The slag pile is at once a hallmark of Anaconda’s proud working heritage and a symbol of the Superfund legacy which that history gifted the town. “These waste piles are as historically significant to the process as the buildings that were there. “It’s an important representation of what made these regions,” he says. Historian Bode Morin, who has spent most of his career studying copper smelter towns, says when people think about heritage, usually they think about old houses and pleasant scenery. Gloria O’Rourke, who grew up in Anaconda, remembers watching ants dig up slag from her family’s yard when she was kid. Last summer, local couple Zane and Haley Kenny inscribed their names on the slag using white planks, a message to the whole town that they were getting married soon.

Kaitlin Leary, who moved back to town recently, said that the heaps are always there to greet her and she would be sad to see them go. And at Old Works Golf Course, you can get your golf ball stuck in “slag traps.”Īnacondans share an odd fondness for the heaps. You can buy Ziploc baggies of it at the Chamber of Commerce for two bucks each - cash only though. You can jump into a pit of slag at the Anaconda Smelter State Park, pick up a handful and let it run through your fingers like sand, except it’s coarser and sharper. Large obsidian piles of fine, sand-like byproduct leftover from the days of the Copper Kings.

Driving into town, they’re the first thing visitors see. It’s hard to imagine Anaconda without slag heaps. This story is part of The Montana Gap project, produced in partnership with the Solutions Journalism Network.

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