Smoke and tailings: An environmental history of copper smelting technologies in Montana, 1880-1930

Many among the American public assume that, prior to the second half of the twentieth century, people had little concern over the effects of industrial pollution on the environment, yet the historical record shows considerable opposition to the industries generating such damaging pollution. This dissertation examines the sources of that faulty assumption through a case study of the historical environmental impacts of the Montana copper industry. From 1887 through 1918, the Butte mining district in Montana produced more copper annually than any other mining district in the world. To extract copper and other metals from the complex sulfide ores in the Butte hill, metallurgical engineers working in the smelters at Butte, Anaconda, and Great Falls developed many technologies important to the world copper industry. Those engineers paid little attention to the effects byproducts of milling and smelting had on the surrounding environment, especially in the early years of that period. As Butte\u27s copper output grew to world-class proportions, so did the environmental damage caused by the smoke and tailings discharged from the smelters. This dissertation examines actions taken by farmers and the United States government to try to stop the copper industry from damaging their property and resources. Actions included mounting some monumental law suits against the copper industry and creating a Board of Experts charged with finding technical solutions to abate the problems caused by smoke and tailings. Montana\u27s copper industry concentrated into the hands of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company (ACM), which by 1912 was the world\u27s fifth largest industrial corporation. The dissertation describes how the ACM came to incorporate the environmental problems of its smelting operations into control of its larger industrial system, thus quieting social conflict concerning pollution. The company quelled its environmental controversies in part with pollution abatement technologies and in part through acquiring property it was damaging. The silencing of environmental conflict is contrasted in this dissertation with the history of the labor movement in Montana\u27s copper industry, which has been amply described by scholars as a long-term source of resistance to the policies and actions of the Anaconda Company