Butte’s iconic headframes have a bright future, thanks to continued support from the Town Pump Charitable Foundation.
Strings of red lights were initially installed on several of the Mining City’s headframes in 2003 to illuminate them at night. Those lights, however, have experienced plenty of wear in that time, and Town Pump donated about $37,000 to replace the lights on the Travona headframe last November and contributed about $45,000 each for lights on the Original and Steward headframes earlier this year, just in time for the city’s summer festival season.
The headframes “honor the people who had worked in them and what they represent to Butte,” said George Everett with Mainstreet Uptown Butte. “They’re iconic symbols of the community.”
The Town Pump Charitable Foundation “has been critical to bringing the headframe lighting project into the present day with modern technology,” Everett said.
The original red LED rope lights are being replaced with high-tech light systems that provide a variety of patterns that can match the seasons, from St. Patrick’s Day and Easter to Fourth of July and Christmas.
“This is one of the larger and more difficult custom projects that we’ve ever done,” said Tyler Jarvis of High Country Lighting. “Between the 85-foot lifts and 130-foot cranes we're having to use to get up and accomplish this project, this is quite a feat.”
Markovich Construction provided the lifts to help light installation.
The Foundation’s “generosity has been an inspiration for others who have stepped up to help light other headframes, most recently the Belmont which has been dark for more than a decade,” Everett said.
“We will continue to push ahead with this project to re-light the remaining headframes in 2025, starting with the Mountain Con and the Bell Diamond,” he added. “This would not have been possible without the support of the Town Pump Foundation.”
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