Anaconda is the town that Marcus Daly built. As the smelter for Butte’s enormous reserves of copper and zinc, Anaconda became a powerful city, nearly edging out Helena as capital of Montana.

To the industrialists who built Butte, its incredible mineral wealth was only half the equation. A lot of water was needed to refine the ore. Butte, situated in an arid basin near the Continental Divide, had scarcely enough water for prospectors to successfully pan for gold.

Copper King Marcus Daly decided that, rather than bring the water to the ore, he’d take the ore to a better water source. He went to the Warm Springs Creek Valley, 26 miles west of Butte, to establish a smelter.

Daly laid out the town in 1883 and named it “Copperopolis.” As unlikely as it now seems, Montana already had a settlement with that name, and the new town was renamed Anaconda (pop. 8,888, elev. 5,331 feet) for Daly’s mine in Butte.

The Washoe Smelter, towering on a hill above Anaconda, became the largest copper smelter in the world. Daly established the Butte, Anaconda, and Pacific Railroad solely to transport the ore from his Butte mines to the Washoe. The smelter could process 1,000 tons of ore an hour; it employed about 3,500 workers. The immense smokestack that rose above Anaconda became a landmark; at 585 feet high, nearly seven million bricks were used in its construction.

Anaconda was a classic “company town.” Daly was inordinately proud of the town that he founded, and he graced it with fine civic buildings. When Montana became a state in 1889, Daly mounted a huge campaign to name Anaconda the new capital. He immediately clashed with W. A. Clark, who favored Helena, the territorial capital. A classic Copper King feud ensued.

Daly spent $2.5 million promoting Anaconda and disdaining Helena and Clark. Clark painted a picture of Anaconda as a grimly obedient company town, and he minted copper dollars as exemplars. In 1894 Helena won out, but by fewer than 2,000 votes.

Anaconda was inextricably tied to the fate of Butte. When Butte stumbled, Anaconda also faltered. After years of failing business, ARCO, which had purchased Anaconda in the late 1970s, closed the Washoe Smelter in 1983.