The Smelter That Melted a Mountain of Copper — The History of the Anaconda Works

On May 5, 1919, smoke rose for the first time through the tallest chimney in the world: the 585-foot stack of the Washoe smelter in Anaconda, Montana. Below it, a hillside of furnaces could take in 12,000 tons of rock a day from the richest hill on Earth and turn it into the copper that wired America. This is the history of the Anaconda Works: how an Irish miner named Marcus Daly struck a 100-foot-wide vein of copper just as the electrical age began, why he built his smelter 26 miles away, how the ore was crushed, roasted, melted and blown into nearly pure copper, the farmers, cattle and smeltermen who paid for the arsenic in the smoke, Black Monday in 1980, how the old fire moved overseas, and what you can still see today, including a golf course built on the original Old Works. SOURCES Montana Historical Society, Montana: Stories of the Land, Chapter 10, Politics and the Copper Kings Montana Historical Society, Montanans: Marcus Daly Montana Historical Society and Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks historical markers: Anaconda, Smelting the Ore, Washoe Stack Facts, Contributions of the Washoe Smelter Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, Anaconda Smoke Stack State Park National Register of Historic Places nomination, Anaconda Smelter Stack American Institute of Mining Engineers, Washoe Reduction Works (1913) Copper Development Association, The Butte Copper Mines History of Deer Lodge County, Montana (1921) Bliss v. Anaconda Copper Mining Co., 167 F. 342 (D. Mont. 1909), and Bliss v. Washoe Copper Co., 186 F. 789 (9th Cir. 1911) Keil and Richardson, Environmental Health Perspectives (2017), Anaconda smelter worker cohort Laurie Mercier, Anaconda: Labor, Community, and Culture in Montana's Smelter City Montana Historical Society, Montana's Rosies: Female Smelter Workers during World War II U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Anaconda Co. Smelter Superfund Site U.S. Department of Justice, Atlantic Richfield consent decree for the Anaconda Smelter site (2022) High Country News, The Montana gap Multinational Monitor, March 1981 Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, From black slag heaps to sand traps in Anaconda (1997) U.S. Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025: Copper Center on Global Energy Policy, Columbia University, Protecting U.S. and allied smelters (2026) Metso, 70 years of flash smelting SMS group, Peirce-Smith converter This video is an independent historical documentary made for educational purposes. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Atlantic Richfield, the Anaconda Company's successors, the State of Montana or any museum mentioned. Figures come from the published sources listed above; where sources disagree, we give a range or use the most authoritative one. Archive images are public domain or used under fair use for commentary and education. Some visuals are illustrative reconstructions. If you spot an error, tell us in the comments with your source. Somebody did this by hand. Now you know how. #anaconda #montana #copper #smelter #butter