So you grew up in Butte?

I did. My father was a minor and my family were minors going back four or five generations.

Kathleen McLaughlin is a reporter. For years, she worked in China. But recently, she decided to come home to Butte, Montana, the same copper mining town where she grew up.

It was once known as the richest hill on earth.

Drive me through this region where mining has really been such a part of the infrastructure for so long.

You come, let's say you're coming from Helena and you cross over the continental divide to the west.

You come over this huge mountain and down into a valley that is Butte.

So when you look at the town, you'll see head frames, these black structures that look kind of like oil derricks.

They're not. They were the lifts that put men down into the mines underground.

Underneath those head frames are thousands and thousands of miles of abandoned mineshaft.

Mining supported Kathleen's family, supported the whole town, really.

But it was always a tense bargain.

Accidents made workers suspicious.

There were union strikes.

And then the mines began to close.

I was about, oh, 11 years old when mining completely shut down in Butte. And so my childhood

in the 80s was really kind of defined by the shutdown enclosures and people leaving town and the economy collapsed.

And I left right after high school because, to be honest, it didn't seem like there was any opportunity for me in Butte.

For the last 40 years, this region has been dealing with what the mines left behind.

When did this wariness start to encompass the possible health effects of mining?

In my memory and just, you know, talking with my family, I think there had always been some

suspicion about what was in the dust, about what was in, you know, the air when the smelters

...