Word: pit
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...that once lined "Venus Alley" have disappeared. But the ugliness remains. In the years following World War II, Butte had a raw look because it was a boom town. Today it is shabby because it is dying. For the past two decades, the Anaconda Company's immense Berkeley pit has been slowly nibbling away one section of the hilltop city after another. Now the pit, a gaping, terraced ulcer 7,200 ft. long, a mile wide and 1,500 ft. deep, has begun to eat into the town's business district. By 1985, say some resigned residents, Butte...
...fouled streams and scarred mountainsides. By the mid-1940s, Butte's high-grade ore thinned out, forcing the company to increasingly undermine the town in its search for copper. By 1955, when the decreasing quality of the ore made even those operations uneconomical, Anaconda turned to cheaper open-pit mining...
...huge machines used in open-pit operations replaced many miners. Then the machines began digging into Butte itself. First opened just to the south of the city, the ever-growing Berkeley pit has swallowed neighborhoods with names like Dublin Gulch and Sin Town; since 1970, it has devoured most of the city's residential McQueen section. Currently, it is chewing away at downtown Butte. Meanwhile, a second pit, begun in 1973, has destroyed the Columbia Gardens amusement center and the city's only sizable park. With the remaining ore reserves due to run out in a decade...
...mine's encroachment continues to spread. Butte's population, which stood at 80,000 during the boom early in the century, has plummeted to 24,000 as many citizens fled in search of employment. More than 50 businesses have deserted the once-stylish uptown district since open-pit mining began. With the exception of one small bank building, no major construction has taken place in Butte since 1962. Arson has become common as people who are unable to sell their devalued buildings burn them for the insurance...
...called himself Thermidor and lucked into an exceptional lobster restaurant. Some of the CB messages are unembarrassedly commercial. A group of CB-assisted hookers plies one of the main highway approaches to Los Angeles ("This is Tender Love. I've got Lady Jane here ready for a pit stop...