World Museum of Mining
155 Museum Way
Butte, MT
A museum built right on the Orphan Girl Mine, complete with a headframe, an underground tour, and a re-created 1890s boomtown on the richest hill on Earth.
The World Museum of Mining in Butte is that rare museum built on the very thing it interprets. Established in 1963, it sits on the grounds of the historic Orphan Girl Mine, a silver, lead, and zinc mine worked from 1875 into the 1950s, and its centerpiece is the steel headframe still standing over the old shaft. Butte earned the nickname the richest hill on Earth, and this is the place to understand why.
Alongside the real mine buildings, the museum re-creates an entire 1890s mining town called Hell Roarin' Gulch. Dozens of structures, many built by volunteers from period materials, line its streets, from a Chinese laundry and a schoolhouse to a bank and a saloon, each packed with artifacts from the turn of the century. Together, the mine and the town tell the story of the miners and immigrants who dug the copper that wired the modern world.
What Guests Love
- Wandering Hell Roarin' Gulch, a re-created 1890s mining town of dozens of buildings
- Going underground on a tour into the historic Orphan Girl Mine
- The towering steel headframe, a gallows frame that marks a real shaft
- Getting the immigrant, labor, and copper-boom story of 'the richest hill on Earth'
Worth Knowing
- The underground mine tour is seasonal and popular, so check availability and dress warm for the cool shaft
- The site is on a working historic mine yard, so wear sturdy shoes and mind uneven ground
- Butte's high elevation and its mining history give the air and light a distinctive edge
- Pair it with a drive past the Berkeley Pit to see both the old and the industrial-scale mining
Details
Butte, MT
Learn about World Museum of Mining
The Orphan Girl and the headframe
The Orphan Girl Mine opened in 1875 and was worked to a depth of about thirty-two hundred feet, producing silver, lead, and zinc for roughly eighty years before it closed in the 1950s. Its steel headframe, the tall gallows frame over the shaft, still rises above the museum grounds, a landmark that once hoisted men and ore up and down the mountain.
On the seasonal underground tour, visitors descend into the historic workings to feel the cool, close world where miners spent their shifts. It is a direct, physical way to grasp the labor behind Butte's wealth, and a reminder that the richest hill on Earth was built one hard shift at a time.
Hell Roarin' Gulch
Spread across the grounds is Hell Roarin' Gulch, a careful re-creation of an 1890s mining town assembled over decades, largely by volunteers using old materials. Its brick-lined streets hold dozens of buildings, a general store and saloon, a one-room schoolhouse, a union hall, a bank, even a Chinese laundry and a sauerkraut factory, each filled with the tools and goods of daily life a century ago.
The town captures the human side of the boom. Butte drew tens of thousands of immigrants, Irish, Cornish, Chinese, Finnish, and more, into a raucous, dangerous, hard-working city, and Hell Roarin' Gulch lets you walk through the world they made.
The richest hill on Earth
By 1910, Butte was among the world's greatest copper producers, and copper was the metal of the electric age, wiring cities and powering the new century. The mines under the city ran for miles, and the fortunes and labor battles they generated shaped Montana and the American West.
That story did not end gently. The nearby Berkeley Pit, an open-pit copper mine, later swallowed part of the old landscape and left a Superfund site behind. Seeing the World Museum of Mining and the pit together frames the full arc of a place that gave enormous wealth and paid a heavy price for it.
Closest Boutels
The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.
Things to Do Near Butte
Berkeley Pit Viewing Stand
About 4 miles east
An overlook onto Butte's vast open-pit copper mine, now an acidic Superfund lake, an honest look at industrial-scale mining.
Uptown Butte Historic District
About 3 miles east
One of the largest National Historic Landmark districts in the country, blocks of grand copper-era brick buildings climbing the hill.
Our Lady of the Rockies
East of town
A ninety-foot statue high on the Continental Divide above Butte, reached by tour, with sweeping views of the valley.