Right after talking to a psychic about my own path and Butte’s, I felt comforted. It felt good to let someone else take the wheel for a while, you know? But that comfort turned out to be temporary. Soon, those vague answers about the future only gave birth to more questions. 

It got me wondering, is it really possible for a town that was built on extraction to experience a complete paradigm shift – towards reclamation and renewal? What does moving on from a toxic mess of this magnitude even mean? And what could Butte stand for in a post Superfund world? 

After talking with folks that have spent their lives here, countless scientists and Superfund experts, miners and environmental activists, I thought I would have figured that out. That Butte would be a butterfly I could pin neatly under glass. But honestly the more I get to know this place, the more mysterious it becomes. The story, only longer and more complicated. 

Still, it’s human nature to try and know the unknowable, to divine our destiny. So today, in this final chapter of Richest Hill, we’re going to spend some time searching for more clues in the past and present, and looking over the horizon. This is Episode 10: We Wear Butte Proudly On Our Skin. 

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