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I grew up in Great Falls and always regarded Black Eagle as the quirky little neighborhood across the river. I golfed at its Anaconda Hills course and rode the long, metal slide at the Black Eagle park that really absorbed the heat of the midday sun.
My time there came after everything changed for Black Eagle. In 1980, the smelter that built the company town closed. In 1982, crews demolished the landmark Big Stack (here is yet another chance to share this wonderful 1992 KRTV special). For those who lived through the demise of “The Company,” the industrial legacy is still very much part of Black Eagle’s character.
For most of the town’s history, the company was the Anaconda Copper Mining Company. Black Eagle was its company town, its own little entity that even today isn’t officially part of the city of Great Falls. The Anaconda company is mostly known for its operations in Butte and Anaconda, but it was the Black Eagle smelter and wire mill, powered by the nearby dam, that processed the copper and other materials into usable products. Many longtime Black Eagle residents have stories about playing in or around the white flue dust, a waste material from the smelter. One lifelong resident, 82-year-old Mary Ann Cosgrove, recalled during our recent conversation her elementary schoolyard just downhill from the smelter.
“And every morning, that playground would be covered in white, some kind of dust coming out of the big stack,” Cosgrove said. “And there had to be some real stuff in there. I don’t think anybody ever checked it out to see what we were running and throwing around at each other.”
Smelter waste is still around today. During one neighborhood walk-through last year, an official with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency pointed to white patches along an aging gravel trail. That was smelter slag, another potentially hazardous byproduct from the smelter era that was packed into home foundations, sidewalks and other parts of town. Like Butte, Black Eagle is now the site of a Superfund cleanup project aimed at clearing the arsenic and lead pollution left behind by the smelter operations.
But for an unincorporated community with no official local government, Black Eagle has taken strides to modernize its infrastructure. The Black Eagle Volunteer Fire Department has moved into a new building and is working to upgrade equipment and train more firefighters. Major improvements to its water and sewer systems have been in the works for many years and were recently completed.
Many of the people who handle the community’s logistics — infrastructure, park maintenance, civic matters — are older and volunteer, but the modernization and cleanup efforts set Black Eagle up for its future. One lifelong resident remarked in an interview that houses have been selling for surprisingly high prices.
There will be a time when a newer generation, with fewer ties to the company era, will be in a position to bring Black Eagle into its next phase. What that phase looks like is hard to say today.
— Matt Hudson
Hot Potato 🥔
From Missoula to Billings to Butte, data center projects are the talk of the town, and about as unpopular as wildfire smoke and ticks.
In Yellowstone County, things got heated in a regular meeting of the board of county commissioners Tuesday. Opponents of a massive, 5,000-acre project planned for Broadview turned out in force to ask commissioners to help pause any data center-related business in the county.
Kassi Solberg, who has become the face behind the movement to regulate the proposed Broadview data center, roused the crowd into cheers as she pounded on the lectern, saying: “Give me liberty, or give me death!”
Some in the audience wore T-shirts that said, “We the people are fed up!” They clapped and cheered for other speakers and booed the commissioners.
Then, on Thursday, at the Yellowstone County Board of Commissioners’ regular discussion meeting, more data center opponents showed up.
Tracy Linder, a county resident, said she was frustrated that she hasn’t yet had a chance to hear what commissioners think about the nuts and bolts of the data center project. She wanted, “[…] to have a really good discussion with you guys and have your side explained to us and what the options are and how, hopefully, you guys can find a way to help protect us.”
Commissioners have been advised to tread carefully. At a commission meeting Aug. 4, Yellowstone County Attorney Scott Twito said a law signed in 2025 by Gov. Greg Gianforte, called the Right to Compute Act, puts the county in a tricky spot regarding data center development.
“We gotta see how it unfolds, but it’s so broad and it’s a sweeping right that I would advise you as your counsel, I’d be very careful,” Twito said. “Because their definition of any government action that impinges on the right opens us up to liability.”
Twito also said that there are big differences between Missoula County and Yellowstone County, in part due to the amount of land in Yellowstone County that is currently “unzoned.” For that reason, he told commissioners, they couldn’t use the same mechanism — emergency interim zoning — that Missoula County used earlier this summer to put a pause on its data center development.
Do petitioners have a path forward? Yes. They can pursue a special election in May for their ballot initiative.
Whether that ballot initiative is legally permissible is still tied up in court.
The opponents are also likely to continue their calls for emergency interim zoning or for the commissioners to use their authority to put the initiative on the ballot this fall. But given the county attorney’s guidance, those actions seem unlikely.
— Phoebe Tollefson
Following the Law ⚖️
In more data center news, a District Court judge heard arguments Wednesday in a case related to another data center initiative in Butte-Silver Bow County.
Let me back up a bit. Last week, a nonprofit working to put data center development decisions in the hands of Butte-Silver Bow County voters sued the county after a deadline to gather requisite signatures was changed to a date in the past.
Denise Kelly, founder of 406 People First, began collecting signatures in May for a ballot initiative that would allow voters to approve or reject data center development or expansion on the November ballot. In the complaint, she alleges that the Butte-Silver Bow election administrator approved the petition and instructed organizers that the deadline to collect at least 3,652 signatures was Aug. 14. On July 31, according to court documents, the administrator emailed Kelly that the signature requirement had been met, but on Aug. 10, Kelly alleges, the administrator “reversed course,” saying a Montana statute actually required a July 13 signature deadline.
