Washoe Stack Facts

Washoe Stack Facts. . , During the early years of smelting in Anaconda, each of the many furnaces at the Old Works required its own stack. Later the individual stacks were connected through flues to a large central stack. , When constructed in 1902, the first Washoe Smelter stack stood 285 feet high. As the production capacity of the smelter grew, the decision was made to design and construct one enormous stack to handle the large volumes of flue gas. In May 1918, the 30-foot high octagonal base for the "Big Stack" was completed. It was comprised of 20,891 sacks of cement, 50 railroad cars of sand, and 118 railroad cars of crushed rock. The Washoe Smelter stack was a colossal construction project that was completed in an extremely short time. Construction took 142 actual working days (8-hour shifts), with an average of 12 bricklayers per shift. On May 23, 1918, the first block was set in place, and the last block was set in place a little over six months later, on November 30, 1918. , From the 30-foot base (elevation 5,754 feet), the stack rises to 585 feet and is constructed of 2,464,652 locally-manufactured tile blocks, the equivalent of 6,672,214 ordinary bricks. Elevation at the top of the stack is 6,339 feet. An enormous amount of material went into the mortar necessary to construct the stack: 41,350 sacks of cement, 77 railroad cars of sand (50 tons per car), and 37 railroad cars of fire clay. Over 300,000 feet of lumber were used in the stack's construction. By May 5, 1919, the flue and stack were placed into operation, and the first smoke from the Washoe Smelter emerged from the stack.