Montana native discusses Butte’s Berkeley Pit at public talk

Country Bookshelf in Downtown Bozeman – Montana’s largest independent bookstore since 1957 – is known for its expansive selection of good reads, but also hosts regular events to connect author with reader.
Montana native Brian James Leech stops in at 6pm on Tuesday, July 2nd to discuss his recently published book, The City That Ate Itself: Butte, Montana and Its Expanding Berkeley Pit.
In the book, Leech provides a social and environmental history of Butte, Montana’s Berkeley Pit, an open-pit mine which operated from 1955 to 1982. Using oral history interviews and archival finds, The City That Ate Itself explores the lived experience of open-pit copper mining at Butte’s infamous Berkeley Pit. Because an open-pit mine has to expand outward in order for workers to extract ore, its effects dramatically changed the lives of workers and residents. Although the Berkeley Pit gave consumers easier access to copper, its impact on workers and community members was more mixed, if not detrimental.
The pit’s creeping boundaries became even more of a problem. As open-pit mining nibbled away at ethnic communities, neighbors faced new industrial hazards, widespread relocation, and disrupted social ties. Residents variously responded to the pit with celebration, protest, negotiation, and resignation. Even after its closure, the pit still looms over Butte. Now a large toxic lake at the center of a federal environmental cleanup, the Berkeley Pit continues to affect Butte’s search for a postindustrial future.
Leech is an assistant professor of history at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. He currently serves as Secretary of the Mining History Association.
Country Bookshelf is located at 28 W Main St. Author events are free and open to the public. For more information about the store and to take a peek at its upcoming calendar, visit www.countrybookshelf.com.