Life Underground Episode 7 - Chasing Ladles
Life Underground Episode 7
“Chasing Ladles”
The town of Anaconda sits about 24 miles to the west of Butte, Montana, and the two communities are intimately linked by industry. While Butte was where they mucked the copper ore out of the mines and hoisted the rock to surface, Anaconda was where there smelted it. When Marcus Daly, one of Butte’s Copper Kings, bought the Anaconda mine in Butte from Michael Hickey in 1881, it became the origin point and namesake for a massive industrial empire that would ensnare the whole state of Montana.
This is Life Underground, and today we’ll explore Anaconda, Montana and the massive Washoe Smelter Stack. What was it like to work there? What kind of pollution did it create for the surrounding area, and what is the community like today, with the smelter now closed for over 40 years?
Way back when, in the days of the American Civil War, white men started mining on the Butte hill. It wasn’t the mechanized, corporatized operation that made Butte rich and famous; the first mining in Butte was placer mining. In his book The Battle for Butte: Mining and Politics on the Northern Frontier, Michael P. Malone quotes Joe Bowers, who was writing from Butte in early 1865, saying, “Water and timber are in the greater abundance and convenient to the [mining] lodes. In fact, I dare not tell the whole truth because I know the story would be read and regarded as the emanation of a heated brain.”
Malone continues: “In actual truth, the Silver Bow Camps were rough and unattractive places. [It was] typical of gold camps: heavily male in population, slovenly in appearance with dirt-mud streets and log or rough-cut lumber buildings. Early observers described Butte as a ‘deplorable’ place filled with men armed with guns and knives and enlivened by ‘hurdy gurdy houses and the wide-open gambling dens.’ Among the thousands of miners who came in the Silver Bow gold rush, some from the very beginning attempted to work the quartz leads on the Butte hill. A determined foursome erected a crude blast furnace to work the ores they extracted. [They] knew the ore was rich in copper, but could not flux it for smelting. They rebuilt the furnace and sent four tons of matte to Swansea in Wales for smelting, but they finally gave up, realizing the had neither the technology nor the transportation facilities to succeed.”
That excerpt from Michael P. Malone. So despite the obvious mineral wealth in Butte in the late 1860s, there just weren’t the smelting facilities in place to make it all work. That changed throughout the late 19th century, when a flurry of massive industrial investments began to transform the Summit Valley’s pristine mountain air into a thick cloud of smelter smoke.
According to Ralph Smith’s 1953 History of the Early Reduction Plants of Butte, Montana, Butte was practically deserted in 1869 after the failed attempts at concentrating and smelting ore there. “The camp was revived in 1875 by the discovery of rich silver lodes. The years 1879 to 1900 may be called the major smelting period of Butte proper. The smelters were immediately successful, grew rapidly, and the metallurgical improvement was constant. Butte’s original eight plants made a significant contribution to the industry during this period, laying a good portion of the foundation for our present copper industry.”
In 1882, the Butte district produced nine million pounds of copper. In 1883, production went up over 250%. The next year, Marcus Daly was building what would become the world’s largest metallurgical plant at Anaconda.
“A few of the smelters ran for a brief period after 1900 and one new smelting venture was started after 1902, but by 1900 Butte’s smelting was declining and the city was settling into its major industry: mining. The concentration of ore and the reduction and refining of metal were being moved and centralized at Anaconda and Great Falls, more favorable locations where the necessary water and power were available.”
So the groundwork was laid and the industry of smelting had matured in Western Montana. The town of Anaconda had been founded in 1883 and Marcus Daly financed the construction of the Anaconda smelter to process copper ore from the Butte mines. In 1918, the Anaconda Company was growing exponentially and it was time to upgrade the smelting operation in a major way. The Washoe Smelter Stack was born. At 585 ft tall, it is made up of nearly 2.5 million super-sized tile bricks and weighs just over 21,000 tons. The Stack is the tallest free-standing masonry structure in the world.
