Anaconda-Deer Lodge, MT

Anaconda-Deer Lodge is a consolidated city-county in southwestern Montana, shaped by the copper works that Marcus Daly planned beside Warm Springs Creek. Anaconda was laid out in 1883, and the smelter drew workers and families into the Deer Lodge Valley. The map still carries that industrial beginning: Commercial Street, the old smelter grounds at Old Works, the Butte, Anaconda and Pacific Railway, and neighborhoods built around the company town. Anaconda-Deer Lodge County keeps the city and county story in one civic frame.

Smelting ended in 1980 after a century of copper processing, leaving a difficult environmental legacy and a long cleanup. The former works now sit beside the Old Works golf course and other reuse projects, while the Copper Village Museum and Arts Center at 401 East Commercial keeps local photographs, objects, and stories in the old civic core. Five National Register districts and 27 individual properties give the streets a dense historic layer, including the Washoe Theatre, courthouse, City Hall, and Commercial district. Anaconda's local feel comes from that visible overlap: a company-built town, a county seat, and a community still making daily use of the places the smelter left behind.