Contributions of the Washoe Smelter

By editor

Anaconda, Deer Lodge County, Montana

It is a curious fact of American industry that the fortunes of copper mining and smelting in Montana have often been as volatile as a gambler’s luck in a Nevada saloon. The Washoe Smelter, perched on the banks of the Clark Fork River in Anaconda, played a central role in this strange dance of boom and bust through the better part of the twentieth century. The story of the Washoe Smelter is not merely one of metal and fire but of railroads, labor, war, and the peculiar ways in which men seek to wrangle wealth from the earth.

The man most responsible for the Washoe’s prominence was Marcus Daly, whose name is as deeply etched into Montana’s history as the veins of copper beneath its soil. Daly understood that the value of copper ore was not just in the ground but in the cost of hauling it out. To control these costs and to tie the vast operations of Butte’s mines to the smelting works in Anaconda, Daly incorporated the Butte, Anaconda and Pacific Railroad (BA&P) in 1892. This was no mere siding to a main line; it was a lifeline.

By 1903, this railroad was hauling 500 cars a day between Butte and Anaconda--an astonishing figure when one considers the rugged terrain and the limitations of early twentieth-century technology. By 1906, the BA&P had moved a staggering 2,700,000 tons of industrial products. This wasn’t just ore and copper--it was passengers, freight, and the supplies that kept a region alive. The line stretched westward to mining districts such as Georgetown and Southern Cross, knitting together the scattered enterprises of the Copper King’s domain.

The BA&P was no ordinary railroad. In 1912, it became the first in the United States to be fully electrified, a modern marvel that cut through the Montana hills with a silent efficiency that must have seemed miraculous to the steam-belching lines of the era. By 1917, nearly 1,000 commuters were riding the rails daily, a fact that hints at a population and economy more complex than the usual image of isolated miners and rugged individualists.

Copper prices during this period were prone to jump like a trout in a mountain stream. In 1916, as the world edged toward the conflagration of the First World War, the price of copper surged from 18 cents a pound to 33 cents. This was no small matter: copper was the sinew of modern industry, wiring for telegraphs, electricity, and the shell casings that kept soldiers alive or dead, depending on which side of the gun they stood. The demand was "insatiable," as one contemporary report put it, and the Washoe smelter and its railroad were caught in the tide.

But as quickly as the war inflated copper’s worth, peace brought a sudden deflation. The demand plummeted, and the railroads that once hummed with activity found themselves creaking under the weight of diminished business. By 1925, the tracks out to the western mining districts were abandoned, swallowed by economic necessity and the shifting fortunes of a metal market that could not be tamed.

The smelter’s story, however, does not end with the decline of the 1920s. The outbreak of World War II rekindled the furnace’s fire. This time, the nation faced a labor shortage so severe that it had to turn to a resource it had long overlooked: women. Over seventy women found work at the Washoe Smelter during the war and the immediate post-war years. This was not a simple matter of opening the doors and letting them walk in. The Mill and Smeltermen’s Union initially resisted the idea of women stepping into these traditionally male roles. The union negotiated to ensure that the seniority rights of men returning from military service would be protected, a move that both acknowledged the necessity of female labor and the persistent grip of old labor hierarchies.

The women who worked at Washoe were part of a broader national phenomenon, immortalized in the figure of Rosie the Riveter. They handled the intense heat and dangerous fumes of the smelter, filling gaps left by husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons who had marched off to war. In the shadow of the Anaconda Stack, their labor was a quiet but crucial chapter in the war effort.

Speaking of the stack--it is not a slender chimney but a colossal monument to industrial ambition. Completed in 1919, the Washoe Smelter Stack rises 585 feet into the Montana sky, making it the tallest masonry structure in the world. One can only imagine the architects’ and builders’ pride, and the odd mix of awe and annoyance it must have inspired in the townsfolk. It was designed to carry the smelter’s noxious gases far away from the town, a practical solution to a filthy problem. Yet, it also symbolized the scale of the enterprise that shaped Anaconda’s existence.

Marcus Daly’s vision, despite its flaws and contradictions, transformed this part of Montana. In Daly’s own words, as recorded in an 1890 interview, he said, “Copper is the blood of the modern world, and Montana is its heart.” The Washoe Smelter and its railroad veins made that metaphor literal. The copper that passed through Anaconda wired cities, armed soldiers, and illuminated homes across the nation.

But as the years rolled on, the copper industry’s cycles continued, reflecting the shifting gears of global economics and technological change. The Washoe Smelter finally ceased operations in 1981, a relic of a bygone industrial era. Yet, the story of the smelter, the railroad, the workers, and the women who kept the fires burning remains a chapter worth reading--where men’s ambition and nature’s riches collided, and where Montana’s copper veins shaped more than just metal, but the very life of the region.

See also

• Contributions of the Washoe Smelter at Anaconda, Deer Lodge County
• Marcus Daly: An Irishman with Vision at Anaconda, Deer Lodge County
• Smelting the Ore at Anaconda, Deer Lodge County