ANACONDA STACK CELEBRATING 100 YEARS
PHOTO BY STEVEN CORDES, THE MONTANA STANDARD 2 | AUGUST 2018 | Anaconda Smoke Stack, 100 years THE MONTANA STANDARD
Join us in Anaconda, Montana! ANACONDA SMOKE STACK 100TH ANNIVERSARY August 8 – 12, 2018
Anaconda, Montana is a town teeming with history and surrounded by natural beauty. It is also home to the iconic Anaconda Smoke Stack, the largest free-standing masonry structure in the world—and that is something worth celebrating! Enjoy a week of family-friendly culture, food and drink, and history at the Anaconda Smoke Stack 100th Anniversary Celebration, a birthday bash a century in the making!
August 8 August 10 Wednesday Friday 3-5PM Music by Smokey, George Fiddler and Joe Strelnik STACK TOURS: Kennedy Common 9AM, 11:30AM, 2PM and 5:30PM 5:15PM Performance by the Anaconda Aislings Meet the bus at the Stack Park. Kennedy Common 5-7PM Alive After Five 3-8PM Children’s Games Kennedy Common August 11 6PM Parade – Line-up at Courthouse 5PM Saturday The Forest Service Mule team is leading the parade, along with an STACK TOURS: appearance from the Wells Fargo Stage Coach. After the parade, 9AM, 11:30AM, 2PM and 5:30PM there will be keynote speakers and music at the Kennedy Common. Meet the bus at the Stack Park. 8-10PM Ian Thomas & The Band of Drifters 9AM Fun Run – Registration at 8AM Kennedy Common Washoe Park Tennis Courts August 9 2-7PM Smeltermen’s BBQ and Brewfest Thursday Chamber Lawn 2p2p ppmm STACK TOURS: Free Music, 5 Breweries and AWAAWNWNWN 9AM, 11:30AM, 2PM and 5:30PM a BBQ Competition Meet the bus at the Stack Park. 5-7PM Art & Wine Walk August 12 Start at the Copper Village Sunday and follow the map. 6PM Shakespeare in the Park 7PM Adam Miller Folk Concert Washoe Park Pavilion – Free Kennedy Common Love’s Labour’s Lost
Bring your lawn chair and enjoy the music! Sponsored by the Friends of the Hearst Free Library
Movies at the Washoe Theater every night at 5PM
QUESTIONS OR INTERESTED VOLUNTEERS Please call the Chamber of Commerce (406) 563-2400 or (406) 560-3582.
Sponsored by the Anaconda Community Foundation, 100th Stack Anniversary Committee and Southwest Montana. KEN MILLER THE MONTANA STANDARD AUGUST 2018 | Anaconda Smoke Stack, 100 years | 3
LAW FIRM OF KNIGHT Celebrating & DAHOOD the thth 100100 Wade J. Dahood Jeff Dahood AnniversaryAnniversary Nancy Dahood, CLA OF THE ANACONDA Melissa Dahood, R.N. SMOKE STACK! Ann Wareham Stephanie Vankirk
113 East Third Street Anaconda, Montana 406-563-3424 In MT 1-800-823-3424 www.kdesdlaw.com 4 | AUGUST 2018 | Anaconda Smoke Stack, 100 years THE MONTANA STANDARD A look back at the Anaconda Smelter
Dangerous work that bors drinking beer on the hood of “There were jobs for everybody. standing masonry structure in the their cars together, homes with You could learn a trade.” world. (see related column). gave life to a town huge families, and a place where Also remaining is more than people knew who lived in every Ellen Tocher, who worked in the Anaconda Company’s 300 square miles of environmen- SUSAN DUNLAP house all the way down the block. general office in the late 1950s tal damage and 130 acres of the [email protected] A place where everybody looked waste byproduct, the mound of t was hot. It was dirty. It was out for one another. black slag lining Highway 1. dangerous. But it was a job for They remember an era when They also say that getting a job century. This year is the Anaconda I thousands. making $19.90 a day was good “on the hill” was just what you did Those who are still around re- Stack’s 100th birthday. And this Anaconda’s smelter was money and a $52 a month pension if you lived in Anaconda. Many count stories of bad accidents is the story of that stack and Ana- a lifeline to immigrants and the after 45 years of heavy labor was lament that the Anaconda Com- that took individual lives. They conda’s Washoe Smelter, gathered lifeblood of a town that depended nothing to complain about. They pany is no more. remember drinking — lots of from the memories of the people on the jobs it provided — even as could buy homes for $6,000, and They wanted to retire with the drinking — both on the job and off. who made it work, 24 hours