Thursday April 22nd, Day #12

I drove from West Yellowstone to Butte, Montana (which Gloria calls butt).  Butte, Montana has a big gash in the mountain called the Berkeley Pit which was an open copper mining operation in the 50's.  When I was approaching the city from about 10 miles away, I was already able to see the gash.  It's a mile long, half a mile wide and 1800 feet deep.  They have a viewing stand in the city and when I went there I was in for a shock.  The pit is full of water!  When they stopped mining in 1980, they turned off the water pump and it started filling up.  It has 900 feet of water in it.  The water has a pH of 2.5 (highly of acidic) and it's one of the national Superfund cleanup sites.  About 12 miles away from there in the city of Anaconda, where they smelted the copper and built a chimney for the smelter that was over 500 feet tall.  The Washington Monument would easily fit in the chimney.  From there, I drove to Dillon, Montana for the night.  

Berkeley Pit is now a tourist attraction

Downtown Butte which has seen better days

Berkeley Pit