Tallest in the World!

 248 miles west of Billings, we are still in Montana! Interstate 90 has brought us through a variety of landscapes and up to an elevation of 5200 feet above sea level. 

We followed the Yellowstone River for awhile. It was amazing how many times we crossed that river, but just east of Bozeman the river turned south toward Yellowstone National Park.

By now we were approaching the Rocky Mountains, passing by the Beartooth Range and skirting the Absaroka Range.

Near Whitehall, we passed through a fantastic series of rock formations.

West of Butte, we bailed off the interstate and pulled into Copper Court RV Park in Anaconda, Montana,

We’ve heard about the huge copper mine in this area, and thought that the actual mine was in the town of Anaconda because the name of the operation was the Washoe Smelter and Anaconda Reduction Works.. Not exactly true as we found out as we took a drive through this lovely little town.

However, we knew we liked this place right away!

Anaconda is a small town of some 9500 people founded in the 1800’s as a company town that supported the Anaconda Smelter. The smelter processed copper ore that was mined at the Berkeley Pit in Butte. Literally….in the town! Smelting was the first step in the purification process where extreme heat was applied to burn off impurities. There was a plentiful supply of water in Anaconda and cheap land available, so a railroad was constructed to bring ore to the smelter at the rate of 500 cars per day! The vast operation has been shut down since the 1980’s and the land reclaimed. 

The only remnants of this are a huge slag pit and “The Stack”.

The slag pit contains an astronomical amount of black, hard, glass-like residue from the smelting operation. Today it is contained by a huge earthen berm, with just the top visible.

Anaconda’s famous stack is 568 feet tall and has an inside diameter of 60 feet at the top. Containing almost 7 million bricks, it is the tallest freestanding masonry structure in the world! The stack collected, via underground flues, the exhaust from several smelters and released it well above the plant and the adjacent town.

Back at camp, some of the local residents wandered through, unconcerned by our presence.

A very nice day!