Anaconda Smoke Stack State Park

Anaconda Smoke Stack State Park protects the stack of the old Washoe smelter, the 585-foot brick chimney that stands on a hill on the east side of Anaconda. It is among the tallest free-standing brick structures in the world, and the Washington Monument, at 555 feet, would fit inside it. The figure includes a 30-foot concrete foundation on the downhill side. The inside diameter is about 75 feet at the base, narrowing to 60 feet at the top, and the chimney contains roughly 2.46 million bricks.

The Alphons Custodis Chimney Construction Company of New York built the stack between May and November 1918 for the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, and it went into service in 1919. It served the Washoe Reduction Works, which processed ore from the Butte mines and by 1919 claimed to be the world's largest non-ferrous processing plant. The smelter closed in 1980-81 and was demolished, but local residents campaigned to keep the stack. Anaconda itself was founded by Marcus Daly in 1883 as the smelter town for his Butte mines, so the stack is the town's reason for being as much as its landmark. It became a state park in 1986 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.

Visitors cannot go near the stack itself. The ground around it is contaminated with arsenic, copper, cadmium, lead and zinc and is part of a Superfund cleanup. Instead, the park is a viewing area with interpretive signs near Goodman Park, at the junction of Park Street (Montana Highway 1) and Monroe Street on the east edge of town, about 1.2 miles from the stack. From there you can photograph it across the valley and read about the smelter, the Copper Kings and the cleanup.

The park is open every day of the year during daylight hours, and the signs take only a few minutes to read, so this is an easy stop on the way into town on Highway 1. For a longer look at the smelter's legacy, drive to the Old Works Golf Course, built on the site of the original smelter works as part of the cleanup, or continue into town to the Copper Village Museum and Arts Center.