Butte-Anaconda Historic District is a historic district

Historic district

A historic district or heritage district is a section of a city which contains older buildings considered valuable for historical or architectural reasons. In some countries, historic districts receive legal protection from development....

 that spans parts of Walkerville

Walkerville, Montana

Walkerville is a town in Silver Bow County, Montana, United States. The population was 675 at the 2010 census. Walkerville is a suburb of Butte.Part of Walkerville is included in the Butte-Anaconda Historic District...

, Butte

Butte, Montana

Butte is a city in Montana and the county seat of Silver Bow County, United States. In 1977, the city and county governments consolidated to form the sole entity of Butte-Silver Bow. As of the 2010 census, Butte's population was 34,200...

 and Anaconda

Anaconda, Montana

Anaconda, county seat of Anaconda City/Deer Lodge County, is located in mountainous southwestern Montana. The Continental Divide passes within 8 miles of the community with the local Pintler Mountain range reaching 10,379 feet...

, Montana

Montana

Montana is a state in the Western United States. The western third of Montana contains numerous mountain ranges. Smaller, "island ranges" are found in the central third of the state, for a total of 77 named ranges of the Rocky Mountains. This geographical fact is reflected in the state's name,...

. It has the most resources of any U.S. National Historic Landmark District.

It was declared a National Historic Landmark

National Historic Landmark

A National Historic Landmark is a building, site, structure, object, or district, that is officially recognized by the United States government for its historical significance...

 in 1961, when it focused only on Butte.

In 2006, the district was expanded significantly to include parts of Walkerville and Anaconda, as well as the bed of the Butte, Anaconda and Pacific Railroad. The expanded district covers 9,774 acres (39 km²) with nearly 6,000 contributing properties of historic significance.

New York's Adirondack Park and Alaska's Cape Krusenstern Archeological District are much larger by area, but may contain fewer contributing elements.

Significance

The district's national significance relates to its long history of copper production as well as to its role in the development of the labor union movement in the United States. As the source of nearly one-third of all the world's copper in the early 1900s, Butte's mines provided one of the metals that were critical to American industrialization.

Walkerville represents some of the earliest mines in the district and preserves the early mining camp flavor present in the 1890s to 1910s. Butte itself is an urban metropolis where industrial relics such as mine yards and head frames are juxtaposed with a wide variety of residential and business structures. Anaconda was created as a company town that contained the smelters for Butte's ore. The Butte Anaconda and Pacific Railroad, connecting Butte and Anaconda, is a designated part of the expanded National Historic Landmark District.

Known as the "Gibraltar of Unionism", Butte saw the early development of a mine worker's union in 1878. The Butte union's members were at the forefront of creating the Western Federation of Miners

Western Federation of Miners

The Western Federation of Miners was a radical labor union that gained a reputation for militancy in the mines of the western United States and British Columbia. Its efforts to organize both hard rock miners and smelter workers brought it into sharp conflicts – and often pitched battles...

 as well as the Industrial Workers of the World

Industrial Workers of the World

The Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...

 and later the Congress of Industrial Organizations

Congress of Industrial Organizations

The Congress of Industrial Organizations, or CIO, proposed by John L. Lewis in 1932, was a federation of unions that organized workers in industrial unions in the United States and Canada from 1935 to 1955. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 required union leaders to swear that they were not...

 (CIO). Labor strife in Butte from 1914 to 1920 served as a model for corporate and union activities across the nation. Important factors in this labor history include the murder of Frank Little and the Anaconda Road Massacre

Anaconda Road Massacre

The Anaconda Road Massacre was a deadly incident that occurred on April 21, 1920 during a miners strike in Butte, Montana's copper mines. A group of striking miners who were picketing near a mine of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company were fired upon by company guards, killing a miner named Tom...

. Events in Butte shaped the attitudes of politicians, including Burton K. Wheeler

Burton K. Wheeler

Burton Kendall Wheeler was an American politician of the Democratic Party and a United States Senator from 1923 until 1947.-Early life:...

, long-time U.S. senator from Montana.