a day, the toxins it produced shortened many did. company. They wanted to send After a little prodding, they seven days a week — the workers some workers’ lives. They reminisce about a day their kids to work there just as so summon back to mind the fun of the Anaconda Company. The smelter was shut down in when a man putting a silver dol- many of them worked alongside they had in the midst of heavy 1980, and the few smeltermen who lar in the hand of a kid meant so their fathers and uncles, cousins labor and personal danger. With In the beginning are still around to tell their stories much that one worker after an- and brothers, and in the footsteps no trouble at all, they remember There was the company. There remember a different time and a other recalled that particular of their grandfathers. the smell. was always the company. very different Anaconda. One af- aspect of Smelterman’s Day in They see the emptiness of a Now what remains is a histori- Although local lore says that ter another, the former workers of some detail, though it was more town that was built by mining cal footnote that reaches 585 feet Irish immigrant Marcus Daly the Anaconda Company sat down than half a century ago. The Mill king Marcus Daly for the sole pur- into the sky: The Anaconda Stack, moved operations west of Butte to with us on their front porches, and Smelterman’s Union gave the pose of serving a copper smelter. big enough to fit the Washington build his smelters closer to water on their lawns and in their living silver dollars and held the annual They lament how, having lost that Monument inside, nestled in a sources, Bozeman-based historian rooms and told stories of an idyllic event on Aug. 8. The company let smelter nearly four decades ago, mountain-shaded valley. Built in time — kids running freely, neigh- almost everybody off work. the town struggles still in the 21st 1918, the stack is the largest free- See ANACONDA, Page 6
Nestled in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, Anaconda delivers a unique blend of outdoor recreation, shops and restaurants, beautiful scenery, and the friendliest folks in Montana. Explore all that Anaconda and Montana have to offer while staying at the Marcus Daly Motel! Newly Remodeled • Spacious Rooms • Clean, Non-Smoking Facility • High-Speed Internet • Cable Television • Queen Sized Beds • Refrigerators Microwaves • Coffee Makers • Recliners • Ironing Boards • Hair Dryers • Grab & Go Snacks Sorry, No Pets THE MONTANA STANDARD AUGUST 2018 | Anaconda Smoke Stack, 100 years | 5
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From one pillar of the community to another, Happy Birthday Anaconda Smoke Stack!
St. James Healthcare 400 S. Clark Street, Butte, MT 59701 P: 406-723-2500 | www.stjameshealthcare.org 6 | AUGUST 2018 | Anaconda Smoke Stack, 100 years THE MONTANA STANDARD Anaconda Continued from Page 4
Timothy LeCain says Daly chose the valley 25 miles west of the Mining City to erect his smokestacks because the air pollution from smelter smoke in Butte was so severe that people were falling ill and dying. So the Anaconda Company headed west to a place with few inhabitants. Their first smelter, called Old Works, went up in the 1880s, along what is now called Warm Springs Creek. Then in 1902 the Anaconda Company moved south to build the original, ap- proximately 300-foot stack and smelter operations near Mill Creek for a reported $9.5 million. But that stack wasn’t tall enough. Farmers and ranchers in the Deer Lodge Valley sued the Anaconda Company shortly after the first load of copper ore was smelted that year. Within that first year, livestock were dying due to the 20 tons of arsenic coming out of the stack every day. It took 15 more years, but in 1917, the Anaconda Company responded to the PHOTO COURTESY OF COPPER VILLAGE MUSEUM AND ART CENTER problem by preparing ground to build the This 1918 shot shows the beginning of the base as it was in the process of being built. 585-foot stack. The idea was a taller stack would send the arsenic farther up into the
HOT SPRINGS LODGING DINING GENUINE. GOLF MONTANA. EXPERIENCE. SPA
Congratulations on the 100th Anniversary of the Smoke Stack!
