The Pit and the Pig

Leash them, chain them, corral them, fence them in, but do whatever it takes to keep the snout nose porcine revelers in check. A Butte, Montana pig was not so restrained.

BUTTE - Four men were able to save a small pig before it fell into the Berkeley Pit on Friday.

Chris Fisk says he was driving near the Finlen Hotel when he spotted a black pig running down Arizona Street.

He realized it was a household pet when he saw three young boys were chasing after it, he said.

The pig, named Oggy, eventually found its way toward Montana Resources and crawled underneath the fence, Fisk said.

Fisk followed the pig under the fence and notified Montana Resources.

Jay Clark, Jim Holman, and Nate Gelling, who work for Butte-Silver Bow, were inside the Kelley Mine Yard when they noticed Oggy walking on the north rim of the Berkeley Pit, Holman said.

Fisk feared Oggy was about to fall 300 feet to his death, he said.

The Berkeley Pit is a defunct open pit mine, a gargantuan excavation, dug out of a mountainside starting almost six decades back.

In 1955, mining in Butte saw the light, literally. Excavation on what would become the Berkeley Pit, named from one of several nearby historic underground mines that the Pit would later engulf, began that year in a transition from underground to open pit mining.

The Pit would, in the next decade, swallow Butte neighborhoods like Meaderville, Dublin Gulch, and McQueen. The transition to open pit mining, a highly industrialized form of mining, also meant fewer jobs for the city’s miners. But mining had always been the lifeblood of Butte, and so the community embraced the new mine, and there was little objection to the sacrifice of some of the city’s neighborhoods.

The pit miners burrowed 1,780 feet into the earth's surface; when they turned off the pumps the pit eventually filled with more than 1,000 feet of water. It is more than a mile and one-half across and four miles around in circumference. Back to the pig.

Three Men with a Pig

Clark eventually tackled the pig on the west side of the pit without harming him, according to Fisk.

Fisk noted, "This thing ran like lightning," Fisk said. "I guess that pig was showing me exactly who was fat and who wasn't, ya know. Put me in the dirt."

Oggy is now safe at home.

A big "oink" out for that.