The Orphan Girl Mine

The World Museum of Mining rests on land once occupied by the Orphan Girl Mine, and is therefore heir to that operation's authentic 100-foot steel headframe, or "gallows frame". Silver and zinc were the main ores extracted from the Orphan Girl, although the site overlooks the area of the 1864 gold strike. In fact, over 7,500,000 ounces of silver were produced from the "Girl" during her history, which extended from 1875 until 1956 — but a measure of the richness of Butte is the fact that this amounted to only 1% of all the silver ever produced in the whole district. Time line of Orphan Girl history.

Like most of the mines in Butte, operation was nearly continuous, 24 hours a day. The only shutdowns occurred when labor problems or economics would stop the mining. Old timers would say that you could tell if it was going to be a lengthy labor strike if they took the mules out of the mines. As you can see in a photo display in our Underground Exhibit, getting a mule up or down the narrow mine shaft was a difficult procedure — not a happy experience for the mule!

The mine is called the Orphan Girl because it was relatively isolated, on the western side of the Butte mining district, in what is called the "Outer Camp". This zone, which includes the Alice Mine north of Walkerville, appears to be rich in silver, lead, and zinc, with less copper than the central ore veins. The Orphan Boy was a 500-foot-deep shaft just northwest of the Girl,  beyond the big smelter car at the northern edge of the mine yard. The Orphan Girl was more than six times as deep, with a shaft extending more than 2700 feet down. The lowest level was called the 3200 level, even though it was actually nearly 500 feet shallower, to provide level name consistency with the primary mine pumping system. Mine levels were measured from the surface, not relative to sea level, so the same level would have different depths in different mines.

The headframe, along with the Nordberg double drum hoist (photo, left) in the remaining engine house, allowed miners and their tools to be lowered into the 3,200 foot mine shaft in search of ore. The "official" speed for a man-car was 800 feet per minute, but retired miners will tell you it seldom seemed to be that slow! In addition to the headframe, hoist, and hoist house, other original elements of the Orphan Girl include the timber slide, boiler, and remnants of the carpenter shop.

The Orphan Girl was a popular place to work, because it was cool underground (55°-65°F) compared to most of the "hot boxes" on the Butte hill, where temperatures at 3000 or 4000 or 5000 feet down could be above 100°F. Because of this, the Girl's early owner, Copper King Marcus Daly, would use this mine as a showcase to take investors and other V.I.P.'s. They used the smaller chippy hoist (the cage on the left as you look at the headframe) to shuttle such passengers, so that they would not interfere with the continuous hauling of ore, men, mules, and equipment on the main hoist.

Headframes and other equipment were moved all around the Butte district as one mine played out and others came to the fore. The present Orphan Girl headframe was moved here from the Colorado Mine, southeast of what is now uptown Butte, in 1925. The mine yard includes several examples of headframes from much smaller mining operations.

Photographs and other records in the World Museum of Mining Photo Archives indicate that employment at the Orphan Girl in the 1920s and 1930s consisted of 400 to 700 men. By that time, the length of a shift had been reduced from 12 hours to 8 hours per day, with three shifts working.

An illustrated history of the Orphan Girl Mine is available for purchase in the museum's gift shop.