Copper King Mansion - Butte, MT - Wikipedia Entries on Waymarking.com

In Montana High Wide and Handsome, Joseph Kinsey Howard wrote of William Andrews Clark that "never a dollar got away from him that didn't come back stuck to another..."

William Andrews Clark was born January 8, 1839 in Connellsville, Pennsylvania. He worked on his father's farm until 14 when he entered the Laurel Hill Academy and then attended law school at the University in Mount Pleasant, Iowa for two years. He then taught school in Missouri from 1859 to 1860. In 1862, he headed west with a small grubstake to enter the risky business of gold mining near Central City, Colorado. Hearing of a gold strike in Bannack, he moved north to the Montana Territory with a friend named Selby and together they staked a claim on Jefferson Davis Gulch near Bannack. They worked the claim and sold it within two years for $1,500.

Clark decided that he was better at helping miners to manage their findings than he was as a miner himself. He invested his profit in a team of horses and a wagon and traveled to Salt Lake City, Boise and elsewhere and began hauling supplies to the mining camps in Montana Territory. From there he began recording claims for miners and making loans based on their claims. From there he quickly amassed a growing fortune through his many mining and banking ventures, at one point having an income that was recorded at about $17 million dollars a month.

When he decided to build his Butte home, the cost of the Copper King Mansion at the time, estimated at about a half-million dollars, represented a half-day's income for him.

By 1900, Clark had amassed a personal fortune estimated at $50,000,000 and was considered one of the wealthiest men in the world.

With his business ventures secure, Clark pursued his passion for politics. He served as the president of Montana's two constitutional conventions. He was instrumental in ensuring that the state capital would be located in Helena. He was elected to the U. S. Senate from Montana and served from 1901 to 1907.

At the height of his career, Clark's business ventures spanned the continent. He owned newspapers in Montana and Utah including The Butte Miner, The Great Falls Tribune, and The Salt Lake Herald. He owned sugar plantations in California with one of the largest factories in the West--the Los Angeles Sugar Company. Nearby, he owned land with oil wells in Long Beach, California.

In Butte, he entered the mining business by foreclosing on an undercapitalized silver mine and then bought several others. He then returned for a year to the Columbia School of Mines in New York to better understand the technical aspects of his new business interests.

In Butte, he built the first successful smelter and stamp mill, established the water company, the first commercial electric light company and an electric railway. He donated money to the YMCA and to the First Presbyterian Church.

Perhaps his greatest legacy to Butte was that he built the beloved Columbia Gardens, a 68-acre playground and amusement park for the young at heart of Butte and the region. Thursdays were set aside to transport children for free to the Columbia Gardens on his electric trolley system.

Other charitable efforts of Clark include a girl scout camp in New York state named for his daughter Andree. He also funded the Paul Clark Home, an orphanage in Butte that provided sanctuary for the sick and the indigent, and the YWCA home in Los Angeles for homeless girls and their mothers.
From The Copper King Mansion

CLARK MANSION
William Andrews Clark already was a successful businessman in Montana Territory before he came to Butte in 1872, having been involved in freighting, wholesale trade, and banking in Bannack, Virginia City and Deer Lodge. When he decided to enter the new field of silver and copper mining, the thorough Clark typically attended the Columbia School of Mines for a year. He built Butte's first smelter, and its first water system and electrical plant. In 1884, the year he chaired the territory's second constitutional convention (ending in Montana's second unsuccessful attempt at statehood), he also began construction of this mansion. Its three floors and 30 rooms would take four years and $260,000 to complete, by which time Clark was fighting the "War of the Copper Kings" after his defeat as territorial delegate to Congress. This mansion's "modem Elizabethan" architectural style was Clark's favorite. Throughout the interior are rich touches of fine hardwoods, including mahogany, cherry, laurel, sycamore, oak and both birdseye and curly maple. The mansion's nine fireplaces are adorned with imported color tiles, each capped by a hand-carved mantle in hardwood to match the room's décor.

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Self-made multimillionaire William Clark spent an estimated $260,000 on the construction of this splendid thirty-two-room residence between 1884 and 1888. Though an astounding sum, that figure represented only a half-day’s earnings out of Clark’s seventeen-million-dollar a month income. The irregular architectural plan, a classic of Queen Anne styling, features porticos, arched windows, and elaborate decorative elements. The interior boasts finishing in a different wood for each room, frescoed ceilings, and Tiffany stained glass windows and chandeliers. The intricately carved staircase took four years to complete and was dismantled and displayed at the 1904 Worlds’ Fair in St. Louis.
From the NRHP plaque at the building