Anaconda Mining 1946

ANACONDA COPPER MINING CO.

The Anaconda Copper Mining Company, part of the Amalgamated Copper Company from 1899 to 1915, was an American mining company. It was one of the largest trusts of the early 20th century and one of the largest mining companies in the world for much of the 20th century.

Founded in 1881 when Marcus Daly bought a silver mine, the company expanded rapidly based on the discovery of huge copper deposits. Daly built a smelter in Anaconda to process copper mined in Butte. Daly sold his assets in 1899 to H. H. Rogers and William Rockefeller. By 1910, Amalgamated had expanded its operations and bought the assets of two other Montana copper companies.

During the 20’s metal prices went up and mining activity increased. Those were really the golden years for Anaconda. The company was managed by dexterous Ryan-Kelley team and was growing fast, expanding into new areas of activity: manganese, zinc, aluminum, uranium and silver. In 1922, Anaconda bought mining operations in Mexico and Chile; the latter was the largest mine in the world and yielded two-thirds of the company's profits. At that time Anaconda was the fourth largest company in the world.

In 1960 its operations still had 37,000 employees in North America and Chile. In 1971, however, Chile's newly elected Socialist president Salvador Allende confiscated the Chuquicamata mine from Anaconda, stripping Anaconda of two-thirds of its copper production. Allende was overthrown in 1973, and the successor government of Augusto Pinochet paid Anaconda compensation of $250 million.

Losses from the Chilean takeover however, had seriously weakened the company's financial position. Later in 1971, Anaconda's Mexican copper mine was nationalized by president Álvarez's government. After a series of poor investments in the subsequent years, Anaconda halted production in 1980, and mining ceased completely in 1982 when the deep pumps keeping the mine drained were shut off, allowing the Berkeley Pit to fill.