Anaconda angles toward self-reliance

Mark Bartlett, president of Western States Garage Door Supply, paused on his walk around the company’s 43,000-square-foot facility in Anaconda to talk with craftsmen about the best ways to assemble, modify and resize garage doors. 

“I’ve been in the door industry my whole life,” he said. “I got out of school and went into the Marine Corps. And when I got out of the Marine Corps, my first job was sweeping the floor in a door warehouse.”

Bartlett met his wife, Susan, in the 1990s at a construction supply company in southern California, where he managed the door division. When they moved to Anaconda in 2003, they commuted 25 minutes to their then-nascent garage door business in Butte. 

Last summer, Bartlett moved his operation’s headquarters and 17 employees into the new facility in Anaconda, in part because Anaconda-Deer Lodge County offered incentives.

“There was a grant. There was a loan. The land didn’t cost much,” Bartlett said. “And we wanted to be in Anaconda.”

Western States operates out of the Opportunity Triangle, an expansive patch of nonresidential land nestled along Highway 1 just east of town. 

Some local leaders believe the Triangle, and businesses like Bartlett’s, offer the best hope for a stable economic future in this southwest Montana community of roughly 10,000 residents.

The county offered to pick up 10% of Bartlett’s construction costs and to loan an additional 10% at a low rate if he substantially completed the building within one year. The two more recently arrived businesses next door to Western States  — KLM Contracting, Logging and Excavation, and Johnson Construction — have taken advantage of similar offers.

The land beneath the Opportunity Triangle isn’t suitable for residential zoning. Like much of Anaconda, it was peppered with toxic byproducts from large-scale smelting operations that ended half a century ago. 

Copper baron Marcus Daly established Anaconda in 1883 to smelt ore mined in nearby Butte. The smelter closed in 1980, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency designated the area a Superfund site three years later, sparking decades of negotiations, remediation and cleanup that are now concluding. 

Bill Everett, a fifth-generation Anacondan who serves as chief executive officer of the consolidated city-county government, said the town’s post-industrial reputation has long hindered growth.

“For years, Anaconda and Butte were just known for arsenic and lead,” Everett said. “It’s really tough to create a positive economy when you have that stigma attached to your community.”

When Everett took office in 2017, he worked hard to attract tourism-oriented businesses in an effort to draw recreational money into the former company town. The Forge, a high-end Best Western hotel, and Pintler’s Portal Hostel, a more affordable accommodation, both opened in the wake of COVID.

Boosted by a post-pandemic increase in travel to Montana, the town became a destination. Anaconda’s lodge tax revenue tripled from 2020 to 2022. 

In 2022, outdoor magazine Halfway Anywhere published survey results ranking Anaconda as hikers’ favorite resupply point along the Continental Divide Trail. Hiker traffic has since increased by 30% at the hostel. This July was the busiest month yet, according to co-owner Marsha Hill.

Out-of-state travelers, often pit-stopping in Anaconda on the drive between Yellowstone and Glacier national parks, accounted for roughly half of the city’s half-million 2024 visitors. But today, growth in the recreational and tourism sectors has made Everett wary of Anaconda getting the wrong kind of big.  

“Tourism has an expense associated with it, too,” Everett said. “They use all your roadways and different things like that: your facilities, your infrastructure. But they don’t financially contribute to it. They don’t pay taxes.”

Without a statewide sales tax, Everett said, the county’s cost of hosting tourists is “basically left to the residents.” 

And property taxes are going up. Anaconda’s median residential property value increased by 119%, the second-highest in the state, between 2020 and 2024. 

As an alternative, Everett is eyeing Opportunity Triangle as a way for resident Anacondans to claim a bigger stake in the town’s future. 

“We just want to make it a population of 11,000 people — a healthy community where you can work in this town, where the manufacturing base picks up a good part of the tax base,” Everett said.

According to Todd O’Hair, leader of the Montana Chamber of Commerce, Montana’s manufacturing industry has grown by 80% since 2017, primarily through small and mid-size manufacturing concerns.

Everett believes an industrial future will ensure that Anacondans are able to live in the community where they work.

“You need jobs that are actually going to be paid $20 to $25 an hour, with benefits and all that stuff, so those people can buy a house and be a part of your economy,” Everett said.

He added that Anaconda “doesn’t want trophy homes.”

“We got enough of it at Georgetown Lake,” Everett said. “The residents here view it very negatively, because, ‘hey, these are people buying up our land.’”

Carl Hamming, director of Anaconda’s planning department, called housing affordability a “heck of a challenge.”

“We just want to make it a population of 11,000 people — a healthy community where you can work in this town, where the manufacturing base picks up a good part of the tax base.”

Bill Everett, chief executive officer, Anaconda-Deer Lodge County

“If there’s an easy solution, I’d love to hear it or learn how we can come up with something,” Hamming said. 

Hamming identified condominium construction as a prime direction for development.

“We love these types of projects that introduce more density into our urban area of Anaconda — it offers different types of living opportunities, but also usually is going to keep costs a little bit lower than if you’re developing in a greenfield opportunity.”

Anaconda has also begun to attract subdivision development, including a 26-lot development that sparked debate between commissioners before it was greenlighted in June. Hamming said tourism and new development can have positive effects on the community, but keeping the cost of living affordable for current residents is the “No. 1 priority.”

Another of the Triangle-based outfits, KLM Contracting, Logging and Excavation, employs 25 full-time employees, most of whom live in Anaconda, but partner Bryan Lorengo said it’s difficult even for those employees to maintain stable housing in town. 

“Instead of being able to purchase their own home, they’re maybe having to rent longer or find a roommate to live with to be able to afford to live here,” Lorengo said. “And 20 years ago, when I was in their position, it was different. I could afford to buy a house here.”

Despite those challenges, Lorengo’s plans include steady growth, adding several new employees each year.

“It’s a good time to locate a business in Anaconda,” Lorengo said. “We’re turning the corner.”

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This story was reported in collaboration with the Anaconda Leader newsroom as part of Montana Free Press’ 2025 Reporter Residency program, which places MTFP reporters for weeklong stints in community newsrooms throughout the state.

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