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Margie and Pete Smith stand at the base of the 585-foot stack that once served the copper smelter near Anaconda. Pete Smith worked at the smelter for years. He and Margie and others fought to preserve the stack when the Atlantic Richfield Co. contemplated its demolition.
Margie and Pete Smith of Anaconda recently returned to Smelter Hill. They and others worked to save the stack from demolition when the rest of the copper smelter complex was razed.
The 585-foot masonry stack that served the copper smelter was threatened for a time with demolition after the Atlantic Richfield Co. closed the smelter. A group of citizens rallied to save it. Margie Smith was among them.
A group of bucks has found habitat they like on Smelter Hill, where Superfund-related work is ongoing.
Anacondans embittered by the 1980 closure of the company town’s lifeblood copper smelter anticipated a boisterous party when the towering stack became a heaping pile of rubble.
They wanted it gone. They wanted a divorce from the city’s industrial past. For those in the demolition camp, the stack represented arsenic and heavy metals, worker exploitation and cattle dying in the Deer Lodge Valley.
Margie and Pete Smith of Anaconda recently returned to Smelter Hill. They and others worked to save the stack from demolition when the rest of the copper smelter complex was razed.
Margie Smith was not among them. Neither was her husband, Pete. Add Mike Finnegan, Bob Vine and a host of others who formed Anacondans to Preserve the Stack Committee in 1982.
For them, the 585-foot stack, completed in 1918, was a brick and mortar tribute to Anaconda’s rich heritage of hard-working immigrants and their kith and kin, of contributions to the nation’s growth and security, of union solidarity and strife.
In 1977, the Atlantic Richfield Co. purchased the former operator, Anaconda Minerals Co. Three years later, Atlantic Richfield announced that due to high production costs and tougher environmental regulations the smelter closure would be permanent. Demolition of the entire sprawling complex was planned.
“I could never imagine the stack not being here,” Margie Smith said during a recent visit to Smelter Hill. “It’s the landmark.”
George Ochenski of Helena, who became friends with and admirers of Margie and Pete Smith, was initially in the demolition camp.
“Personally, I wanted to stand on top of Cable Mountain where the old fire lookout used to be and toast with champagne when they blew the stack to the ground,” Ochenski said. “That thing did untold damage to people, the land, and at the end, what was left of Anaconda’s economy.”
Ochenski was chairman of the state’s first Citizens Environmental Advisory Council, focused on the state’s first Superfund site, and Margie and Pete Smith were appointed to the council. Pete Smith worked many years at the smelter.
Ochenski said there were people in Anaconda advocating for a thorough cleanup of a vast Superfund site but others, fearful of Superfund stigma, preferred denying anything dramatic was wrong. The latter group often hassled the former, he said.
Margie and Pete Smith stand at the base of the 585-foot stack that once served the copper smelter near Anaconda. Pete Smith worked at the smelter for years. He and Margie and others fought to preserve the stack when the Atlantic Richfield Co. contemplated its demolition.
“Margie and Pete and Mike Finnegan and Theresa McCarthy were all on the council and were strong — really strong — advocates for cleaning it up,” Ochenski said.
He said their determination led him to see the stack preservation campaign with more tolerance.
“They were such great ‘comrades in arms’ and willing to take absolute s..t, threats, condemnation from others in their community over trying to get it cleaned up that I finally decided, ‘What the hell, go, they deserve something for their endless and tireless efforts — and they have been fearless.’”
Such dedication has not escaped notice.
In May, the Montana Historical Society announced that Margie Smith, now 74, was being honored as a recipient of the prestigious Heritage Keeper Award, bestowed by the Montana Historical Society Board of Trustees.
The Historical Society cited Smith’s work to save the smelter stack, to revive Smeltermen’s Day and preserve the Montana Hotel in downtown Anaconda.
The society observed, “For more than 40 years, Smith — a lifelong Anaconda resident — has been a strong force within the Smelter City’s historic preservation community. Her determination, grit and get-it-done mindset saved the Anaconda Copper Mining Company’s smokestack, the Montana Hotel and the annual Smeltermen’s Day celebration.”
Ochenski wrote a letter supporting Smith’s nomination for the award.
“I have known Margie Smith for nearly 40 years now and can say without reservation that without her unending support for Anaconda’s historic landmarks and, in particular keeping the Anaconda Smelter Stack from demolition, preserving that stunning symbol of Montana’s mining history would not have happened,” he wrote.
Smith’s great uncle, T.C. Calnan, worked as a bricklayer when the stack was built. Roughly 2.5 million locally manufactured bricks were used.
