Caplice & McCune Store

Butte–Anaconda Historic District

Photographed by Cosmos Mariner, July 6, 2024

1. Caplice & McCune Store Marker

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West

Corridor.

America,

Mountains,

Photographed by Cosmos Mariner, July 6, 2024

2. Caplice & McCune Store (northeast elevation)

The marker is mounted on the right side of the east/front entrance, between the door and the window.

Hemisphere,

World,

Anglosphere.

Land

Purchase.

From the National Register Nomination prepared by Derek Strahn, 1/2006:
The silver industry attracted miners, while the mining camp drew a variety of entrepreneurs and merchants purveying the basics of everyday life: grains,

Photographed by Cosmos Mariner, July 6, 2024

3. Caplice & McCune Store (southeast elevation)

Notice the pointed arch windows — an oddity for a commercial building — added later by Mount Bethel Methodist Episcopal Church.

vegetables, meat, liquor, boots, clothing, building materials and mining equipment. Investment opportunities attracted merchants with considerable business acumen from other Western gold and silver camps. For example, John Caplice drove a load of supplies to Bannack via Denver in 1863, and within 20 years operated five stores in southwestern Montana, including a provisionary with his partner McCune in Walkerville.

Many sturdy business buildings still stand along Main and Daly Streets, and represent commercial building patterns of the nineteenth-century Rocky Mountain mining frontier. These buildings are one or two stories in height, with heavy ashlar native stone on the first story and wooden construction above. Examples include the Joseph Broughton Co., the John Caplice & A.W. McCune Co.; the Bielenberg & Bruhn Meat Market; and the Schonsberg Brothers store and Saloon.

Located just west of the Continental Divide, on the northern slope of the Summit Valley in southwestern Montana's Silver Bow County, the city of Butte is concentrated on a furrowed outcropping that once was appropriately nicknamed the “Richest Hill on Earth.” Both Butte and Walkerville owe their life to mining and a labyrinth of precious metals deposited deep beneath the earth's surface. These geologic patterns directed mining and milling operations to be concentrated mostly along the steeply sloping upper Butte Hill and on the ridge crests. It was mining, smelting, and railroading that shaped the built environment of the Butte-Anaconda Historic District throughout the period of significance from 1876-1934. Supported by complex technology, outside capital, and railroads, the mines on Butte Hill represented industrial mining on a colossal scale. In 1961, Butte's national prominence as a copper-producing center was recognized with its designation as a National Historic Landmark.

Excerpt:  The Butte–Anaconda Historic District is a National Historic Landmark that spans parts of Walkerville, Butte and Anaconda, Montana. It was declared an National Historic Landmark in 1961. The district's national significance relates to its long history of copper production as well as to its role in the development of the labor union movement in the United States. As the source of nearly one-third of all the world's copper in the early 1900s, Butte's mines provided one of the metals that were critical to American industrialization. Walkerville represents some of the earliest mines in the district and preserves the early mining camp flavor present in the 1890s to 1910s. Butte itself is an urban metropolis where industrial relics such as mine yards and head frames are juxtaposed with a wide variety of residential and business structures. Anaconda was created as a company town that contained the smelters for Butte's ore.