For over 60 years, the Washoe Smelter was the lifeblood of the town of Anaconda, and a central facet of the global corporate dominance established by the Anaconda Company. But looking up to smelter hill near Anaconda today, you might now know what the giant stack was for. All of the buildings, rail lines, bridges and huge network of industrial workings that surrounded the base of the stack are gone, torn down years ago. The giant brick chimney stands solitary on the hill, a lonely remnant of bygone industry in the middle of the Rocky Mountains.
On today’s show, we’ll start with the closure of the Washoe Smelter and work back in time. Before we hear what it was like to actually work in the smelter, and what all the Company made there, we take a look at the after effects of the smelter’s closure, and examine how the town of Anaconda has coped with deindustrialization and its legacy of pollution.
The pollution from smelting copper in Montana was an issue from the beginning. The aerial deposition of arsenic and other dangerous metals was wreaking havoc on Montana farmlands and ranches from the moment smelting began. In 1996, the Montana Historical Society hosted a panel called Aftermath & Afterthoughts - Mining & Smelting, which looked back on these issues with new research. Kent Curtis was a PhD student working on the social and environmental history of the Anaconda Company, and he speaks to the resilience of the city of Anaconda as it was navigating its initial post-industrial period.
[Kent Curtis]
The EPA listed Anaconda on the Superfund National Priorities List in 1983. Ostensibly sent in to help the situation, the EPA quickly lost trust from local people.
[Kent Curtis]
Kent Curtis says the Mill Creek evacuation was, in a way, a unifying event for the city of Anaconda, as people banded to gather to try and prevent the fencing off of land and the other negative impacts, like the stigma of pollution, that came with a Superfund designation.
[Kent Curtis]
The idea of the Old Works Golf Course as an economic development effort and environmental remedy was met with open arms by leadership within the Anaconda local government and the project managers from ARCO and the EPA, but it wasn’t considered the best use of resources by some of the locals in Anaconda.
[Kent Curtis]
At the time of his talk in 1996, the cleanup of Anaconda was still getting underway, and Kent Curtis paints a grim picture of how much work remained at that time.
[Kent Curtis]
That was a talk given by Kent Curtis in 1996, then a PhD student working on the social and environmental history of the Anaconda Company, at the Montana Historical Society conference called Aftermath & Afterthoughts - Mining & Smelting. Kent Curtis is now an associate professor of Environmental History at Ohio State University. Professor Curtis briefly mentioned the Mill Creek subdivision in his talk there, and I’d like to take a closer look at that community through the eyes of an LA Times reporter that came to Anaconda in January of 1986.
Maura Dolan is the legal affairs reporter for the LA Times, and her work on the Mill Creek neighborhood offers a heartbreaking look at the extreme levels of pollution the families in that area were dealing with, a threat to human health so great that the EPA eventually forced the families to permanently relocate.
“The smelter closed in 1980, leaving behind long lines of unemployed, but also a gradual improvement in the environment. Insects and birds slowly began to return to Mill Creek. A family of foxes was spotted. And grass, although still scarce, began to shove its way up through the metal-laced soil.
But the decades of soot and dust left a legacy that may threaten future Mill Creek generations. Recent tests found that the young children of Mill Creek have six times more arsenic in their urine than children about 100 miles away.
Long-term, low-level exposure to arsenic, a residue of copper smelting, is believed to cause skin and lung cancer. At more acutely toxic levels, which have not been documented here, arsenic causes nervous system and gastrointestinal disorders.
The Anaconda Company, which was bought in 1977 by Los Angeles-based Atlantic Richfield Co., reflects little of the residents’ alarm. James C. Windorski, manager of Montana Minerals Properties, Arco’s Anaconda subsidiary, said the form of cancer most commonly associated with arsenic is skin cancer.
“Obviously, no one wants to have cancer,” he said, “but if you have to have cancer,” the mortality rate of skin cancer is “extremely low.”
Greg Seitz, the son and grandson of Montana cattle ranchers, moved to an area just behind Mill Creek about five years ago, shortly after the smelter closed. With 50,000 acres, he was able to expand his herd from 300 cattle to 950.
