Butte-Bozeman, MT

In the 19th and 20th centuries, Butte experienced every stage of development of a mining town, from camp to boomtown to mature city to center for historic preservation and environmental cleanup. Unlike most such towns, Butte s urban landscape includes mining operations set within residential areas, making the environmental consequences of the extraction economy all the more apparent. It prided itself on architectural diversity and a civic ethos of rough-and-tumble individualism. In its heyday between the late 19th century and about 1920, it was one of the largest and most notorious copper boomtowns in the American West, home to hundreds of saloons and a famous red-light district. Bozeman s largest employers include Montana State University and nationally known companies based in Bozeman include Newport/ILX Lightwave, Quantel USA, Right Now Technologies, Gibson Guitar Corporation, and Simms Fishing Products.