For Smith and many other Anacondans, the stack — which is visible for miles — is a symbol of home. Smith said some people who were once in the demolition camp have told her they are grateful the stack still stands.
The 585-foot masonry stack that served the copper smelter was threatened for a time with demolition after the Atlantic Richfield Co. closed the smelter. A group of citizens rallied to save it. Margie Smith was among them.
Today, residents of Anaconda-Deer Lodge County routinely post photos of the stack — taken during sunrise, during sunset, during storms - on the Uniquely Anaconda Facebook page.
The campaign to save the stack faced long odds.
Margie Smith’s father, the late Joseph Calnan, formerly an Anaconda mayor, suggested she reach out to legislators and to the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks about preserving the 585-foot stack as a state landmark or park.
“To say it was an uphill battle would be an enormous understatement,” Ochenski recalled. “The last thing most legislators wanted to do was to have the state involved in any ownership or responsibility for an enormous — and perhaps structurally failing — brick stack in the middle of a Superfund site.”
Ultimately, the Smiths and Mike Finnegan and their allies prevailed. The state park designation became the ticket to preservation.
Public access to the stack itself remains limited. The Anaconda Smoke Stack State Park offers interpretive signs and a view from a moderate distance.
During a recent visit to the stack, federal Superfund remediation was ongoing on Smelter Hill. Among other work, heavy equipment re-graded a huge pile of black slag along Montana Highway One in preparation for adding soil and vegetation to keep arsenic-laden slag dust from blowing in the wind.
“Smelting facilities released tons of arsenic, copper, sulfur, lead and zinc each,” according to the EPA. “Because of aerial emissions (from the stack), contamination spread across 300 square miles around the Anaconda smelter.”
In 1983, EPA listed the area on its National Priorities List as the Anaconda Smelter Superfund site.
On Wednesday morning, wildlife was in the mix on Smelter Hill. A grouse waddled across a gravel road. A half-dozen mule deer bucks with impressive racks emerged from a shady spot.
A group of bucks has found habitat they like on Smelter Hill, where Superfund-related work is ongoing.
Smith continued on the historic preservation path after the victory with the stack.
How does she explain her passion for preservation?
Smith said it probably started at her family’s kitchen table when she was growing up.
“When you live around your grandparents and then they’re gone and you have special things from them, that history is important,” she said.
Smith and many others grieved when local urban renewal claimed St. Paul’s Roman Catholic Church, the Hibernian’s Hall and other landmark buildings.
“We lost such amazing buildings,” Smith said.
And there was sorrow too when a onetime owner of the Montana Hotel removed the striking building’s upper two stories.
Construction of the hotel began in 1888 and was completed in 1889.
“Designed by Chicago architect W. W. Boyington, this building was heavily financed by Marcus Daly, mining magnate and patron of the Smelter City,” reports one history of the building.
The Montana Hotel passed through several hands. In 1959, demolition was a possibility.
In 2012, Montana Hotel Restoration stepped in, started by Joan and Bob Morris and Ray Schmidt. Once the organization received non-profit status, it changed its name to the Anaconda Restoration Association, which purchased the hotel in 2021.
The association and its many volunteers have tackled a host of projects designed to return some measure of glory to the once-grand hotel. Margie and Pete Smith and many others have been in the thick of that effort.
And that’s not all.
In 2018, Smith helped revitalize the Anaconda Co.’s annual Smeltermen’s Day. The timing coincided with the centennial of the smelter stack’s completion. The event had been mostly dormant for more than 25 years. It returns this year from Aug. 5 to Aug. 7.
Smith is scheduled to receive the Heritage Keeper award at 4 p.m. Aug. 5 on the steps of the Montana Hotel.
Gayla Hess, historic preservation officer for Anaconda-Deer Lodge County, was among those who championed Smith’s candidacy for the award.
Hal Stearns is president of the board for the Montana Historical Society.
“These awards represent the highest honor the Historical Society can bestow upon those doing the daily work of saving Montana’s past for future generations,” Stearns said. “Their contributions, and their level of devotion, are amazing.”
Smith said she is moved and humbled to receive the award. She emphasized that others have always played key roles in historic preservation efforts in Anaconda. Among them was the late Alice Finnegan, a winner in 1996 of an award from the Montana Historical Society.
Smith acknowledged, though, with a smile, that she has a penchant for tenacity.
“I don’t give up. I won’t give up. If I can’t do it, I’ll find somebody else who can. I’ve driven a lot of people crazy.”
Originally published on mtstandard.com, part of the TownNews Content Exchange.