Anaconda Copper Mine

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The Anaconda Copper Mine was a large copper mine in Butte, Montana. It was bought in 1881 by Marcus Daly from Michael Hickey. Hickey was a prospector and Union Civil War vet, and named his claim the Anaconda Mine after reading Horace Greeley's civil war account of how Ulysses S. Grant's forces had surrounded Robert E. Lee's forces "like an anaconda". Daly then developed the Anaconda Mine in partnership with George Hearst, father of William Randolph Hearst, and James B. Haggin and Lloyd Tevis of San Francisco.

From this beginning grew the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, a global mining enterprise featuring the Anaconda and other Butte mines, a smelter at Anaconda, Montana, processing plants in Great Falls, Montana, the American Brass Company, and many other properties, mostly in the United States and Chile.

The Anaconda mine itself was closed in 1947 after producing 94,900 tons of copper. Its location has been consumed by the Berkeley Pit, a vast open-pit mine.

The Anaconda copper mine appeared in Don Rosa's The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck (Part 4), where Scrooge became owner of the whole mine as a result of a little known law known as the law of apex that states that the whole of an ore body belongs to the one who owns the land where the body is closest to the surface. Don Rosa had, by his own statement, based this story on an actual incident in the history of the Anaconda mine. F. Augustus Heinze used the apex law to extract ore from the Anaconda Mines. Heinze purchased a small parcel of unclaimed land on top of Butte Hill and several Butte Judges was able to take copper ore that was in the Anaconda companies shafts. After years of losing lawsuits to Heinze the Company shut down all operations in the state putting as much as 80% of the state workforce out of work to force the state legislature to adopt a "change of venue" provision for lawsuits. Eventually the Company bought out all of Heinze's properties and claims.