I know this is old news, but before it disappears into the void, I’d like to revive it. Back in 2000, someone discovered the Butte County School District #111, in Arco, Indiana Idaho, which surprisingly enough, had a website! In the logo presented on their school website, it was clear that their high school’s mascot was a pirate — slightly less common than the ubiqutous bulldog, but still not unusual. What was unusual was the perhaps accidental but wholly sophomoric humor value in what the name of their athletic teams might have been referred to: The Butte Pirates. Here’s the logo:
The reason I’m bringing this up again? I tried to Google for this old bit of history and it was nearly impossible to find. The school’s current website (which is horrible from both a design and usability perspective, compared to the simpler site of years earlier) lacks any mention of the school’s mascot — probably due to the attention it got several years ago, but that’s just a guess. Luckily, Google had this gem buried in amongst the 26,900 results for “butte pirates”, which contained the original URL to the school’s site with the mascot on it. Unfortunately, Google’s cache didn’t have the site’s contents, but the trusty Wayback Machine did! So, I was able to retrieve the logo and share with you links to the original site circa 2001.
Here’s to my attempt to prevent this little tidbit of trivia from getting lost. Maybe I’ll even make it to the first search results page for “butte pirates,” too.
Programmer, husband, father, singer, guitarist, tinkerer, reverse engineer, strange, and living in New Jersey. 
Congrats. I did the search on GOOGLE and you made it. Front page!!!!
Great find!
You, sir, are a legend.
Keep the dream alive!!!
Big Ramifications: Uh, thanks! Just doing what I do best, you know. :-)
Hi. Thanks for posting this and doing whatever you did to get it to the top of Google’s “Butte Pirates” search results. I looked around for pictures of the place, but besides the front entrance to the school, I couldn’t find anything.
While I was driving around visiting national parks, I wasn’t far from Arco and decided to see what was there. I was not disappointed, and I’ve posted the results on LiveJournal (http://sailhome.livejournal.com/5162.html) which links to pictures on flickr (search for Butte Pirates).
Enjoy!
Thanks, Carl. You’ve got some great pics of the school … nicely done!
I was a Butte Pirate
It would be nice if this person would of gotten the state right! Its Idaho!! trust me I know!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh my goodness, Jake–you’re right! It’s Idaho, not Indiana. Thanks for pointing that out.
If you built a High School across the street from a state mental institution what would be the most inapropriate mascot for your high school? Perhaps Maniacs. Well leave it to Idaho to do the most inapropriate. Check out the Orifino Maniacs. Yes, they are located across the street from State Hospital North.
Ryan: Haha! Thanks for the tip–yes, it looks like Orofino High School hails itself as the “Home of the Maniacs” and is right around the corner from Idaho Correctional Institution-Orofino. Google Maps of 300 Dunlap Rd. shows how close everything is.
Too funny!
If you look at the picures on the frontpage of Butte’s website you can see it says “home of the pirates”
I actually go to this high school by the way… seriously, I promise. If proof is needed… um, on the wikipedia, it said that the principal was Erik Strom (who happens to be one of my best best best friend’s dad)… for one thing, he was the principal of the middle school, not the high school, and he moved this year. The principal of the high school was previously Brandon Ferris… But now it’s… umm.. I don’t know is first name, but his last name’s Chambers, which is creepy if you ask me. He’s obsessed with shaking peoples’ hands…
So anyway, well I think they took if off of the website because people kept emailing them about how “vugar” it was to be the Butte Pirates. I definitely think it’s oh so weird, I don’t know WHY in the world they’d even choose to be the pirates, not smart. But it’s pronounced like Beaut in Beautiful… haha. But yeah! I go to that school! I’m a sophomore… :D bye bye!
Amy: Thanks for all the recent information!
I think most people know it’s prononced “beaut” and not “butt”, but the confusing rule of “silent e” in English makes pronouncing “Butte” as “butt” very plausible – thus making the frequent interpretation of “Butte Pirates” as “butt pirates” possible.
It’s still sophomoric humor, but that doesn’t make it any less funny. :-)
I swear, the first time I saw their website, that GIF had the word “PIRATES” along the bottom of the image instead of “High School”. A smaller version can be seen here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20010808224829/d111.k12.id.us/BHS/Images/BHShome.gif
haha when I came from poky to this school I broke down laghing my ass off because of the name but I got over it pretty fast. Butte is a mountain in idaho they call it the great butte or something like that. If you go to the local grociery store in Arco which is called the A&A where most people in town get their food theres a picture of the butte on the wall looking outside the sliding doors. The name may be dumb but the girls at the school a fucking hot. Good catch line at that school for girls would probly be hey wanna be my butt pirate, idk just thoght about it. overall it’s a pretty good school except the english department it’s pretty bad on spelling. Mr.Chambers is pretty funny I sat down in the office for a bit whial he was talking to one of the castodians and he said alot of funny things that just made me lagh, when he walk out into the commens he flexed in front of me and said 200 something pure muscle what you got. I just broke down laghing my ass off, he’s a pretty funny guy. As for the athletic team they get alot of shit about the name of the school, still they make up for it by kicking there ass at pretty much every school they go up against. The girls basketball team this year Sucks they need to learn to pass a little more elusively.
umm….i’m a girl from BHS. You are a freaking weirdo who should be put into a mental institution. I think that Butte is a wonderful name and a fetching awesome place to live. You are lucky to live in Arco. SCREW ALL OF U!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Arco has a lot of good fishing places and if our basketball team sucks so bad then how come we have won the state championship TWICE??? In a FREAKING ROW????? and keep wishing because none of the girls would be stupid enough to talk to a person like you Gn!!!!!!!!POKY IS GAY!!!!!!!!!and thats a really really bad catch line. FYI. and you’re not that great of a speller yourself. (Brett if this is you you are friking screwed.)
Nice find and i went to that school. It is small but it has the best people in the world and the best teachers. Butte County High School Pirates!!!!!!!!!!! The best mascot ever,
All I want to know is: where do I get the t-shirt. If this school is mart, they’d get the logo trademarked and start their CAFE account.
YARRR!!! I be here fer yer booty!
This is so funny to read because I believe it was my brother who ended up making this well known back in the day. He had a computer gaming and technology site called Planet Riva (later to be called Planet GeForce) and pretty much every day he would mention something random and funny just for kicks. One thing he mentioned actually made the back page of PC World Magazine. His site used to get LOTS of traffic. He mentioned the school because I noticed the town name on the way to a track meet in Pocatello, ID (I was on a bus all the way from Edmonton, AB – CAN). He did some research, saw the logo, posted it and the rest is history… I think.
When I was in high school we played sports against the Butte Pirates. At one of the games we hosted there bus was parked at our school. A few kids snuck in the school and took yellow construction paper and taped it over the E on both sides of the bus so it said Butt Pirates. Wish I would have had a camera!
Butte High School hosts a Cross Country meet called Pirate Pride. Pretty dang close to the school hosting a “Butte Pirate Pride” event!
https://www.buttehigh.org/student_activities/athletics/cross_country