The Lexington Tunnel/Syndicate Pit Mine Tour Feasibility Study

The Scientific/Technical Writing team was asked to determine the feasibility of starting an underground mine tour at the Lexington Tunnel in Butte, Montana. The project investigated prospects for establishing a working tour of the mine, potential revenue from the tour, and anticipated expenses incurred from operations. The completed feasibility study consisted of three major areas of research: ownership scenarios, MSHA (Mine Safety and Health Administration) requirements, and start-up/operation plans. Although Butte has a long and interesting history of mining, it does not have an underground mine tour to help preserve and interpret that history. Decisively establishing the feasibility of an underground mine tour in Butte will lay the groundwork for economic development, historic preservation, and expanded interpretation of Butte’s rich mining history.

Ownership Scenarios
The study explored several ownership scenarios: the first scenario highlights Montana Tech as owner and operator of the tour. This scenario ensures continued access to the tunnels for research and instruction as well as providing work-study or co-op opportunities for students. A second scenario involves Butte-Silver Bow owning the tour which could provide increased income for the city. The third ownership scenario outlines private ownership. Other variations examined one owner leasing the facility to an operating contractor.

[Lexington Tunnel Mine Tour Map]

Safety Regulations
Because the tour will take place inside a mine, it must meet MHSA regulations. The mine itself already meets most of the current regulations, but the tour employees will have to be MSHA-trained.

Pictures showing the Lexington Tunnel

Start-Up/Operation
Numerous existing mine tours were surveyed to determine their revenues and expenditures, points of interest, and any other specific operational hints they were willing to divulge. Estimates of costs required to make the tunnel operational were developed, as well as the costs of equipment needed to run an underground tour.

Saving the Mary MacLane House

Butte’s Citizens for Preservation and Restoration (CPR) committee asked a team of Business and Professional Writing students to investigate the historical and architectural significance of the home, a structural assessment to determine the feasibility of saving the home, and a survey of the site’s possible future uses and funding sources. Moreover, an assessment of the significance of Mary MacLane’s literary career was needed to find appropriate sources of funding and future uses for the structure.

Historical and Architectural Significance of the Home
Preliminary investigation determined that, while the house contains some architecturally significant features, it is not unique. Rather, it represents a popular style produced in the district between 1890 and 1920. It was originally a four-unit walk- up of wood construction with American stretcher-coursed brick veneer siding. The windows are double hung, one over one, and were originally fixed with stained glass transoms (one original remains intact). The lower level has two fireplaces, and much of the wainscoting and fir flooring remains intact.

The Mary MacLane house at 419 North Excelsior Street at it looks today (1998) >>

Mary MacLane
Mary MacLane was a prominent turn-of-the-century author who was raised in Butte. Her notorious behavior and scandalous writing made her a celebrity throughout the country. Her first book, The Story of Mary MacLane, was published in 1902 and sold 100,000 copies in the first month. In it she wrote openly about her inner life—every vanity, weakness, and desire. She out-raged strait-laced society by writing about taboo subjects such as drugs, death, truth, bisexuality, beauty, and the Devil. She later published several other books and wrote for newspapers in Butte, Chicago, and New York City. Mary MacLane gained an international reputation for her courage and her candor, as well as for the beauty and sensitivity of her writing. However, her novels were not very popular in Butte, where she was reputed to be mad. (Butte’s citizens apparently were not ready for such an outspoken female writer.) Elsewhere, however, her influence helped shape the Modernist movement in literature, and her writing and her lifestyle helped to fuel the women’s movement and the fashions and the behaviors associated with the naughty girls of the Twenties—the Flappers.

Possible Uses
Developing the property as a rental/income unit, and developing it as a museum/cultural center were the primary avenues investigated. Research into the rental option revealed that an investor would have to lease the property for 15 years before realizing a profit, which effectively rules out this option. While developing the house into a museum and cultural center would entail considerably greater expense up front, this use seems to be more justifiable for a publicly owned property. Costs for extensive renovation, for project overhead and maintenance, and for the purchase of historical furnishings and memorabilia of Mary MacLane will bring the total up to the $200,000 range.

Funding Sources
While Butte-Silver Bow’s Office of Historic Preservation has expressed its commitment to help secure funds to preserve and develop the property, the project’s most striking (and promising) development comes from far beyond Butte’s city limits. The firm of Abernathy & Brown, publisher of the recent anthology of MacLane’s work, Tender Darkness, (Elizabeth Pruitt, ed.) has committed itself to provide emergency funding to keep the house from being destroyed. The firm indicates that it may donate additional funds once ownership and future-use issues have been settled. Abernathy & Brown is also developing a documentary film about the life of Mary MacLane and wants to use the house—and the Butte community—as film locations. If the film is made, the firm indicated that significantly greater funds will be available for the renovation project.

A Mary MacLane film made in Butte will not only benefit the restoration project, but it could also focus national attention on Butte through increased national awareness of Mary MacLane, thereby creating more opportunities for securing external funding for operation and maintenance of the facility.

Conclusions and Recommendations
Restoring the Mary MacLane house as a muse- um and cultural center meets CPR’s objectives. Aside from merely restoring the structure, this solution also secures its future and retains its identity as the family home of Mary MacLane.

With such a total historic renovation, the Mary MacLane house would serve as an example of the architecture that sprang up throughout the district between 1890 and 1920 to serve the needs of the more than 100,000 citizens who flooded into Butte to work in the mines. Located just off the city tour-train tracks, and across Excelsior Street from the Anselmo Mine—a centerpiece of the Butte Heritage Park system—the renovated house would provide an easy stop for people touring those facilities.