Anaconda Road

By editor

Butte, Silver Bow County, Montana

Marcus Daly, a man who knew a good bet when he saw one, arrived in Butte in 1880 carrying the modest title of agent for the Walker Brothers of Salt Lake City. His job was straightforward enough: assess a silver mine perched near the top of Butte Hill, aptly named the Anaconda. The name, it turns out, was more fitting for the snake of fortune that gripped Daly than for any creature of the wild. What Daly found was not merely silver veins but a copper deposit so rich it would inflate his pockets and alter the map of American industry.

At the time, copper was about as glamorous as a lump of dirt, but the 1880s and 1890s had other plans. The world was electrifying, and copper was the wire that made it happen. Telegraph lines, telephone cables, the electrical wiring that promised to light up cities and homes--each demanded vast quantities of copper. Daly, with the eye of a hawk, realized the Anaconda’s true value and began buying up smaller mining claims all around Butte Hill. By the early 1890s, his holdings were so extensive that he effectively owned the hill itself.

In 1883, Daly declared, “Copper is king, and Butte is the throne.” This was not idle boast. The Anaconda Mine, under his leadership, became the largest copper mine in the world, and its output helped shape the American industrial age. By 1900, Butte was producing nearly half of the copper mined in the United States, and Daly’s empire, known as the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, was worth tens of millions of dollars--a fortune rivaling the likes of Carnegie and Rockefeller.

But the story of Anaconda Road is not just the story of copper or capitalists. It is the story of the people who made the mines work. When Daly started accumulating claims, Butte was little more than a rough collection of shacks and tents on the rugged hillside. The miners came from everywhere: Cornwall and Wales, Italy, Norway, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, and above all, Ireland. The Irish, many fleeing famine and hardship, found something close to home in the hard rock mining. They brought with them a stubborn work ethic, a fierce sense of community, and a faith that would build the cornerstone of the neighborhood--St. Mary’s Parish.

The Anaconda Road, which snakes up the hill from the center of Butte to the mines, became the spine of the neighborhood where these immigrants settled. Boarding houses and small homes crowded the narrow street, their windows often fogged with soot and sweat. The miners rose before dawn, lunch pails in hand, to trudge up Anaconda Road to work in the Anaconda, Neversweat, High Ore, Diamond, Badger, and later, the Kelley mines. These were long shifts, often eight to ten hours deep underground, in conditions that would have made the average man blanch. And yet, they endured, driven by the hope that their labor would provide a better life for their families.

The neighborhood itself reflected the mix of these cultures. The Cornish brought their Methodist chapels, the Italians their Catholic traditions, the Slavs their communal bonds and language clubs. But it was the Irish who left the most indelible mark, both culturally and physically. St. Mary’s Parish, established in the 1880s, was more than a church--it was a community center, a social hub, and a place where the miners’ children learned to read and write in the shadow of the mountain that fed their fathers’ toil.

Yet, this prosperity came at a cost. The Anaconda mines were notorious for their dangerous working conditions. Mining accidents were common, and the air underground was thick with dust that would later be linked to deadly lung diseases. Miners often worked twelve-hour shifts, seven days a week, with little job security. Labor unrest was frequent. In 1917, a strike against the Anaconda Copper Mining Company lasted nearly a year, illustrating the tension between the company’s bottom line and the miners' demands for fair wages and safer working conditions.

Marcus Daly’s approach to labor was as hard as the rock his miners extracted. He famously said, “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs,” which in mining terms meant risking lives and livelihoods to keep the copper flowing. The company’s power extended beyond the mines; it controlled the town’s bank, the newspapers, and even the local government, making Butte a near company town. Yet despite this dominance, the immigrant communities along Anaconda Road maintained a fierce independence and a resilience that would carry them through decades of hardship.

Railroads played a crucial role in turning Butte into a copper titan. The Northern Pacific Railway connected Montana’s copper fields with national markets, making it possible to ship tons of ore to smelters and factories. Daly himself invested heavily in railroads and smelting operations, including the Anaconda Smelter in nearby Anaconda, Montana, which processed the ore into pure copper. This vertical integration made Daly’s empire efficient and ruthlessly competitive.

By the turn of the century, Butte was a city of nearly 40,000 people, many of whom lived in the neighborhoods surrounding Anaconda Road. The street was more than a path to work; it was a corridor of life. Children played in the alleys, women gathered at the parish, and miners swapped stories of the day’s labor. The community was rough around the edges--miners drank heavily, and violence was not uncommon--but it was alive with the spirit of those chasing the American dream.

Today, the Anaconda Road neighborhood still carries the marks of its past. The old boarding houses and churches remain, standing weathered but unbowed, reminders of the men and women who carved a life out of the hillside. The copper may have dimmed in economic importance, but the story of Anaconda Road is far from over. It is a record of ambition, hardship, and a people bound together by more than just the ore beneath their feet.

See also

• Anaconda Road at Butte, Silver Bow County
• Butte at Butte, Silver Bow County
• Marcus Daly: An Irishman with Vision at Anaconda, Deer Lodge County