Mining Childhood

Book excerpt: Mining Childhood offers a fresh perspective on Montana history. Drawing from a broad range of archival materials and oral histories, the book offers a child’s-eye view of key events in Butte’s history and considers how social, political, and economic forces shaping life in Butte left their marks on children. With its rich stories, the book captures children’s experiences of school, play, and work by exploring their joys and miseries, their keen impressions of life in Butte, and the varied lessons learned. These stories illuminate the meaning and purpose of mining life in Butte: people came in search of a better life for themselves, and they stayed and struggled in order to build a better life for their sons and daughters—living with the hardships and dangers of mining life so that their children might have a life beyond mining. Children were, quite simply, Butte’s reason to be.