Oral History Collection

 

Our Objective
The Oral History Association defines ‘oral history’ as: a field of study and a method of gathering, preserving and interpreting the voices and memories of people, communities, and participants in past events.

The Verdigris Project oral history collection preserves the memory of Butte, Montana’s bygone neighborhoods, underground mines, and industrial might. Our goal was to preserve these stories for future generations, including the family members of the narrators, but also researchers and historians who might make use of these materials for future projects. The living memory of underground mining in Butte is fading away, but these recordings preserve that memory. We gathered these oral histories to help us remember what Butte once was and better understand how it continues to change.

The Process
Here you will find a list of all the project participants. These members of the Butte community shared their oral history with us in a show of trust and openness. The majority of these interviews were conducted by Aubrey Jaap and Clark Grant at the Butte-Silver Bow Archives from 2017-2021. Each Friday for nearly four years, folks would come to the conference room of the Archives and share their life history in a recorded conversation.

The tone of the interviews is casual, but always with a focus on the lived experience of the person being interviewed. Rather than a fact-finding mission, these recordings hold the recollections (often very personal and at times tearful) of a life lived in Butte, Montana. The subject matter is largely guided by the narrator, most of whom tell the story of their life in chronological order and conclude with a reflection on the state of Butte, Montana in the present day. The first half of these conversations is usually conducted by Aubrey Jaap, with Clark Grant asking questions for the second half of the interview.

Recordings were made with three SM58 microphones and a MOTU 4PRE audio interface. High quality versions of all audio recordings are available upon request, as are transcripts of each interview.

Subject Matter
Many of these oral history recordings concern the practice of underground mining in Butte, Montana, although the collection is not limited to that subject. When Butte was an industrial center-point in the Rocky Mountains, it had all the services of a thriving metropolis. Many of our interviews concern work that was tangential to mining, such as the service industry professions that depended on a multitude of miners for business. Building on the earlier oral history work of historians like Teresa Jordan and Mary Murphy, our project picks up where they left off. In Jordan’s ‘Is There Life After Copper?’ project, she interviewed numerous miners right after the closure of the underground mines in the early 1980s. Our project looks at Butte’s decline and redevelopment since that period, including the age of Superfund and recent efforts to preserve and redevelop the historic central business district (Uptown Butte).

Though our collection is largely an autobiographical account of each narrator’s life, all of these recordings place the narrator in the context of Butte’s century-long struggle for survival since the city’s peak in 1917. Each interview asks the narrator to consider Butte’s role in the larger economy of the State of Montana and the global commodities market. Each narrator then explains how they understand Butte’s significance in their own way, often through the lens of their career, be it as a miner, lawyer, waitress, teacher, etc.

Permissions and Use
Each narrator provided written consent to collect their oral history and make the contents of their interview available to the public. Materials are available through this website and through the Butte-Silver Bow Archives. Please contact Project Director Clark Grant with any additional questions at iamclarkgrant@gmail.com