He planted oats and barley. But in some spots the grain just would not grow. Where it would, he had to work the crop much harder than he had on his former ranch for an even smaller yield. And his cows began dying mysteriously.
The first year he lost several calves. By now, more than 60 have died. The deaths were slow and agonizing. Seitz discovered the shaking animals lying on the ground near pools of water that he suspects were contaminated with arsenic. Unable to swallow, they were choking on their vomit.’
This is Life Underground. I’m Clark Grant. That was Maura Dolan’s 1986 LA Times piece on the pollution plaguing residents of Mill Creek, near Anaconda, Montana. Today we’re looking a the Anaconda Company’s Washoe Smelter and the legacy of pollution it left. As part of the overall EPA cleanup plan for Anaconda, the Mill Creek area was given its own designation, the Mill Creek Operable Unit, also known as OU15. According to a Clark Fork Watershed Education Program publication, “The remedy was selected in 1987 and included permanently relocating all Mill Creek residents. Demolition debris was removed and disposed, and contaminated soils were stabilized. Monitoring and maintenance of the vegetation is on-going.”
So Anaconda is still dealing with the fallout from decades of smelting and heavy industry. Like Butte, industry is what built the town of Anaconda, but it’s also what led to its severe economic downturn and overall decline. So far we’ve heard about the problems the smelter caused and the devastating pollution it left in its wake after the closure, but what about all those years that Anaconda had a thriving community and people had stable employment with the Anaconda Company? To learn more about what it was like when the smelter was really going, we turn to the oral history of Frank Palakovich, a lifelong resident of Anaconda whose father came to work in Montana from Yugoslavia. Frank’s family history is a quintessential American immigrant story. His mother’s parents lived next door and carried with them many of the traditions, and food, from the old country. Frank spent a lot of time there.
[Frank Palakovich]
Frank’s wife joined us for the oral history recording and sat nearby in the kitchen, gently probing Frank’s memory when need be.
[Frank Palakovich]
Frank Palakovich embodies the deep community ties that often characterize small towns reliant on a large single industry. With stable work and strong family ties, Frank has lived over 70 years in the same house.
[Frank Palakovich]
I asked Frank to tell me about his dad, and how he ended up in Anaconda all the way from Yugoslavia.
[Frank Palakovich]
Frank Palakovich only had a couple of short term jobs before he spent decades working for the Anaconda Company at their smelter. He says he really ever only had two jobs, despite him giving a short list of places he worked as a young man.
[Frank Palakovich]
Frank’s mother witnessed the building of the stack and even took a special ride when it was completed in 1918.
[Frank Palakovich]
In our conversation, Frank repeatedly said how good the Anaconda Company treated its workers, setting up extracurricular activities for folks to do throughout the years, and the unions also did their part to make life a little better for everyone.
[Frank Palakovich]
Frank had over 30 years with the Company, and he’s proud of the work he did. He also says he’s never hesitated to live among the pollution from the smelter. I asked him if the cleanup efforts are going in the right direction.
[Frank Palakovich]
That’s Frank Palakovich, interviewed at his home in Anaconda in 2018 for the Verdigris Project. Frank represents a rare breed of old time smelter men who are still living in Anaconda, and who carry the memories of a town that once thrived. Today, Anaconda’s poverty rates are nearly double the Montana average, and half of children under five live in poverty. With the decline of their major employer and the legacy of smelting pollution all around and within the town, it can be hard to imagine a thriving Anaconda once again. But after nearly 40 years of EPA-led cleanup, wildlife is returning to surrounding areas and the local community is diversifying its economy through new service industry ventures like brewing and restaurants.
To finish today’s show, we’ll remember the Anaconda smelter with a bit of poetry from Hal Waldrup. He recorded his book of poetry at KBMF radio in 2018.
[Hal Waldrup]
This is Life Underground. I’m Clark Grant, thanks for listening.