Anaconda Montana: Copper Smelting Boom Town on the Western Frontier

Social history at its best. Whether you're from Anaconda, Montana or Timbuktu, you'll want to read this engrossing story. It is local history with a universal flair. From the perspective of a small smelter town in the west, it projects a broad historical chronicle of America during the closing decades of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth century. Its description, in comprehensive detail, of the founding and growth of this town in Montana's Deer Lodge Valley brings to life the social, political, ethnic and religious issues of the age. It has at once local color and broad historical sweep, very skillfully weaving the town's growth with the national and international events which influenced it. It not only provides an engaging tale of the town's early history, but fills a real need for those wanting a detailed look at environmental issues, turn of the century industrial development and the labor movement in the western United States.