In the 1880s, the dawn of electrification caused the demand for copper to skyrocket, and the ground surrounding the mining town of Butte, Montana, was flush with it. What had been a moderately prosperous silver town became the world’s largest copper producer, earning the nickname “The Richest Hill on Earth.”

But with wealth came crime, corruption and impetuous scheming. State politicians were bribed while miners indulged in the usual vices of drinking, gambling and whoring, birthing the red-light district of “Venus Alley.” The city’s frequent skirmishes between labor unions and mining companies became even more notorious after Dashiell Hammett captured them in his Red Harvest, a noir novel inspired by his time working in the area strikebreaking for the Pinkerton Detective Agency and by the Anaconda Road Massacre, in which mining company guards opened fire on striking workers, killing one and injuring 16.