Environment: Into the Pit

This is the toughest, bawdiest town in America ... By night it has a certain inferno-like magnificence. By day it is one of the ugliest places I have ever seen.

Butte has changed a lot since the late John Gunther described Montana's mineral capital in his 1946 book Inside U.S.A. The gambling joints and the whorehouses that once lined "Venus Alley" have disappeared. But the ugliness remains. In the years following World War II, Butte had a raw look because it was a boom town. Today it is shabby because it is dying. For the past two decades, the Anaconda Company's...

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