Map of Butte, Montana by USGS, 1996 – Deer Lodge National Forest & Silver Bow Creek

Published in 1998 from 1996 topographic data, “Butte North” presents the U.S. Geological Survey’s precise portrait of one of Montana’s most storied mountain cities and its rugged northern approaches. At 1:24,000 scale, the map captures Butte not as an abstract place-name, but as a working landscape of streets, rail lines, creeks, reservoirs, forest margins, and sharply rising ground. Its fine contouring reveals the abrupt elevation changes that define this part of Silver Bow County, where urban development presses against hills, gulches, and the broader uplands of the Continental Divide region. The result is a richly informative late twentieth-century view of Butte, recording the relationship between settlement, transport, resource extraction, and terrain at a moment before more recent urban and environmental transformations.

The U.S. Geological Survey, founded in 1879, became the great cartographic authority for America’s physical landscape, producing the national topographic base maps relied upon by scientists, engineers, planners, hikers, and historians alike. “Butte North” belongs to that tradition of disciplined observation: roads are graded by type, railroads thread through the built environment, watercourses are carefully traced, and land boundaries are rendered with standardized clarity. The USGS style is understated but powerful, using a consistent palette to distinguish vegetation, hydrography, relief, transportation, and developed areas. Here, that language is especially effective because Butte’s geography is complex. The map is both a navigational document and a compact scientific record, translating mountainous terrain and human alteration into an elegant, legible system.

Butte itself occupies the heart of the sheet, a city whose name is inseparable from mining, railroading, and the industrial history of the American West. Once among the world’s great copper-producing centers, Butte grew from a hard-rock mining camp into a densely layered urban and industrial landscape. The map hints at that inheritance through transportation corridors, possible mine-related features, and the tight juxtaposition of settlement with worked and altered ground. Interstate 90 appears as a modern artery, while railroad lines evoke the older logistical networks that carried ore, machinery, timber, and people through the region. In this sense, the map is not merely topographic; it is a record of how geology shaped economy, and how economy, in turn, reshaped the land.

North and east of the city, the terrain becomes increasingly expressive. Closely spaced contour lines signal steep hillsides, ridges, and gulches, including the named drainage of Oregon Gulch and the course of Silver Bow Creek. Ridgeway Reservoir adds a distinct hydrological feature to the mapped landscape, while the surrounding roads and trails show how access followed the dictates of slope, water, and forest. Portions of Deer Lodge National Forest appear within the broader setting, with land-use and boundary markings giving structure to the transition between developed Butte and the public forestlands beyond. The shaded relief and contour pattern work together to make the land feel dimensional, revealing the rises, basins, and corridors that govern movement across this mountainous district.

As a historical document, “Butte North” captures a specific late-1990s moment in a place where environmental history is especially visible. Butte’s mining legacy, including questions of reclamation, water quality, and urban expansion, has continued to evolve, making this map a valuable snapshot of conditions before subsequent changes on the ground. It preserves the arrangement of roads, trails, forest boundaries, waterways, reservoirs, and built-up areas as understood by the USGS at the end of the twentieth century. For collectors, its appeal lies in the union of scientific exactitude and Western drama: a disciplined federal topographic map of a landscape shaped by mountains, minerals, infrastructure, and ambition. It is a compelling portrait of Butte as both city and terrain.

Cities, towns and places on this map

• Butte, Montana
• Deer Lodge National Forest
• Silver Bow Creek
• Oregon Gulch
• Ridgeway Reservoir
• I-90 / Interstate 90
• Railroad lines in the vicinity of Butte
• Trails and roads connecting the area
• Nearby mountains and hills indicated by contour markings
• Land use boundaries around forested areas
• Potential mining sites indicated on the map

Historical context & cartographic details

• Map title: Butte North
• Produced by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
• Historical 1:24,000-scale topographic map
• Dated 1996 with a 1998 imprint
• USGS is a U.S. federal scientific agency known for topographic mapping and natural resource assessment
• The map uses detailed contour lines to show elevation changes
• Shaded relief adds visual depth to the terrain
• A consistent color palette helps distinguish land uses, elevations, hydrography, roads, and boundaries
• Closely spaced contour lines indicate hilly and mountainous terrain
• The map records the area before later urban, mining-related, and environmental changes

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