Granite Mountain Memorial Overlook

The Granite Mountain Memorial Overlook, also called the Granite Mountain–Speculator Mine Memorial, sits on the hill above Uptown Butte and Walkerville and remembers the worst hard-rock mining disaster in American history. On the night of 8 June 1917, fire broke out deep in the Granite Mountain shaft and spread through the connected Speculator workings; 168 men died.

The fire started about 2,400 feet underground. A heavy electric cable being lowered for a new fire-sprinkler system fell and was damaged, and a foreman's carbide lamp ignited its oil-soaked insulation. The shaft drew the flames upward like a chimney, and smoke and gas filled the tunnels. Most of the victims died of asphyxia. Some men survived by walling themselves into dead-end drifts: Manus Duggan led a group of 29 who sealed themselves in on the 2,400-foot level, and 25 of them got out alive, though Duggan himself died during the escape. The disaster set off a wave of strikes over safety and pay, and in August 1917 the labour organiser Frank Little was lynched in Butte.

The city voted for a memorial in 1917, but it was never built. Plans revived in the 1990s through the work of VISTA volunteer Gerry Walter, and the memorial was dedicated in 1996; it was rededicated in 2010 after new features were added. Designed by Butte architect Mark Reavis as an open-air plaza, it faces east toward the mine and the East Ridge. Interpretive plaques tell the story of the fire and of the men who died, and of Butte's mining and labour history more broadly; the memorial also honours the many other miners killed in Butte's mines. From the plaza you look over the Highland Mountains, the Continental Divide and the headframes and waste dumps of the old mining district.

The site is unstaffed and has no services, and there is no admission charge listed. Visit in daylight; the approach climbs past old mine yards that are fenced off and should not be entered. The roads at the top include some gravel, but they are passable in an ordinary car. A trail from near the memorial links toward the Top of the World trail and Mountain Con Park, a restored mine site. Butte has held commemorations here on the anniversary of the fire, at which the names of the 168 men are read aloud.

The memorial is a short, quiet stop, best combined with the World Museum of Mining or a walk past the Uptown headframes. In winter the hill roads can be icy.