Uptown — confusingly, the historic centre of Butte sits high on the hillside, while the newer commercial district is on the flat below — is a more or less intact Victorian and Edwardian streetscape. Iron-fronted commercial blocks, the Hennessy Mark-Up that anchored the company town, miners' boarding houses, and the kind of ornate cornices you would expect in San Francisco rather than the Rockies.
The walking-tour pamphlet from the visitor centre is the easiest way to navigate. Allow at least two hours. The headframes of disused mines still poke up out of the residential blocks; this is the only American city where the working iron of the mining era is still part of the streetscape.