When I read the book “The City That Ate Itself: Butte, Montana and Its Expanding Berkeley Pit” by Brian James Leech, I was blown away.

For one thing, I could not believe that a guy who grew up in Bozeman could so eloquently capture the heart and soul of the Mining City. He saw through the stigma that is attached to Butte to look into the eyes of the people.

Not only was he fascinated by this place, he set out for a decade-long project to explain it. Nothing can tell the story of post-World War II Butte like the story of the Berkeley Pit.

When the Anaconda Co. moved away from underground to open pit mining, it pitted Butte against itself. We needed mining to survive, but mining needed our neighborhoods.

The Berkeley Pit swallowed up the neighborhoods of Meaderville, McQueen and East Butte. Mining also relocated all the residents of the Dublin Gulch.

For years, I just assumed that the people of Butte gave into this out loyalty to the company and the good of the mining industry. That certainly was not the case.

I watched the 2023 documentary “Resurrecting Holy Savior” last spring, and that movie documents some of the fight that people put up to try to save their neighborhoods. In the fall, my good friend Michele Shea forcefully recommended that I read “The City That Ate Itself” because, as she said, it is required reading for anyone running for office in Butte.

I couldn’t put the book down. I read it in a matter of a few days, and it was eye opening.

For one thing, I want to go back in time to meet former Walkerville Mayor Jimmy Shea. The town of Walkerville should place a statue of Mayor Shea on top of the old Alice Mine Dump, which is now a beautiful site that overlooks the mining city. Without Mayor Shea, who I don’t believe is a relative of Michele, Walkerville as we know it, would not exist. He fought the vaunted Anaconda Co. and won. You cannot say that about many other people throughout history.

“The City That Ate Itself” should be required reading for anyone from Butte or Montana. It should be literally required in our high schools.

One reason I say that, is you see the same divide-and-conquer techniques used by the company during the Berkeley Pit era is still employed today. We saw that when Butte-Silver Bow and British Petroleum representatives took people on one-one-one tours through the Dublin Gulch to try to explain the killing off the old neighborhood for good — while dumping toxic waste within a chip shot of many homes — was not only a good thing, but the only choice. 

We see it when they try to get by with waste-in-place cleanup in the heart of our town.

Brian Leech is a professor of history at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. I caught up with him for a phone conversation, and it was a lot of fun.

Listen in to hear why Leech became intrigued with Butte at a young age. Listen to hear how he decided to write a book about Meaderville, McQueen and East Butte and all the time he spent at the Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives researching the book. Listen in to hear that Leech agrees with my assertion that we have to build a statue of Mayor Shea in Walkerville.

Copies of Leech’s book are available at the Isle of Books at 43 E. Broadway. Buy a copy and read it today.

Today’s podcast is brought to you by Casagranda’s Steakhouse. Eat where the locals eat.