Silver Bow & Deer Lodge counties MT

[If my soul was made of stone]

The region's mineral wealth was such that Butte was known as the "Richest Hill on Earth" during its heyday, but it of course was concentrated in the hands of the extremely wealthy and unscrupulous higher-ups of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company (of which Anaconda, which they lobbied to make the state capital, was founded as a company town). This class resentment powered a very strong IWW and Socialist Party presence prior to the Wilson-era clampdown on that organization, although then-District Attorney (later progressive firebrand Senator and running mate of Robert La Follette, before he became an anti-Semitic America First gadfly) Burton Wheeler avoided pursuing prosecution for sedition, with which many Wobblies were charged during the war. The legacy of unionization continued through the twentieth century, outlasting the peak era of extraction, in part due to the environmental destruction that mining wrought as Tintrlvr mentions; the remnants of an open-pit mine, filled with carcinogenic water after the pumps were shut off, still rests right next to downtown Butte. The counties are of course trending right in the current alignment and with the general Democratic decline in state politics, but remain well to the left of most similar counties given the strong radical heritage and continued relevance of issues related to its mining legacy.