The closure abruptly eliminated 1,000 jobs in Anaconda, but the troubles ran even deeper. "A whole town is dying, and we're crying out for help." "You can tell President Carter we've got a 20th century ghost town out here" said Jim Morley, who has worked in smelters for 11 years. Most people here figure Arco is closing down the town, too. On Monday the Atlantic Richfield Co., which bought out the old Anaconda Mining Co., three years ago, announced it is closing down the smelter, lock, stock and barrel.
The stack, so tall and wide you could put the Washington Monument inside and have room to spare, still pierces the Big Sky of Montana.īut this week the shell-shocked people of Anaconda, a historic Western town of 10,000, are wondering if that stack won't become the biggest tombstone in the world. When that failed he built a hotel with a dining room for 500 - eating there alone until business picked up - and constructed a cooper smelter with the largest smokestack in the world. When the copper king, Marcus Daly, decided to build his town here at the dead end of Deer Lodge Valley almost a century ago, he did it the way he did everything else - big.ĭaly spent a half million dollars just buying politicians, trying to make Anaconda the state capital.
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