FairmontMontana.com | 800.332.3272 THE MONTANA STANDARD AUGUST 2018 | Anaconda Smoke Stack, 100 years | 7 atmosphere and spread out the toxins. ore. There were big piles of dust that could The second Anaconda Stack would also burn skin, conveyor belts, slurry lines, 40- contain a pollution abatement process to inch pipes, cranes moving, and thousands capture the 75 tons of arsenic a day that of men wandering in the smoke, dust and was, by then, going up in smoke. The new gas in buildings that were anywhere from stack and environmental control system 40 to 90 feet tall, Ryan said. would cost the company $1.6 million. There were also underground tunnels. The system, which involved electrified Ryan called it “a real strange place.” chains that attracted the arsenic in the dust “Most of that smelter was built in the before it went out the chimney, was only 45 early 1900s. It was still the same,” he said percent effective in the early years. In later of his time at the smelter in the 1960s and years, it was somewhat improved. 1970s. Ryan speaks in a deep, guttural Workers alive today are familiar with voice. “Some of them buildings, they were Congratulatins that abatement system because the com- spooky but kind of neat, hardwood floors, pany continued to use it until the smelter brick walls, and they had arched windows. closed in 1980. It had an other-worldly feel to it.” ANACONDA LeCain writes in an article “The Lim- its of Eco-Efficiency” in a journal called What researchers learned 307 E. Park Ave. • Anaconda Environmental History in 2000, that the Workers described the smell as having company used the arsenic, a by-product of been, at times, “chemical” or sulfuric, the copper smelting process, to treat rail- like rotten eggs. But what Peggy Mangan 563-5203 road ties. remembers most is the 1880 Harrison Ave. • Butte Mike Skocilich, who “One thing I noise. Anaconda Smelter Stack is 71, remembers they Mangan, who is now 497-7000 remember, the noise 100th Anniversary still used arsenic to 65, worked as a smelt- 3701 Harrison Ave. • Butte treat railroad ties when erman during the sum- up there was incredibly A smoke stack so large, the he worked, first as a mers in the early 1970s Washington Monument could fit inside! smelterman, later as a intense. It didn’t seem to pay for college. 494-3900 foreman, on the hill, in to matter where you “One thing I remem- the 1960s and 1970s. were, you could be in ber, the noise up there Member “The ties would last was incredibly intense. www.glacierbank.com FDIC forever, but you didn’t the rod mills or the It didn’t seem to mat- want to get a sliver from ball mills. It was noisy. ter where you were, them. It was bad, it was you could be in the rod really bad,” he said while Even having lunch, it mills or the ball mills. sitting with two report- was always crazy noisy It was noisy. Even hav- ers on his front porch ing lunch, it was always last week, the hill within and dirty and dark.” crazy noisy and dirty Proud to Celebrate sight from his chair. Peggy Mangan, and dark,” she said over He pointed to places former smelter worker the phone from her At- on the slope as he lanta-based home last the History that thought back to the week. different departments But it wasn’t the noise and listed some of them: The zinc plant, that killed people. It was the arsenic in the the beryllium pilot plant, the phosphate dust the workers breathed. Built Anaconda’s plant, the brick plant. He got up from his In 1969 two researchers from the Na- chair and pointed to a particular spot and tional Cancer Institute in Bethesda, said, “That’s where the ferro mag plant Maryland, began researching Anaconda’s