International Smelting and Refining Company

After the shut down of several of the International Smelting sites, environmental reclamation has been performed by Anaconda Copper's successor company ARCO and the EPA Superfund program.

Interest in constructing a smelter outside of Tooele was begun by the Utah Consolidated Mining Company in the early 1900s due to the James Godfrey et al. v. American Smelting and Refining Company et al. lawsuit, which shut down several of the smelters operating in the Murray, Utah, area due to air pollution concerns.

A prime site was found in Tooele on the western slope of the Oquirrh Mountains which was isolated from the growing Salt Lake Valley, had strong headwinds which it was hoped would take most of the pollution up into the nearby Pine Canyon instead of towards nearby Tooele City, and was located close to the rapidly growing Bingham mining district.

Corporate offices for the company would at one point be located in New York City[2] The Tooele Valley Railway, which was built to serve the smelter construction and operation, had been chartered in Utah on November 18, 1908.

Among the founders of the new smelter were mining moguls John D. Ryan and Thomas F. Cole who would eventually bring the company under the control of Anaconda Copper.

[4] The copper smelter in Tooele opened in 1910, with an aerial tramway having been built to bring ores in from the Bingham Canyon mining district.

[14] An electric narrow-gauge railroad system ran through the tunnel, and interchanged with the Tooele Valley Railway at the surface portal.

This post-war market lead to the Elton Tunnel being shut down, the closure of the Apex and Utah Delaware mines, and the end of copper smelting operations in Tooele.

The National Tunnel and Mines Company declared bankruptcy in 1948, a move which forced all the remaining assets into complete control by Anaconda.

From 1941 to 1944 the International Smelting and Refining Company leased and expanded the Copper Canyon mining camp near Battle Mountain, Nevada.

[22] Guidelines for land developers in the area were set in place and made available for the public via the Tooele County Health Department.

Due to the low-income neighborhoods built in the area after the shut down of the lead facilities, clean up has been a difficult and controversial process.

In 2016 the EPA began evicting residents from the West Calumet housing complex, which had been built over the former Anaconda/International site, with plans to demolish the structures there.

The Carr Fork Reclamation and Wildlife Area has sign markers and monuments with information on the historic smelter site.

As of June 2016, several pylons of the aerial tramway between the smelter and Bingham Canyon remain standing across the Oquirrh Mountains.

A view of the International Smelter near Tooele, Utah , facing east toward the Oquirrh Mountains , taken in August 1972, shortly after the facility shut down.
The administrative offices at the International Smelter site in Tooele. This building would survive long past the demolition of the smelter, being used as offices for the nearby Carr Fork Mine, before being finally demolished in the mid-1980s.
An overhead view of Miami, Arizona in 1944. Smoke from the International Smelting operation in the city can be clearly seen in the background coming from the site's smokestack
The interior of the ore crusher at the International Smelting and Refining Company site near Battle Mountain, Nevada.
A steam crane used at the Tooele smelter stored in Nevada, as seen in 2019.