Anaconda (mostly by Vicki Rains)

The Deer County Courthouse in Anaconda

Next we traveled to Anaconda, MT.  In my trip planning I was intrigued by the descriptions of this revitalized Victorian town.  Little did I know the real story until we came to stay there.  The town of about 5000 people is actually quite lovely and I really enjoyed my daily dog walks along the creek in the city park through town.  (But "revitalized" might be a somewhat optimistic description for Anaconda. -RR-)

Anaconda was founded by Marcus Daly, the copper magnate whose mansion we toured back in Hamilton while we were staying in Darby.  You can find that blog

Combination City Hall and fire station (now tourist shops)

here. He built a copper smelter alongside Warm Springs Creek to process the ore mined in Butte, MT, located about 20 miles SE of Anaconda.  The smelter promptly started churning out slag and, I suppose, copper.  The copper is gone, but the slag remains.  Lots and lots of it.  Unfortunately, we never got around to taking a picture of the slag, so you'll just have to take our word for it.  There was a lot of slag.  The Anaconda Company boasted that the smelter's smoke stack was the largest masonry structure in the world & the processing plant was the largest of its kind.  They did not mention any records set by the slag heap. 

City library

The Atlantic Richfield Company bought the plant in 1977 and then promptly had to close it down due to falling copper prices. They were hoping to acquire a profitable mining operation  but instead they just got stuck with the responsibility for the large scale hazardous waste contamination of the area.  The Environmental Protection Agency and a lawsuit required that ARCO spend millions of dollars to clean up the area as a Superfund Site.  After 30 odd years the conditions are much improved.  The creek is now clean enough that fish can almost live there.  By 2050 you'll probably be able to catch trout in Warm Springs Creek (but I wouldn't eat them).

The smoke stack is all that's left of the smelter

Mine head-stock in Butte

We drove down to Butte, MT to see the mining museum hoping to learn more about copper mining, which mostly ended in Butte in 1983.  The museum turned out to be a display of old buildings brought in from around the area, and arranged to represent an old mining town.  It certainly gave one the feel for what it would have been like to live in Montana around 1900 but taught us effectively nothing about mining. 

What distinguishes Butte from other mining towns is that its mining operations were placed right in the residential areas.  One can still see the head-stocks of the old mines throughout the older part of the city sticking up between the buildings, making the environmental consequences all the more apparent, as you shall see.

Real turn of the century buildings in a fake mining town

"Victoria's Rooms" in mining town

The Berkely copper mining pit

We decided to take a look at the Berkeley Pit, site of decades of copper mining.  Open pit mining was started in the mid 1950s, stopped in the 1980s, restarted for awhile, stopped in 2000 and restarted again in 2003.  The pit is now filled with contaminated water chock full of toxic heavy metals.  A water decontamination plant was built in the 1990’s but can’t operate fast enough keep up with the growth of this lake of poison.  A sign at the pit says that the Berkeley Pit water won’t reach the drinking water tables until 2023, another 6 years, but that they should be able to take care of the problem by then. Maybe, but I don’t think I want to move to Butte any time soon.

Phillipsburg

From Anaconda we took another day trip along MT Hwy 1 to Phillipsburg, another quaint old mining town, but without the tumultuous history or massive pollution.  We're not sure exactly what they produced here but whatever it was it is gone.  The early 20th century buildings appear mostly unchanged in the last century.

Mount Haggins Wilderness Area

The Osprey

We also took a day trip down to the Big Hole River through the Mount Haggins Wilderness area.  The area was lovely although we didn’t see a lot of wildlife on our drive.  There was one Osprey nest along he highway, but when we approached it the bird took to the air, so the pics are marginal at best.

Before we left the area we visited Lost Creek State Park.  It was in a lovely little canyon close to Anaconda.  It had a lovely little waterfall but there was hardly anyone there to enjoy it.  Their loss.

The waterfall at Lost Creek State Park