1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Anaconda (city)

ANACONDA, a city and the county-seat of Deer Lodge county, Montana, U.S.A., situated in the mountains on the W. side of Deer Lodge Valley, in the S.W. part of the state, about 26 m. N.W. of Butte, and at an altitude of about 5300 ft. Pop. (1890) 3975; (1900) 9453, of whom 3478 were foreign-born; (1910, census) 10,134. It is connected with Butte by the Butte, Anaconda & Pacific railroad. Among its public buildings are the county court-house and the Hearst free public library (1898). Industrially, Anaconda is essentially a smelting camp for the copper ores from the Butte mines, probably the largest copper-smelter in the world being located here; the principal copper-mine at Butte—one of the most famous copper-mines in the world—is called the Anaconda. In 1905 the capital invested in manufacturing was $13,728,456, and the factory product was valued at $28,581,530. Electric power generated at the Helena Power Transmission Company’s plant on the Missouri river, 18 m. from Helena, comes to Anaconda over 110 m. of wire at 70,000 voltage. Anaconda is to a large degree the market and trading-place of the Big Hole Basin cattle country in the north-western part of Beaverhead county; with Wisdom, in the Big Hole Basin, it was connected in 1905 by a 65 m. telephone line. Anaconda was first settled in 1884 and was chartered as a city in 1888.