Mining Cultures: Men, Women, and Leisure in Butte, 1914-41

by Mary Murphy

Butte, Montana, long deserved its reputation as a wide-open town. Mining Cultures shows how the fabled Montana city evolved from a male-dominated mining enclave to a community in which men and women participated on a more equal basis as leisure patterns changed and consumer culture grew. Mary Murphy looks at how women worked and spent their leisure time in a city dominated by the quintessential example of "men's work": mining. Bringing Butte to life, she adds in-depth research on church weeklies, high school yearbooks, holiday rituals, movie plots, and news of local fashion to archival material and interviews. 

A richly illustrated jaunt through western history, Mining Cultures is the never-told chronicle of how women transformed the richest hill on earth.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

328 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1997

About the author

Mary Murphy is the co-founder, managing director and owner of FullCycle, an eco business in Noordhoek, Cape Town, owned and managed by women. She is a committed environmental activist and educator who consequently became a businesswoman. She is currently studying towards her PhD in environmental education at Rhodes University.

Reviews

[Jordan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Informative, but a little dry.

[Wijnand · Rating 5 out of 5]

I get homesick whenever I read about Montana and the American West. This book gets all the stars, not only because it was written by my favorite Montana State University professor Mary Murphy, the book is just absolutely fascinating! I visited the Montana mining town Butte in 1997 and in 2010, including one of the best museums I've ever been: the World Museum of Mining.
In its bustling days, Butte was described as "a wide-open town", a man could buy a drink, place a bet, or visit a prostitute at any hour of the day or night without worrying about being arrested. Apart from the dreadful mining conditions, the book elaborates on the social life and interesting gender dynamics in the 1920s and 30s. One sentence from page 42 stands out: "Decades later a Butte woman recalled the many evenings she donned her flapper finery and headed to the dance halls, where she and her friends shimmied to jazz tunes and slipped outside to share a pint of moonshine."

[Leah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed it. I thought it was one of the best books I had to read for class.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extremely intriguing look at how people lived, worked, and played in my home town of Butte, Montana in the early decades of life. A great read, and highly recommended!