Butte, Helena and The Gates of the Mountains
Trip Start
Aug 12, 2008
1
4
9
Trip End
Aug 21, 2008
Butte,
Montana,
United States
Saturday, August 16, 2008
In the afternoon, we took a boat ride down the Missouri River through the Mississippi limestone canyon that was named by Lewis and Clark "The Gates of the Mountains." Very impressive, although once again, an important site for Lewis and Clark is now underwater due to a dam upriver. We saw lots of osprey (their nests are huge, since most are on top of outcroppings and not disturbed year after year) and I even got a great photograph of a pictograph on a canyon wall that is estimated to be 1400 years old.
We finished our day with an unexpected quick trip to the Big Hole - the former open mine called the Berkely Pit right here in Butte. It's over one mile across, almost one mile wide and 900 feet deep - filled with extremely toxic water
near Helena
. From Wikipedia: " When mining shut down at the Berkeley pit in 1982, water pumps in nearby mines were also shut down, which resulted in highly acidic water laced with toxic heavy metals filling up the pit. Only two years later the pit was classified as a Superfund site and an environmental hazard site. Meanwhile, the acidic water continued to rise. It was not until the 1990s that serious efforts to clean up the Berkeley Pit began. The situation gained even more attention after as many as 342 migrating geese picked the pit lake as a resting place, resulting in their deaths. Steps have since been taken to prevent a recurrence, including but not limited to loudspeakers broadcasting sounds to scare off waterfowl. However, in November 2003 the Horseshoe Bend treatment facility went online and began treating and diverting much of the water that would have flowed into the pit. Ironically, the Berkeley Pit is also one of the city's biggest tourist attractions. It is the largest pit lake in the United States, and is the most costly part of the country's largest Superfund site." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butte,_MontanaWe asked: Butte's drinking water is piped in from 15 miles away... cheers.
