The collection is housed in a modern building just off the Montana Tech campus. It is organized in 2,679 drawers and is estimated to contain more than 80,000 specimens including many polished slabs and over 10,000 thin sections. The collection was initiated as early as 1940 and expanded through 1981. The specimens in this unique and outstanding collection are largely from Butte (Montana) underground mines, but a significant number are from other districts in which the Anaconda Company had interests or were visited by Anaconda Company geologists. A variety of specimens were collected by Anaconda Company geologists in their travels.
Sample locations from the Butte mines are plotted on min-level maps (scale 1 in = 400 feet) at 100-foot intervals from surface to the 4,600-ft level. Specimen records include accurate locations for Butte specimens and may include notations such as the reason a sample was collected. The samples were collected as a working suite of research samples, not for their visual appeal. The underground mines at Butte are now flooded and the Anaconda Collection represents a unique set of samples that probably can never be duplicated.
The Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology maintains a collection of rock cores, thin sections, polished sections, hand samples and paper reports related to the mining operations of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company. This inventory is known as the Anaconda Collection.
If funds were available (funding and staffing), it would be desirable to
a. Double check the hard copy inventory;
b. Create an electronic inventory in a database that includes spatial locations of the samples;
c. Add heat to the building so that it could be used by researchers during Montana's cold winter months.
