"Butte has gone from being the richest hill on earth to the world’s most expensive reclamation project and the nation’s biggest Superfund site. The only good paying jobs in town these days go to the supervisors of those charged with cleaning up the mess and to the medical technicians who routinely test the blood of Butte’s children for arsenic and lead.

[...]

The extractive industries of the West-the logging camps and mines-were as brutal on workers as they were on the land. In Butte alone, more than 2,500 miners lost their lives in the tunnels and glory holes. Perhaps, 250,000 were injured, many seriously. Others got sick from foul water and cancerous air. A health survey of 1,000 miners in 1914 found that at least 400 of them suffered from chronic respiratory diseases. The maimed and ill were forced to work until they dropped, then they were discarded like human mine tailings."