Then & Now: The Black Eagle Stack

Then. The Anaconda Co. smokestack stood across the Missouri from Great Falls in Black Eagle, over a smelter and later refinery that ran for nearly 90 years, the Great Falls Tribune wrote in 2016. Before World War II the smelter was the biggest employer in the area. “You got within 25 miles of Great Falls, you’d see that stack,” Bill O’Keefe told the paper.

In October 1980 Arco, which had recently bought the Anaconda Co., announced it was shutting down all of its Montana operations, Black Eagle included. A group called Save Our Stack formed, but it could not raise enough money and could not get President Reagan interested.

On September 18, 1982, the first round of dynamite left a sliver standing, which thrilled the people who wanted it saved. A second blast finished it. O’Keefe said he could hear people across the river applauding and honking. “I kind of hated to see it come down,” he said. “Everybody knew where the stack was at.”

O’Keefe said the real trouble started years earlier, when the company pulled the metal bands off the Black Eagle stack and sent them to shore up the stack in Anaconda. That one is still standing.

Now. The old smelter ground is a Superfund site, and the Tribune noted it may be used for recreation someday if the cleanup allows. Black Eagle is still there, and so is Borrie’s, on Smelter Avenue.

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