John Meyer, a lawyer representing Kelly, said Silver Bow County District Court Judge Frank Joseph asked that more information be submitted to the court by 5 p.m. Monday. Meyer said the judge was specifically interested in how the Butte-Silver Bow case differs from the Yellowstone County case. He told Montana Free Press that a primary difference between the two cases is that the elections administrator in Butte-Silver Bow told petitioners that they had satisfied the signature requirement before reversing her position.
“I told [the judge] that in this case, it’s unconstitutional,” Meyer told MTFP during a phone interview after Wednesday’s hearing. “The people have a constitutional power to make laws using ballot initiatives, and this statute prevents them from doing so, even though they collected enough signatures to get on the ballot. To make some arbitrary, technical deadline is unconstitutional when we, in fact, collected enough signatures.”
Silver Bow County, represented by county attorney Matthew Enrooth, took no position on the ballot initiative or on whether it should appear on the November ballot, according to court documents.
“The County respectfully requests that the Court determine the parties’ respective rights and obligations and enter an order directing the Election Administrator how to proceed,” Enrooth wrote in a response to the initial complaint. Enrooth did not respond to a request for comment.
Meyer said he thought the judge could issue an order as early as next week.
— Nora Mabie
By the Numbers 🔢
That’s the number of acres of public land in the United States protected by the Roadless Rule over the last quarter-century. Nearly 6 million of those acres are in Montana. Those protections could be going away after the Trump administration’s announcement Tuesday that it plans to rescind the rule, which bars “road construction and logging on these lands,” wrote Ellis Juhlin, climate reporter for Montana Free Press and Mountain Journal.
The announcement came in the form of a press release from Brooke Rollins, secretary for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, claiming that wildfires have been more rampant on overgrown national forest land protected by the Roadless Rule.
The science community is unconvinced. Last fall, 32 leading forest science researchers from across the country refuted the administration’s claims in a letter addressed to Rollins and U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz. As Juhlin reported, their analyses showed the opposite: that the “highest number of wildfire ignitions came from land in close proximity to roads.” You can read her full story here.
— Joseph T. O’Connor, environmental editor
Fire Lookout 🔥
The Federal Emergency Management Agency this week awarded Montana a grant that will cover some of the firefighting cost for the Sand Creek Fire, a 32,000-acre blaze in Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest that damaged Maverick Mountain Ski Area.
FEMA’s Fire Management Assistance Grant covers up to 75% of the state’s firefighting cost. But it’s not yet clear how much money the state will actually get.
It will probably take “considerable time” for the state to be reimbursed, according to a spokesperson at the governor’s office. The Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation is still processing the last two fire management grants, including one in 2024 for the Horse Gulch Fire and another in 2025 for the Windy Rock Fire.
Officials at Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest first reported the Sand Creek Fire Aug. 1. Between Aug. 6 and Aug. 17, the blaze grew to more than 30,000 acres. At Maverick Mountain, the fire caused a lift’s haul rope to fail, scattering chairs across the mountain, and destroyed a small building that ski patrollers built two years ago. The blaze did not damage the base area lodge.
About 530 people are still deployed to the Sand Creek Fire, along with 23 engines and five helicopters, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Just north of that fire, another 232 people and 11 engines are battling the Bobcat Lakes Fire, a 10,000-acre blaze. The pair constitute the largest and second-largest fires currently burning in Montana.
— Zeke Lloyd
Highlights ☀️
In other news this week —
• Lauren Miller, in both photos and words, brought us the story about Brady, Montana, and the vibrant legacy of its shuttered school.
• The infighting between factions of the Montana Republican Party went to court this week, culminating with a Supreme Court ruling. Victoria Eavis kept us in the know.
• Readers pick: Our most-read story this last week, by far, was Matt Hudson’s dispatch about the once-thriving company town of Black Eagle.
On Our Radar 
Brad — Helena is a mountain biking town, and I’m an aging guy with a stationary cycle and a well-founded fear of face-plants. But that doesn’t mean I’m immune to boredom, so I like to keep my morning RPMs aimed at something edgy.
Matt — I was recently reminded of how much I miss alt-weekly papers after reading Willamette Week’s latest “Hydro Hogs” feature, which chronicles Portland’s top water users. The results of diligent follow-up calls by reporters make it a fun read.
Stephanie — To all my fellow Muggles counting down the days until HBO’s Harry Potter series premieres this December, I highly recommend checking out the new full-cast audiobooks. With a huge cast, immersive sound effects and all the magic you remember, it’s the closest you can get to hopping on the Hogwarts Express. ⚡️🪄
Jacob — I’m reading Cory Doctorow’s “The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI,” whose title comes from a distinction I can’t stop thinking about. In automation theory, a “centaur” is a person using a machine to become more capable; a reverse centaur is a person forced to work at a machine’s pace on its terms. Doctorow argues that who the technology is meant to work for is more important than what it does. Doctorow, who coined “enshittification,” has been one of my favorite tech writers for years. “Enshittifcation” was my unofficial book of the year in 2025, and this one is making a strong case for 2026. His books are sold everywhere but I always use his official store.
Mara — I’ve sometimes daydreamed about building an accessory dwelling unit in my backyard. Maybe because of that aspiration, a friend recently shared a new type of building equipment that might best be described as environmentally feel-good real-life Legos. Consider me thoroughly intrigued.
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Lowdown is edited by Nick Ehli, with additional copy editing by Mara Silvers.