Drag to turn the globe

Events/Disaster · 1917

Granite Mountain shaft fire at Butte

Disaster, 1917-06-08, United States.

What happened

A fire in the Granite Mountain shaft of the Butte copper mines on 8 June 1917 killed 163 miners, according to the MSHA list of metal and nonmetal mine disasters.1,2

Why it matters

It is the deadliest US metal mine disaster on the MSHA list.1,2

Story cards

Around the same time

  1. Mount Lyell Mining and Railway Company founded

    Mount Lyell Mining and Railway Company founded.3

  2. Union Miniere du Haut Katanga created

    It ran Katanga's mines until nationalisation in 1967 and is the origin of Gecamines.4,5

  3. Katanga copper production begins

    Oxide ore near the surface was mined by hand and at first shipped to Belgium for processing.6,7

  4. Chuquicamata: inception

    Chuquicamata: inception.8

  5. Granite Mountain shaft fire at Butte

    It is the deadliest US metal mine disaster on the MSHA list.1,2

  6. Hand mining falls from 90 to 16 per cent in Katanga

    Steam shovels in the Union Minière open pits cut hand extraction in six years.6,7

  7. Kipushi mine: Wikidata inception date

    The Katanga base metal mine is dated to 1925 in Wikidata.9

  8. Ottawa Accords steer Northern Rhodesian copper to Britain

    Preferential access to British markets meant most Northern Rhodesian copper went to Britain.6,10

Open the full timeline

Where next

Mines

Located inButte copper districtSee the mine at the heart of this story: Butte copper district.1Came out ofBerkeley PitRead what happened near Berkeley Pit: Granite Mountain shaft fire at Butte.11

Events

ExamplesWilberg mine fireMost US coal disasters are explosions. Wilberg in 1984 was a fire that killed 27.1

Places

Located inButteSee the place where this happened: Butte.1

Sources

  1. Fact Sheet 95-8: Historical Data on Mine Disasters in the United States US Mine Safety and Health Administration
  2. Butte (item Q467664), coordinate location P625 Wikidata
  3. Wikidata item Q6921923 (Mount Lyell Mining and Railway Company founded)
  4. Historique Gecamines
  5. Lubumbashi (item Q187593), coordinate location P625 Wikidata
  6. Money D., Teh L., Race at Work: A Comparative History of Mining Labor and Empire on the Central African Copperbelt and the Fushun Coalfields, ca. 1907-1945 International Labor and Working-Class History 101 (Cambridge University Press)
  7. Wikidata item Q187593 (Lubumbashi)
  8. Wikidata item Q746606 (Chuquicamata: inception)
  9. Wikidata item Q15100601 (Kipushi Mine)
  10. Wikidata item Q239580 (Kitwe)
  11. The Berkeley Pit and surrounding mine waters of Butte (Gammons and Duaime, 2020), MBMG Special Publication 122 Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology

From the Prospector Trails mining history dataset: each fact links to the source it was checked against. Figures are as the source gives them, in the money of their day. Not investment advice.

Keep exploring

Stories with these minerals

The Chuquicamata copper mine in Chile's Atacama Desert, photographed from the International Space StationMining historyThe biggest copper pitsCopper · Utah and ChileThe world runs on rockThe MindThe metal and power behind AICurrent eventsSpaceXThe metals behind Starship and StarlinkBig Brutus, a giant stripping shovel, towering over the cars and trees around itEquipmentThe biggest mining machinesRecords · Mines worldwide

All mining storiesThe world runs on rockAll mineralsMining by country

Cover photos from Wikimedia Commons: Chuquicamata from the ISS by Alexander Gerst (ESA), CC BY-SA 2.0.