Butte was a beacon in the dark, a warm handshake with cold fingertips. When winter came, I headed south: Memphis, Nashville, and then Austin, Texas, where I spent 13 years making music.

Instead, Montana's best place to retire is officially the underrated town of Butte. Butte may be underrated, but it's certainly not underdeveloped.

“Butteopia: Impressions of Butte, Montana” is all about pictures, artfully presented on 250 pages. In fact, the only words are a one-page foreword by editor Frank Ruffalo and a list of photo ...

Butte is ugly, the pamphlets and websites said. Ugly from the days of metal mining, from the reign of Montana’s Copper Kings. Lead-stained ground, air-blown arsenic, metals in the soil. Dingy ...