Coming Home
A Special Issue Devoted to the Historic Built Environment and Landscapes of Butte and Anaconda, Montana
Patty Dean, Guest Editor
Rick Newby, Executive Editor
Foreword by The Honorable Pat Williams
Published by The Drumlummon Institute and Montana Preservation Alliance
Perhaps the most scrutinized and documented of Montana cities, Butte and Anaconda possess great material and cultural incongruities that continue to intrigue and beguile: natural beauty versus industrial landscape, great wealth versus subsistence and poverty, ornate buildings designed by nationally known architects versus alley hovels, urban density versus the void of the Berkeley Pit.
This special issue of Drumlummon Views is a joint project between Drumlummon Institute and MPA that seeks to shed fresh light on the industrial and domestic landscapes that make these cities so distinctive. It is a forward-looking, scholarly work that is posted on the internet free for all interested readers, and in hard copy, which will be available later this month, thanks to a major NPS Heritage Partnerships Challenge grant.
The issue features essays and portfolios by some of Montana’s best-known humanists, and reprints of forgotten historic resources as an early 20th-century newspaper series profiling “queer spots” in and around Butte and Anaconda (e.g. Chinese gardens, the “Assyrian colony” on East Park, the Cree village on the Butte Flats), historic photographs of sanitary conditions in Butte’s working class neighborhoods, and a 1907 article on arts and crafts homes in Butte. The issue also includes works by visual artists, writers, and poets who reflect on, interpret, and document the landscapes and cultures that make these places so extraordinary.
For more information or to purchase the book, visit the Drumlummon Views website.
