Richard Hanners began his manuscript after being hired as an industrial electrician for an aluminum smelter in Columbia Falls, Montana in February 1997. He received a history degree from the University of Montana in 1991. Before moving to Columbia Falls, he worked for a historical research company in Missoula, working primarily with computer databases. Hanners created his own database where he gathered thousands of records on the Columbia Falls aluminum plant for his manuscript.

This manuscript covers the history of aluminum, aluminum production and the aluminum smelter in Columbia Falls. Summary: In 1886, aluminum smelters began cropping up following the discovery of a process (called the Hall-Heroult process) which permitted large scale aluminum production. One of the most prominent aluminum companies in the United States was the Pittsburg Reduction Company, which later changed its name to the Aluminum Company of America, later shortened to Alcoa. By 1930, Alcoa produced and sold nearly 100% of all the aluminum electric transmission cabling in the U.S. By 1941, Alcoa was the only primary aluminum producer in the U.S. After World War II, as the result of a lawsuit, the federal government owned most of the U.S. aluminum industry, thus breaking up the Alcoa monopoly. In 1952, the Anaconda Copper Mining Company (later the Anaconda Company) announced that they would build a new aluminum plant in Columbia Falls, Montana. Fluoride emissions from the smelter polluted the surrounding area, resulting in a lawsuit against the Anaconda Aluminum Company in 1970. By the mid- 1980s, the Anaconda Company’s smelter in Anaconda, along with copper mines in Butte, closed down. In 2009, smelter operations shut down and in 2013 polluted soil around the smelter plant was detected by a EPA contractor. In 2015, Columbia Falls Aluminum Company (formerly the Anaconda Aluminum Company), announced the permanent closure of the aluminum plant in Columbia Falls. The property was placed on the Superfund’s National Priorities List in 2016.