Boston and Montana Consolidated Copper and Silver Mining Company
[1] Historian Michael P. Malone has written, "Well financed and well managed, the Boston and Montana came to rank among the world's greatest copper companies.
[3] In 1867, Adolph and Leonard emigrated to the United States and took over the company, focusing their attention on the trading of copper, lead, and zinc.
[6] For many years, it was managed by "Captain" Thomas Couch, a Cornish immigrant and expert miner.
[2] Other productive mines (the Badger State, Comanche, Liquidator, Mountain View, Pennsylvania, Wandering Jew, and West Colusa) now added their ores to the stream needing smelting and refining.
But Butte was a booming mining town that needed to get its metals to market, gold and silver had been discovered near Helena, and coal companies in Canada were eager to get their fuel to Montana's smelters.
[8] Hill's close friend and business associate, Paris Gibson, had founded the town of Great Falls on the Great Falls of the Missouri River in 1883, and was promoting it as a site for the development of cheap hydroelectricity and heavy industry.
Hill organized the Great Falls Water Power & Townsite Company in 1887,[12][13] with the goal of developing the town of Great Falls; providing it with power, sewage, and water; and attracting commerce and industry to the city.
[29] In 1899, Henry Huttleston Rogers, a business associate of John D. Rockefeller, proposed the creation of a giant copper company through the consolidation of smaller firms.
[28] Their goal was to establish diversity of jurisdiction so that any future lawsuits would be heard by federal courts (which Rogers believed would be less considerate of Heinze's interests).
[33] Built by the Alphonse Custodis Construction Co. of New York, it was completed on October 23, 1908,[33] and was the tallest chimney in the world when finished.
[35] In 2011, the old B&M smelter was listed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a Superfund hazardous and toxic waste site.
[36] Historic records show that plant wastes were routinely dumped into the Missouri River below Black Eagle dam.
[38] EPA samples indicated that the contamination could extend as far downstream as Fort Benton, 34 miles (55 km) away.
[36] Toxins present in the water and riverbed, according to the EPA, include antimony, arsenic, cadmium, chromium, cobalt, copper, iron, lead, manganese, mercury, nickel, silver, sodium, and zinc.
