- Anaconda Copper Mine
The Anaconda Copper Mine was a large
copper mine inButte, Montana . It was bought in 1881 byMarcus Daly from Michael Hickey. Hickey was a prospector and Union Civil War vet, and named his claim the Anaconda Mine after reading Horace Greeley's civil war account of how Ulysses S. Grant's forces had surrounded Robert E. Lee's forces "like an anaconda". Daly then developed the Anaconda Mine in partnership withGeorge Hearst , father ofWilliam Randolph Hearst , andJames Ben Ali Haggin andLloyd Tevis of San Francisco.From this beginning grew the
Anaconda Copper Mining Company, a global mining enterprise featuring the Anaconda and other Butte mines, a smelter atAnaconda, Montana , processing plants inGreat Falls, Montana , the American Brass Company, and many other properties, mostly in the United States andChile . The Anaconda Copper Mining Company was acquired byARCO in 1977.The Anaconda mine itself was closed in 1947 after producing 94,900 tons of copper. Its location has been consumed by the
Berkeley Pit , a vast open-pit mine.F. Augustus Heinze used an apex lawsuit to extract ore from the Anaconda Mines. Heinze purchased a small parcel of unclaimed land on top of Butte Hill and several Butte judges, was able to take copper ore that was in the Anaconda companies shafts. After years of losing lawsuits to Heinze the Company shut down all operations in the state putting as much as 80% of the state workforce out of work to force the state legislature to adopt a "change of venue" provision for lawsuits. Eventually the Company bought out all of Heinze's properties and claims.The Anaconda copper mine appeared in
Don Rosa 'sThe Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck (Part 4), where Scrooge became owner of the whole mine as a result of the law of apex. Don Rosa stated that he had based the story on the history of the Anaconda mine.ee also
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Anaconda Road Massacre External links
* [http://www.iww.org/culture/biography/FrankLittle1.shtml Biography of Frank Little, tortured and lynched for organising the copper miners of Butte]
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