Biohazard Cleanup Near Mining District Walkerville, MT

Walkerville is a small incorporated town in Silver Bow County that forms an enclave completely surrounded by the consolidated city-county of Butte-Silver Bow.

When the city of Butte and Silver Bow County consolidated into a single government in 1977, Walkerville kept its own town government, making it the only incorporated community in the county outside the consolidated government.

The town is named for the four Walker brothers of Salt Lake City — Joseph, Samuel, Matthew and David Walker — who bought the rich Alice silver mine on the advice of their agent, future copper king Marcus Daly.

Prospector Rollo Butcher located the Alice claim in 1875, and Walkerville grew up around some of the earliest and richest mines in the Butte mining district.

Walkerville incorporated in 1890, and in the early 1900s roughly 2,500 people lived there, most of them Cornish and Irish immigrants who worked in the mines.

When silver prices crashed in 1893, Walkerville's copper mines, including the Lexington and the Alice, carried the town's economy through the depression that followed.

In the 1950s the Anaconda Company turned the old Alice Mine into an open pit in the middle of town; after years of conflict over blasting damage and a 1961 lawsuit by the town, the Alice Pit never reopened.

At roughly 6,300 feet above sea level, Walkerville claims the title of the highest incorporated town in Montana, and it sits astride the Continental Divide.

Part of Walkerville lies within the Butte-Anaconda Historic District, a National Historic Landmark district, and its streets preserve the look of an 1890s mining camp.

The 2020 census counted 639 residents in Walkerville, down from 675 in 2010, and the 2010 census recorded 304 households in the town.