Community used to be.” smelter workers. The company cooper- Skocilich says the company processed ated, providing documents to scientists ferromanganese to harden steel. Joseph Fraumeni and Anna Lee. They Butch Ryan, a 74-year-old former pip- looked at the records of more than 8,000 efitter and smelterman, put the size of the employees. The researchers could connect place in broader terms. the dots linking environmental exposure “You go up there at night, it was a city, to mortality rates and disease because lights burning everywhere,” he said from they could determine, through company his living room in a house he’s owned in records, where the workers stood or sat Opportunity since the 1970s. for 40 hours a week, 50 or so weeks out Of Lisac’s Tire Anaconda All of the workers mentioned Roaster of the year. 1100 W Park 2, which had “big, huge ovens” where Fraumeni and Lee’s research took them Anaconda the ore dried out before being sent to the all the way back to worker exposure in the 563-6110 Open up a charge account, six months no interest! arsenic roaster, then the reverb, another 1930s. They found a clear link between American Car Care Lisac’s Tire Montana set of furnaces that preheated the ore and respiratory cancer deaths and arsenic Muffler turned it into a molten liquid, which then AND SUPPLY went to the converter, which smelted the See ANACONDA, Page 10 3600 Harrison • Butte 494-4450 2109 Yale • Butte 782-4294 441 S Montana St. • Butte 782-9108 8 | AUGUST 2018 | Anaconda Smoke Stack, 100 years THE MONTANA STANDARD CALENDAR OF EVENTS Longfellow Finnegan Riddle Funeral Home & Cremation Service Anaconda stack 100th
th anniversary celebration In Celebration of the 100 Anaconda is celebrating the 100th birth- Parade starts at 6 p.m. day of the Anaconda stack at the Washoe Anniversary of the Anaconda Stack Smelter Wednesday through Saturday. Thursday The Washoe Theater, 305 Main St., will A wine walk of local busineses begins play two short films, one from the Ana- at 5 p.m. Pick up a map at Copper Village conda Company, plus a short Powerpoint and Art Museum. There will be historic presentation on the making of the stack photos of the stack along the wine walk. beginning at 5 p.m. each evening. Live music begins at 7 p.m. at Kennedy There will also be bus tours to the stack Common. The event is free. each day at the following times: 9 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 2 p.m., and 5:30 p.m. Friday To take the bus to the stack, arrive 15 A street fair, with food and free music minutes early. Meet at Anaconda Smelter runs from 5 to 8 p.m. at Durston Park at the Stack State Park, 100 Smelter Road. Cost: corner of Park and Main Streets. $5 per ticket with a $1.22 ticket fee. Saturday Wednesday A 5k fun run begins at 9 a.m. at the Celebrating the 100th birthday of the Washoe Park Tennis Court in Washoe Park Kyle Zimmerman, Manager-Funeral Director Anaconda stack at the Washoe Smelter be- on Pennsylvania Street. Registration begins gins at 3 p.m. at Kennedy Common, Main at 8 a.m. Fee is by donation. PO Box 997 --- 107 Oak St. Anaconda, MT and Fourth Streets with kid’s activities, A brewfest and live music runs from 406-563-3371 food and live music. This is also the an- 2 to 7 p.m. at the Anaconda Chamber of Anaconda • Philipsburg • Drummond • Deer Lodge nual Smelterman’s Day. All events are free. Commerce, 306 E. Park Street.
WE ARE PROUDTO BE A PART OF ANACONDA’S THE RICH TH HISTORY&100 ANNIVERSARY OFTHE SMOKE STACK.
Jordan Contracting 50 MT-48,Anaconda, MT (406) 563-4409 THE MONTANA STANDARD AUGUST 2018 | Anaconda Smoke Stack, 100 years | 9
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