![]() ![]() Leavitt arrived in Bannack in 1862, and alternately practiced medicine and mined for gold with pick and shovel. Erasmus Darwin Leavitt, a physician born in Cornish, New Hampshire, who gave up medicine for a time to become a gold miner. Though all of the businesses were built of logs, some had decorative false fronts.Īmong the town's founders was Dr. There were three hotels, three bakeries, three blacksmith shops, two stables, two meat markets, a grocery store, a restaurant, a brewery, a billiard hall, and four saloons. Extremely remote, it was connected to the rest of the world only by the Montana Trail. The last residents left in the 1970s.Īt its peak, Bannack had a population of about ten thousand. Bannack continued as a mining town, though with a dwindling population. JSTOR ( January 2023) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)įounded in 1862 and named after the local Bannock natives, Bannack was the site of a major gold discovery in 1862, and served as the capital of Montana Territory briefly in 1864, until the capital was moved to Virginia City.Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places 1987.This section needs additional citations for verification. However, the stack emitted even more pollution and this continued for several decades until the smelter closed in 1980. It took until 1918 for the current smoke stack to be built. A taller, 300-foot smoke stack was built in 1903 but this, too, was not high enough. This was not high enough the smoke from the stack polluted arsenic, dust, and sulphur oxides, all of which affected the health of the local population, farm animals, and reduced crop yields. The company would grow to become the largest copper mining company in the world by 1915.ĭaly built a smelter to process ore from the mine, which was near Butte, and founded the city of Anaconda in 1883. As as result, Daly became rich and one of the "Copper Kings" of the late 19th century. With financial assistance from other investors, including William Randolph Hearst, Daly developed the mine and found a large deposit of copper there-one of the largest found up to that point. He sold his share of that mine 1881 and bought Anaconda silver mining claim. The company sent him to investigate a mine called the Alice Mine, which the company bought Daly also bought a share of the mine as well. Daly rose up in the ranks and became a foreman for a mining company in Utah. He found work as a ranch hand, railroad worker, and logger before becoming a miner in the early 1860s. In 1861 he eventually made his way to San Francisco where one of his sisters had been living. Born in Ireland in 1841, Daly arrived in New York City in 1856 when he was 15. The Anaconda Copper Mining Company was founded by Marcus Daly in 1881. The park features a parking area and a small circular monument imitating the base of a smokestack, interpretive signs, an old mining car, three statues depicting miners, and a stationary binoculars. In fact, its not in the park itself, which is small and located some distance away on Anaconda Smelter Road. ![]() Getting close to the smoke stack is generally not allowed since the immediate area around it is polluted. The smoke stack serves as a remind of Anaconda's industrial history and the significant influence the company had in Montana. At the base, the interior diameter is 75 feet and at the top the diameter is 60 feet. It rests on a 30-foot concrete base, so the actual height of the masonry part of the stack is 555-feet tall. It is purported to be the tallest masonry structure in the world. Reaching a height of 585 feet and consisting of 2.4 million bricks, it looms over the surrounding landscape and can be seen 20 miles away. Built by the Anaconda Copper Mining Company in 1918, the Anaconda Smoke Stack is one of the most important landmarks in western Montana. ![]()
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