Smeltermen's Day

On a weekend in August a parade comes down Main Street in Anaconda. Above the town on Smelter Hill stands the tall stack that remained when the smelter closed in 1980. Smeltermen’s Day runs three days. Discover Anaconda, the Anaconda Chamber of Commerce, organizes it from the visitor center on East Park Avenue and calls it the weekend “spent celebrating the town that built us.”

Main Street for three days

The parade is the center of the weekend. Around it the downtown businesses set out the Downtown Sidewalk Sales, and the Artwalk leads visitors along the same blocks. The Brewfest and the After Party bring live music, and local food trucks feed the crowd. Runners turn out for the Smelter City Scamper, which offers a 5K, a 10K, a half marathon and a Kids Sprint.

Buses run all weekend to the Anaconda Stack. The chamber calls it the tallest masonry structure in the world. On the tours, guides tell the town’s mining story along the way.

In its present form the weekend is fairly new. The chamber’s 2024 visitor’s guide says the parade saw a resurgence in 2018, the Smelter Stack’s centennial year, and grew into a full weekend with the art walk, the run, the brewfest and the parade. In 2023 the county’s Historic Resources Board hung “The Ghost of Smeltermen’s Day Past,” a collection of historic photographs, on the Saturday of the celebration, August 5, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. The chamber lists the next celebration for August 2027.

Labor Day and a 1936 poster

The smelter started operations in September 1884, one year after Anaconda became a city. For decades Labor Day was one of the biggest days of the year in town, with parades, picnics and sporting events. That account comes from John Astle, writing in the Anaconda Leader on August 5, 2005. During the 1916 Labor Day celebration, a float honoring the smeltermen carried a statue of “Mr. Anaconda.” After the parade the statue was set up at the City Common, on the corner of Third and Main Streets. Astle adds, “Rumors have it that the Anaconda Company later took it down.”

Smeltermen’s Day itself began, in Astle’s words, “sometime in the 1930’s.” It was first called Smeltermen’s Union Day. A poster for a Smeltermen’s Day sports program on July 19, 1936, listed these events:

• a soccer game between Anaconda and Butte
• a first aid contest
• 50-yard dashes for fat men and fat women
• a backward race for union members
• a greasy pole free-for-all over the swimming pool

The celebration was discontinued during World War II.

Silver dollars on August 8

The revival came on August 24, 1947. Dan McKittrick, president of the Mill and Smeltermen’s Union Local 117, was in charge. Twenty-one committee members worked with him. The guest speakers were Congressman Mike Mansfield and Lee Metcalf, an associate justice of Montana’s Supreme Court.

The 1947 program ran from morning into the night:

• a parade and a children’s treat
• a sports program, a bicycle race and a baseball game
• daylight fireworks, and night fireworks at the “C” hill
• a street dance on Main Street at 10:30 p.m.

In photographs of the kids’ parade, everyone wears coats and sweaters.

That weather settled the calendar. The union asked the ACM weatherman which day in August was least likely to bring rain or snow. He told them August 8 was their best bet, and August 8 became the day of the annual celebration. News reports said the August 8, 1948 celebration had sunny weather. “It was considered one of the most successful community holidays with record participation,” one report said. “Union officials said that more than 1,000 participated and received treats of candy and ice cream at Mitchell Stadium.”

Through the 1950s the day grew. Local businesses closed, and it became a holiday for the whole town. The numbers ran as follows:

• 1950: about 12,000 men, women and children took part. More than 1,300 children marched in the parade, and each received one silver dollar.
• 1955: over 2,500 children marched. The event gave out 4,800 bottles of pop, 12,000 cups of ice cream, 2,000 pounds of barbecued beef and 18,000 bottles of beer.
• 1957: members of the Mill and Smeltermen’s Union handed out 3,000 silver dollars, $5,000 worth of treats and 9,000 sandwiches.

The Anaconda Standard reported in the 1950s that “Smeltermen’s Day had become known throughout the Northwest as one of the best celebrations of its kind in the U. S. today.” One child put it this way: “Your birthday, Christmas, and the 4th of July, all in one day.”

Labor troubles broke the run of years:

• After the 1959 strike the celebration paused. It picked up again in 1961.
• In 1962 and 1963 there was no formal celebration, though most of the retail stores in town still closed.
• The big celebration returned in 1964, 1965 and 1966.
• It paused again after the long strike of 1967 and 1968. That strike split the union, and members voted to leave the Mine Mill and join the Steelworkers.
• The celebration resumed in 1969 and continued into the 1970s.

The Washoe Smelter closed in September 1980.

After the smelter

The sources disagree about what happened next. In 2005 Astle wrote that it had been about 25 years since the city celebrated Smeltermen’s Day. The Anaconda Leader of Friday, August 7, 1981, tells it differently. That edition announced that “Anacondans will be treated to a day of fun and entertainment Saturday, August 8, due to the efforts of Jim Moses, the Smeltermen’s Union and community donations. Smeltermen’s Day has returned to Anaconda!”

The 1981 day was planned this way:

• It opened with a ribbon-cutting at the new Chamber of Commerce office, which had been the visitor’s center at the east gate of the Anaconda Co.
• Slide shows and bus tours followed.
• A parade ran from Park and Main to Kennedy Common, where trophies went to the winning entrants.
• The grand marshals were Miss SnoFest Laurie Nelson and John Johnson, “Anaconda’s believed-to-be-oldest native citizen.”
• The day closed with the Old Timers–American Legion game at Washoe Park.

Astle’s 2005 article announced another observance for that year’s August 8 anniversary. A local group planned a kids’ parade downtown in the morning. Afterward former smeltermen and smelterwomen would gather at Washoe Park to share memories of working on “The Hill.” Eighteen years later, at the Historic Resources Board’s photo display, volunteers handed visitors copies of Astle’s article.