-Night, Graveyard, Collar and Elbow, and The Cesspool.
Mines were named the Late Acquisition, Neversweat, Orphan Boy, Orphan Girl, Speculator, and Wake-up, Jim!
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By the Writers Project of Montana
Riverbend Publishing, Helena, Montana
5 ½ x 8 ½ inches, 336 pages, 25 black&white photos
$19.95, ISBN 1-931832-04-8
For a review copy, please call 1-406-449-0200 or email info@riverbendpublishing.com.
Riverbend Publishing
P.O. Box 5833
Helena, MT 59604
Phone: 406-449-0200
Fax: 406-449-0330
Toll-free: 1-866-RVR-BEND (787-2363)
Email: info@riverbendpublishing.com