File:Anselmo Mine headframe (Butte, Montana, USA) 1.jpg

English: The town of Butte, Montana (pronounced “byoot”) is known as the “Richest Hill on Earth” and "The Mining City". The Butte Mining District has produced gold, silver, copper, molybdenum, manganese, and other metals.

The area's bedrock consists of the Butte Quartz Monzonite (a.k.a. Butte Pluton), which is part of the Boulder Batholith. The Butte Quartz Monzonite ("BQM") formed 76.3 million years ago, during the mid-Campanian Stage in the Late Cretaceous. BQM rocks have been intruded and altered by hydrothermal veins containing valuable metallic minerals - principally sulfides. The copper mineralization has been dated to 62-66 million years ago, during the latest Maastrichtian Stage (latest Cretaceous) and Danian Stage (Early Paleocene). In the supergene enrichment zone of the area, the original sulfide mineralogy has been altered.

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From a brochure on Butte area mines:

ANSELMO MINE 1887-1959 4301 Feet Deep

Of all the works that stud the Butte skyline, it is the Anselmo which most closely resembles an operating mineyard. Almost all the early structures at this mine have escaped the wrath of time, fire, and bulldozers. The large buildings behind the headframe protects the main hoist engine which lowered miners in cages and raised ore-ladden skips. The adjacent smaller building contains the chippie or auxiliary hoist engine. That metallic-colored boiler heated water for a well deserved shower at the end of the shift. The red building to the west is the carpenter shop. Located above these structures are several buildings associated with the central timber yard which supplied many of the mines with arsenic-treated wood for the underground workings.

The headframe originally stood at the Black Rock Mine but was moved to this site in 1936. Many structures and headframes were moved around the hill as their respective mines played out and others were established.

The Anselmo began as a zinc mine and later copper was extracted. The ore tumbled into train cars that passed beneath the large bin, called a tipple. This is the only one left on the hill. The trains, which laced together all the mines, transported the copper ore to the town of Anaconda where it was concentrated and smelted at the huge Washoe smelter.

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From on-site signage:

The Anselmo Mine produced zinc, copper, silver, and manganese. The Anselmo shaft was sunk in 1887 by independent miners and purchased by the Anaconda Copper Mining Company in 1926. After a lengthy strike in 1959, the Anselmo ceased operations permanently.

The Anselmo Mine Yard is the most intact mine yard within the Butte National Historic Landmark District. Its buildings, among them the engine room, with electricians dry, the carpenter shop, the miners dry (a dry is a change room with lockers and showers), and the machine shop represent the multiple crafts and trades that occuped a mine yard and supported individual mine operations. The three-sheave headframe of riveted I-beam construction sits atop the three and one-half compartment shaft.

"In '47 at the Badger, they lost a car of laggin (planks) and logs. The car ran away down the hill and knocked down a house. It knocked down a telephone pole and knocked all the power out - the Butte, Anaconda and Pacific Railway was shut down. Well, the Anselmo had no ore bin so they had to have dumps (ore cars) under the chutes to keep it running. They brought a steam engine to the Anselmo just to get cars in and out of there or they'd have to shut the mine down. The steam engine was clean to the School of Mines and the engineer couldn't see them dumping ore so we used signals - what we called "decorating the dumps". If you look down you'll see the curve. So you had to "decorate the train" with switchmen with lamps hanging out there to give the signals. That left only one man on the ground here to do all the switching. It was a hell of a mess." Kevin Shannon, switchman, B.A. & P. Railway, retired

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Locality: Anselmo Mine, Butte Mining District, northeastern Silver Bow County, southwestern Montana, USA