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Slag Piles at Anaconda
These are the piles of slag (a by-product of copper smelting) at Anaconda, Mt. Lokk closly & you can see the tracks going up the piles. What they would do is build tracks up the slag piles; when copper was smelted, it left behind a byproduct called slag. They would load the slag into railroad cars & then the train would pull it up the tracks built on the slag piles & then dump the cars full of slag into the piles. When th piles started getting too high next to the tracks, they would build a new set of tracks further up the pile & start dumping slag there, burrying the old track with it. Who knows how many sets of tracks are burried in those piles!
Interesting! I hope this slag is being recycled in RR ballast, highway construction, cement and concrete aggregate, glass fibers, and fertilizer. Looks like a life time supply.
 
Actually, they are using the slag, but not for any of the things you mentioned. They've tried making slag into glass, but that never worked that well. What they're actually using it for is roof shingles. Do you have a shingled roof? If so those shingles are probably coated with slag (most likely it's from here, also), now you can tell people that you're house has its own bit of the Berkly Pit :p . BTW, when you said it's a life time supply, this picture doesn't even include other giant piles of slag to both sides of this pile, & probably there's more behind this pile, also.

Thanks for the 10!
 

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