ANACONDA SMELTER STACK (THE BIG STACK)

The Anaconda Smelter Stack, known locally as "The Big Stack" or "The Stack",  is a brick smoke stack or chimney, built in 1918 as part of the Washoe Smelter of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company (ACM) at Anaconda, Montana.

It is the tallest surviving masonry structure in the world with an overall height of about 585 feet, including a brick chimney 555 feet tall and the downhill side of a concrete foundation 30 feet tall.

The stack contains 2,464,652 locally manufactured perforated tile bricks, each averaging 2.7 times larger by volume than the size of a normal brick. Most are radial bricks that are curved to match a sector of a cylindrical wall. The brick chimney weighs 23,810 short tons (21,600 t).

The Washington Monument would fit inside the stack's brick portion except for the lowest 100 feet where an overlap of as much as one foot at each corner of the monument would occur. The stack's brick portion is about 6 inches taller than the monument's 2015 height. The masonry portion of the stack is about 15 inches taller than the above ground portion of the monument's masonry, which disregards the monument's aluminum apex.

In 1986, it was designated the Anaconda Smoke Stack State Park. The park has two parts: the Washoe Smelter Stack Viewing Center constructed in 2000 just east of the town of Anaconda and the smoke stack about 1.2 mile southeast of the viewing area. The “Stack” is also on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.

THE BIG STACK