Collections
Genealogy
Services
Friends of the
Butte Archives
2005 Annual
Report
The Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives
P.O. Box 81
17 W. Quartz St.
Butte, MT 59703
(406) 782-3280
info@buttearchives.org
The Archives is open to the public Monday and Tuesday from 9 am to 5 pm and Wednesday morning from 9 am to 12 noon. We are closed from Wednesday at 12 noon through Friday.
Our Collections
The collections of the Butte Archives
are comprehensive, interrelated and provide dynamic insights
into the history of the second industrial revolution (the electrification
of America), and the history of copper mining. Home of the world's
largest copper deposit, Butte was once one of the most radically
and ethnically diverse settlements in the West and was a wellspring
of the western labor movement. The records in teh care of the
Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives provide essential information
on a number of subjects in the American West, including the history
of technology, political history, environmental history, the
history of women and minority groups, and labor history.
The Archives houses over 750 collections of primary source materials
relating to the history of Butte-Silver Bow, government, personal,
mining, railroad and the related labor union records. The major
subject categories of the archives collections are labor history
collections--71, manuscript collections--178, organization 
collections--67, individual collections
136, photograph collections 123, small collections --168. The
Archives holds over 6,000 feet of records, 1000 volumes of books,
500 maps and blueprints and nearly 200 audio video media.
The collections also include:
- Significant secondary source materials, newspapers, books, journals and miscellaneous ephemera.
- The government record of Butte City and Silver Bow County.
- Documents of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, which was the world's largest producer of electrolytic copper;
- Manuscripts and archives of
Butte and Silver Bow people and organizations.
For a complete list of collections, contact the Archives.
Collection Development
The Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives actively collects documents, photographs and miscellaneous ephemera relating to the history of Butte-Silver Bow. To donate materials to the Archives simply bring them to the facility or call the staff and ask if they can pick them up. To view the Archives collection policy, click here.
