It was a hard town, hazardous and dirty, winter-cold for half a year. But the Irish flourished there, establishing literary societies and patriotic clubs, opera houses and theaters, schools and churches, raising large families in two-story houses. In the Rocky Mountains, their stories found a home. At one point, more Gaelic was spoken in Daly’s mines than anywhere on this side of the Atlantic. New Ireland, when it finally came to the American West, was Butte, Montana.
