Butte has been economically depressed since the mid 70's, when the last of the mining operation crawled to a halt. For decades, the oft-expressed hope was that "those good mining jobs will come back". Alas, with the rapidly dropping price of the minerals mined, and cheaper available in South America, they never did. The population has been steadily decreasing, decade by decade. In 1970 the population was around 43 K. Currently, in the city limits, it's around 25K.
There was and is no alternate work comparable to the mining jobs. The largest employers are the community hospital, a level 2 that has to ship out open chest surgery. The small University is next, after that come walmark and the soon to close kmart. The one mall has lost almost all it's stories. It's main visitors are the geezer walkers in the morning. The business that come that are 'successful' are the hotels near the freeway. Restaurants come and go, average life span less than a year unless the owner also owns the building. The tourist industry, which sustains many towns in Montana tends to pass Butte by. The town is not attractive from the freeway going by, the mine is a raw, immense scar on the earth, and Bozeman is only 75 miles away.
The town council has made some decisions to help the city over the last decade that have the same underlying belief: If you build it, they will come."
The airport has recently been re-built, an attractive structure around the same size as the one next to it, which will be torn down. We have one airline, with two flights in and out a day. They have no interest if expanding their schedule, the planes are frequently less than full. After they built the new structure they asked the other airlines if they were interested in flying to Butte. The answer from all was no. There just isn't the business. It's only an hour to the Bozeman airport, where one can fly to several major cities, including Chicago. Butte's only flight goes to Salt Lake City.
Then there are the new bike lanes being put on the existing street, narrowing the lanes from two each way on the few busy streets to one. I see maybe 5-10 bicyclists a month. And this is during the 2 months of summer.
Now we have the new waterpark, opening end of this month. Constructed cost was 8.7 million, it has a wandering 'river', slides, etc.......quite attractive, actually. And, it's not covered. It's outside. We had a goodly snow storm last week, this morning it was 41, and scheduled to get up to 55 today. Estimated time it will be open is two to three months a year. And most years we get our first snow in Sept., last in June.
We did have a first visitor to the Waterpark, even though it hasn't opened yet.
Paper didn't say if it paid the entrance fee.
