GREAT FALLS – From its beginnings in 1891 to the famous collapse of the great smokestack in 1982 (scroll down for video), the history of the Anaconda Smelter Company in Black Eagle has been documented in a new film called “Spirit of the People.”
“People came here from all over the world,” said Carol Bronson, a supporter of the Black Eagle Civic Club. “That spirit is still there today because when I work with people today, they are just as excited about their history as they were then.”
The film was produced by Erin Schermele Films in association with Big Sky National Heritage Area.
It includes excerpts from a three-part oral history with Dick Sloan, the smelter’s last operations manager, who now works with the Montana Department of Environmental Quality on Superfund cleanup efforts.
The film contains never-before-seen photos of the people and machines that left an unforgettable mark on history.
“The cool thing about the smelter is that the copper here actually came from Butte, but we were the ones who wired the world, developed the first electrical wiring for light bulbs and we helped save World War I and World War II,” said Bronson, who is also a board member of the Big Sky National Heritage Area.
A free and public screening of the film will be held Saturday afternoon at 1:00 p.m. at the History Museum in Great Falls. Dick Sloan will be there and will bring the original scrapbook.
“Dick talks a lot about the spirit of people,” Bronson said. “It was that spirit that really made Black Eagle such a force.”
Bronson hopes there will be another screening at Black Eagle sometime in October.
Here is a special report from KRTV from 1992 when the chimney was demolished:
