The Butte Miner

Est. 1876. Butte, Montana.

In the centennial summer of 1876, a rough mining camp in the Montana mountains got its first real newspaper. The Butte Miner rolled off the press on June 1 with a declared specialty — mining intelligence — and the town brewer rolled a barrel of his best beer into the newsroom to toast its luck. Neither the camp nor the paper stayed small for long. The hill above Butte turned out to be the Richest Hill on Earth.

What followed is one of the wildest stories in American journalism. Copper King William A. Clark took the Miner and made it his sword. Across the valley, rival king Marcus Daly built the Anaconda Standard as his own. The War of the Copper Kings — for the mines, for the money, for the U.S. Senate itself — was fought not only a mile underground but on the front pages, edition against edition, in one of the loudest newspaper wars the American West ever saw. When Clark's battle for a Senate seat erupted into national scandal, it was the Miner that carried his banner.

Through it all, the Miner chronicled the deepest shafts, the union halls, the fires and fortunes, and the copper that wired and electrified a rising America. Clark died in 1925 among the richest men in the world. His son held the paper until 1928 — when, after a bitter family feud, the Anaconda Company took over the Miner literally overnight and merged it with Daly's old Standard. The two warring papers became one — The Montana Standard — and the Miner's name went dark.

But the bloodline never died. Through its Butte Miner heritage, the Montana Standard is counted the oldest business still operating in Butte. And now, the name itself returns.

Inside this Living Archive edition:

June 1, 1876 — the centennial founding, mining intelligence, and a barrel of beer for luck
The Richest Hill on Earth — how a camp became the copper capital of the world
The War of the Copper Kings — Clark's Miner against Daly's Standard, fought in headlines
The Senate scandal that shocked the nation
1928 — the overnight takeover, the merger of sworn rivals, and the end of an era
The revival — how this legendary masthead lives again under new ownership, preserved and restored through artificial intelligence

Part of the Living Archive Series from Shumake Media Group — rescuing America's great newspapers from silence, one masthead at a time.

The copper is gone. The stories remain — and the Miner digs again.