Smokejumping and the Grant-Kohrs Ranch
Trip Start
Aug 12, 2008
1
3
9
Trip End
Aug 21, 2008
Butte,
Montana,
United States
Friday, August 15, 2008
From there we went south to the Grant-Kohrs Ranch, a former 10 million (!) acre open range cattle ranch that was bequeathed to the National Park Service to protect the history and heritage of cattlemen. I was not particularly excited about this (the older I get, the more I tend to see the Native American point of view), but the afternoon was a delightful surprise for all of us
Flathead Lake
. The ranch is well preserved, still working with longhorn, shorthorn and angus cattle, and I was sold on the experience after I ate on the chuck wagon: cowboy beans, peach cobbler and cowboy coffee. We learned a lot about the 19th century fortunes made and lost here in Montana as European immigrants arrived with big ideas and a strong work ethic.Just south of the ranch is the site of the nation's largest Superfund site. Anaconda Copper was shut down in the 1970s after decades of heavy pollution. Here's a book jacket blurb from "Smoke Wars: Anaconda Copper, Montana Air Pollution, and the Courts, 1890-1924" by Donald MacMillan: The copper mining and smelting communities of Butte and Anaconda, Montana, today host the largest Superfund cleanup site in the United States. Hazardous waste and companies that place profit before environmental concerns have long plagued Montana's mining and smelting industries, according to this provocative history of air pollution. "Smoke Wars" begins with the fight in Butte to abolish heap roasting -a process that created dense clouds of low-lying, noxious smoke and caused death rates in Butte to exceed those of New York City in the 1880s. While a hard-fought public victory forced smelters to end the practice, Butte's air polution remained notorious until industry consolidation caused the transfer of most smelting operations to the great reduction works in Anaconda, twenty-six miles west of Butte. Smelting in Anaconda led to the second phase of the smoke wars -the opposition led, this time, by farmers in the Deer Lodge valley whose livestock and crops were dying from exposure to the arsenic and sulphur dioxide released from the tall stacks of the Anaconda Reduction Works
Cherry trees on Flathead Lake
. Finally, the federal government entered the fray -protesting damage to the national forest. Even the federal government was unable to force Amalgamated Copper -or the Company, as it was known throughout Montana- to control its toxic emissions. With lessons for the current environmental movement, this landmark study raises issues of corporate responsiblilty, the rights of citizens, the costs of industrialization, and the relative value of the environment, issues still hotly contested today."Indeed. We passed by the single remaining 565 foot chimney, all that's left of the smelting operations. Continuing south to Butte, we are just a mile away from "the world's biggest hole," according to Ed. "This is the only city in the country that is digging itself to death." Ed tells us that the open pit carved into the hillside is the site of the old city and it's absolutely huge. We wonder if we should be drinking only bottled water?!
Tomorrow we're off to Helena!
