Filling Up Butte’s Berkeley Pit With Beloved, Weird Items

BUTTE, MT - The Berkeley Pit in Butte, MT is a staple and point of pride for many of us here in Butte. Everyone remembers the first time they experienced it, whether it was driving up from the west and catching a glimpse of its massive walls or coming down from the pass and seeing it from above in all its glory. Either way and no matter what, every first-timer lets out an audible "Whoaaa!"

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READ MORE: Butte's Eyesore Ranked 4th in the world

Considering all the recent news about the Berkeley Pit, I thought it would be interesting to see what popular—but sometimes weird—items would fit in Butte's Berkeley Pit. I guarantee that you're up for a surprise: can you guess how many wop chops would fill the pit? Or how many full-sized pickups? Or even how many Our Lady of the Rockies statues would fit in there?

You're about to find out.

Let's get the math out of the way. I used ChatGPT for crunching the numbers, and we used a calculation of one mile long by half a mile wide with an approximate depth of 1,780 feet, including the 900 feet of toxic water for the measurements for the Pit. Then we had some fun.

How many M&Ms would it take to fill the Berkeley Pit?

Starting off small: M&Ms, as in the candy. How many M&Ms would it take to fill the Berkeley Pit? Well, given that the "average dimensions of an M&M are about 0.5 inches in diameter, and a radius of 0.25 inches," it would take roughly 207.27 trillion M&Ms to fill up the Berkeley Pit. 207 TRILLION! That's a ridiculous amount of M&Ms, but it would be a delicious endeavor.

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How many wop chops would it take to fill Butte's Pit?

Let's get a little larger, and more Butte-oriented, with wop chops. How many wop chops would it take to fill Butte's Pit? Measurements first: "For simplicity, let's assume a pork chop sandwich has dimensions of 5 inches in length, 4 inches in width, and 2 inches in height." Now, the magic number: a whopping 530 billion wop chops. Another delicious endeavor, but let's take it up a notch.

READ MORE: The Best Wop Chops in Butte

How many full-sized pickups would it take to fill Berkeley Pit?

We all love driving pickups here in Montana, so how many of those bad boys would fit in the pit? A full-sized pickup averages around 19 feet long, 6.5 feet wide, and 6 feet tall. Now throw about 16.55 million of those in Berkeley Pit and it would be full. Pretty nuts, right?

How many 3-story apartment buildings?

Alright, just a few more left. Everyone talks about a housing shortage in Montana, so if we wanted to fill the Berkeley Pit with 3-story apartment buildings, how many could we throw in there? If we assume one of these buildings is 10,000 square feet and a total height of 30 feet, then it would take 40,888 of them to fill the pit. That's more than 10x the amount of apartment buildings in New York City. Housing problem fixed?

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READ MORE: Butte's Own Ranked 4th in All of US

How many Our Lady of the Rockies statues?

Okay, let's do one more. And we'll end it on the best Butte has to offer: Our Lady of the Rockies statue. How many of those statues will fit in the Berkeley Pit? Given that it's 87 feet tall and about 20 feet in diameter, the math tell us that 448,798 statues would fit in the pit.

That was fun! I have a lot of ideas for other items. Did you guess any of these right? Pretty crazy that trillions of M&Ms would fit in there. What items would you guys like to see for the next one? Let me know!