Book
Description
Copper Camp is a Montana classic.
First published in 1943 and long out of print, Copper
Camp is available again, bigger and better than ever
with 25 new historical photos chosen specifically for this
edition.
Copper Camp contains
hundreds of brawling, bawdy, over-the-to, laugh-out-loud
stories about Butte during the height of the copper mining
in the late 11800s and early 1900s. Each story is told
with keen wit, love, and appreciation for the world’s
greatest copper camp and the people who lived, loved,
played, and worked there.
Writers for the
Works Projects Administration compiled the stories. Their
aim was to reveal “the
wealth of human interest held within the folds of the ‘richest
hill on earth.’ Instead of the Copper Kings, here
are the kids and characters, ministers, miners, mothers,
girls from the line, bankers, and barkeeps. Of such stuff
as strikes, parades, politics and people – above
all, of rawboned, lively, honest-to-God people – is
a mining camp composed; and Butte, in the opinion of many
experts, if THE mining camp.
Copper
Camp has been described as “a roaring human document
that is as strong, and important as the town of Butte, Montana.” If
you want to understand Butte, then read this book. If you
want to experience the sheer joy of a wonderful book that
takes you to a totally different time and place, then Copper
Camp is for you, too.
Press
Release
Butte, Montana, famous
as the Copper Camp, is full of
fascinating characters and stories
BUTTE, Montana—Has
there ever been a mining town like Butte? Not according
to the classic Montana book, Copper Camp, which is available
again for the first time in 25 years.
Copper
Camp is the “lusty story of Butte, Montana,
the richest hill on earth” during the copper boom
of the late 1800s and early 1900s when Butte was high,
wide, and wide-open. Written by the WPA in the 1930s, Copper
Camp was first published in 1943 but has been out
of print since 1976. Riverbend Publishing in Helena,
Montana, has just published a new edition, including
25 historical photos.
“The
stories in this book remind me of John Steinbeck’s Cannery
Row, except that Copper Camp isn’t
fiction,” said Riverbend president Chris Cauble. “The
stories are almost unbelievable. It’s a great book
for people who want to understand Butte, and it’s
a wonderful book for anyone who likes to be taken to a
totally different time and place.”
“The
characters are fascinating and the quality of writing is
exceptional,” Cauble said. “The writers were
fully aware that Butte was a special place—a wonderful,
never-to-be-duplicated kind of place—and they loved
the town, all of it, the good, the bad, and the eccentric.”
There
are hundreds of stories and anecdotes within the book’s
36 chapters. Most of the stories are about the common citizens,
not the Copper Kings. According to the book’s introduction, “Here
are the kids and characters, ministers, miners, mothers,
girls from the line, bankers, and barkeeps. Of such stuff
as strikes, parades, politics and people—above all,
of rawboned, lively, honest-to-God people—is a mining
camp composed; and Butte, in the opinion of many experts,
is the mining camp.”
Copper
Camp is a 336-page paperback book. It sells for $19.95
and is available at local bookstores.
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