BUTTEOPIA
FORWARD

For those of us familiar with Butte, Montana it's not always easy to see to see the sentimental beauty associated with its decline.

On every vacant lot uptown once stood a proud building.

Every vacant room in every vacant building once held people's souls; their luck, their bad luck, their faith, their fate, their loves, their lives, their schemes, their dreams.
Once the biggest city West of the Mississippi, Butte has had its share of everything.

Caruso has sung at the opera house.
Al Capone used to get off the train just to eat in Meaderville.
Dashiell Hammett was a Pinkerton detective.
Evel Knievel invented extreme sports.
Luigi, Dirtymouth Jean, Tony the Trader, Steve Shoeshine, the list goes on like a “who's who” of characters.

Fortunes have been made, lost, squandered, and absconded with overnight.
The cops have been robbers.
Like some sort of “frontier Brooklyn” it has hosted waves of immigrants that worked in copper mines.
A beacon to saints and scoundrels alike, it was a far flung outpost of hope.
With thousands of miles of tunnels under it, they never undermined the churches.
The richest hill on earth, it wired the world.
Built on color and greed, it's a tough camp indeed. Even today.

Now the old city is disappearing. Slowly going the way of corporate America.
Here it is documented, like a fractured gem.

Butte, America.

- Frank Ruffolo