The Anaconda Company

Butte’s historical identity is as much linked to a single corporate entity, The Anaconda Company, as is the identity of any city in the United States. For a century, the company was by far the largest employer in Butte, and for much of that time it dominated the political life of the entire state of Montana as well. Butte’s cultural landscape still embodies many facets of the central role the company played in the city’s history (see the Headframes of Butte and Mining Technologies tours). This tour focuses on buildings – business blocks and residences – that represent non-mining facets of The Anaconda Company’s important presence in Butte.

The Anaconda Company was the name the company claimed for itself in 1955, but that corporate entity came into being in 1895 as the Anaconda Copper Mining Company. An enterprise calling itself various versions of the Anaconda company went back more than a decade before that. The enterprise got its start in the early 1880s, when Marcus Daly contacted George Hearst to see if he would like to invest in developing the Anaconda mining claim. Daly was an Irish immigrant who had worked in the gold fields in California and then in mines in Nevada, where he was made a mine manager. Along the way, he met George Hearst, who likewise had started mining in California before striking it rich at Virginia City, Nevada. With that wealth, he started investing in other mining properties.

Daly had met the Walker brothers of Salt Lake City, who wanted to expand their mining investments beyond Utah, and sent Daly to investigate Butte in 1876. At Daly’s recommendation, the Walkers bought the Alice mining claim and put Daly in charge of developing the mine, which became the most productive of Butte’s several silver mines. As Daly was severing his ties with the Walkers in 1880, he bought the Anaconda mining claim for $30,000. Hearst and his partners purchased the mine from Daly and agreed to invest in its development with Daly in charge. Sinking a shaft in 1881, Daly’s crews found rich silver ore, but at the 300-foot level, they struck a wide and incredibly rich vein of copper ore. There were several copper smelters in Butte using scarce water and depleting supplies of wood, but not wanting to rely on other parties, Hearst and his partners decided to build their own smelter. Daly chose a site 26 miles to the west and convinced Hearst and his partners to invest in building a giant reduction works at what would become the town of Anaconda.

The enterprise Daly managed for his investors was initially unincorporated, with most of the properties owned in the name of James Ben-Ali Haggin (the Hearst partner who played the most direct role in managing the Anaconda enterprise). It was variously called the Anaconda Gold & Silver Company or simply the Anaconda company. That changed in 1891, when the principals in the enterprise incorporated the Anaconda Mining Company. Haggin transferred all the mining properties in Butte and the smelters at Anaconda to the new corporation. The owners reorganized their enterprise as the Anaconda Copper Mining Company (ACM) in 1895. Anaconda Mining transferred all its property to Anaconda Copper Mining, Haggin remained president, and Daly remained general manager.

Butte had become the world’s largest supplier of copper in 1887, a distinction it held until the First World War. Although ACM was the largest mining company in Butte in 1895, there were several other large companies as well, including the Boston and Montana Consolidated Copper and Silver Mining Company (B&M), the Parrot Silver and Copper Company, the Colorado Smelting and Mining Company, and the Butte and Boston Mining Company (B&B) . In addition, there were F. Augustus Heinze’s group of mines and smelter, and W.A. Clark’s group of mines and his smelter. All those competing companies attracted the interest of financiers intent on corporate consolidation, which began to happen in earnest in 1899, when Daly, in concert with William H. Rockefeller and Henry H. Rogers (both centrally involved in John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust), formed the Amalgamated Copper Company, a holding company that acquired controlling interest in several of the companies. Under this arrangement, Amalgamated owned controlling shares of stock in the subsidiary companies, and each of the companies continued to own and operate its mines and smelters. Daly died in 1900 and was succeeded by William Scallon as ACM president and by Rogers as president of Amalgamated. After little more than three years, Scallon resigned and was succeeded by John D. Ryan, president of Daly’s Butte bank.

The next major step in corporate consolidation occurred in 1910, when Amalgamated had all its Butte operating companies transfer title to their properties to ACM. Shortly thereafter, the Heinze and Clark properties were also absorbed into ACM. Over the next decade and more, ACM’s production in Montana continued to grow, and the company expanded its reach into Utah, Arizona, Mexico, and Chile, and acquired American Brass, with its vast array of plants in New England making products from copper and its alloys. In 1912, ACM was the fifth largest industrial corporation in the world.

Historians have written much about ACM’s outsized influence on Butte and Montana. ACM exercised enormous power in Montana politics, and for much of the twentieth century owned all the major daily newspapers in Montana except the Great Falls Tribune. With so many dangerous mining jobs and large companies to contend with, Butte became a strong union town until 1912. After ACM consolidated most of the mining companies in Butte, the company refused to recognize the Butte Miners Union, leading to a decade-long conflict between labor and the company. The unions did not regain recognition until the 1930s, when New Deal legislation protected workers’ rights to organize.

The corporation changed its name to The Anaconda Company in 1955. It suffered a severe blow in 1974, when the Chilean government nationalized Anaconda’s mining properties there. Atlantic Richfield (ARCO), the giant oil company, bought The Anaconda Company in 1977, closed the Anaconda smelter in 1980, ceased mining in Butte in 1982, and sold its Butte properties to Dennis Washington’s Montana Resources in 1985.

Nevertheless, ACM’s impact on Butte’s landscape persists. This tour focuses on cultural resources in Butte tied to ACM in ways beyond mining’s direct impact on the landscape: 1) important non-mining buildings occupied by ACM; 2) residences of high-level ACM officials; and 3) landscapes not directly shaped by mining.