William A. Clark

For seventy-four years, the people of Butte had a pleasure ground of their own at the foot of the East Ridge, a short streetcar ride east of the city. The Columbia Gardens opened to the public on June 4, 1899, and it closed for the last time on Labor Day, September 3, 1973. During those years it was the only major amusement park in Montana, and admission was always free. Generations of Butte children measured their summers by its flower beds, its dance pavilion, and its rides.

In the late nineteenth century, the Butte hill held some of the richest copper deposits on earth, and copper was becoming essential to a nation wiring itself for electricity. Three men fought for control of that hill. Their struggle, waged from the late 1880s until 1906 with money, newspapers, lawyers, and political campaigns, is remembered as the War of the Copper Kings.