In 1876 Walker Brothers, a Salt Lake City, Utah, mining and banking firm, hired Marcus Daly to investigate silver mining properties in Butte, Montana. The Walkers and Daly purchased the Alice Mine and incorporated as the Alice Gold and Silver Mining Company. Daly served as general superintendent until he sold his interest in the company in 1880.

That same year he bought the Anaconda Mine, located by Michael Hickey in October 1875. Hickey, unable to keep up annual assessment work on the mine, had sold half interest in it to Charles Larabie, a banker. Larabie brought in Daly as a third partner to sink a shaft. Daly got an option from his partners to purchase the property for $30,000 and tried to interest the Walker Brothers in investing in it. When they declined, Daly went to San Francisco and secured the backing of James Haggin, George H. Hearst, and Lloyd Tevis. The four men operated the mine under a partnership arrangement as a silver property. The small quantities of copper which the mine produced were shipped to Swansea, Wales, for processing. In late 1882 a rich copper vein was struck.

As copper became the main product of the mine, Daly decided to build his own smelter instead of continuing the expensive procedure of shipping ore to Wales. He located a suitable site on Warm Springs Greek, twenty six miles west of Butte. He officially platted the new town of Anaconda on October 27, 1883, and began the construction of what became known as the Upper Works. Transportation of the Butte ores to the new smelter was provided by the narrow-gauge Montana Railway. This railroad, under the name Montana Union Railway, was later operated jointly by the Union Pacific and Northern Pacific companies. The original 500-ton capacity mill, completed in 1884, quickly became inadequate and, within two years, was expanded to 1000 tons. During the early years, only the initial stages of treatment were done at the Anaconda Reduction Works, with the concentrated ore still being shipped to Wales for refining. To eliminate this necessity, Daly built an experimental electrolytic refinery, completed in 1888. He also built a second reduction plant, known as the Lower Works, a mile east of the Upper Works. Fire destroyed this plant shortly after its completion. Daly quickly rebuilt on an even larger scale.

While Daly was developing the Anaconda Reduction Works, he was also expanding the basis of his mining operations. Until 1891 the Haggin-Hearst-Tegin-Daly syndicate had operated its Montana properties as a partnership under the name Anaconda Gold and Silver Mining Company. In January 1891 when it incorporated as the Anaconda Mining Company, the company owned four groups of mines: the Anaconda Group, the Mountain Consolidated Group, the Union Consolidated Group, and the Anglo-Saxon Group. Daly, Hearst, and Tegin owned only the minimum shares required by law. Haggin held the remainder in trust. The Anaconda Mining Company reinvested all profits in building its facilities instead of giving dividends.

From 1891 to 1895 the Anaconda Mining Company began the process of consolidating its control over its services and sources of raw materials. Angered by the Montana Union Railway's high charges and inefficient service, Daly built his own railroad, the Butte, Anaconda, and Pacific, to connect the smelter with the mines. The Big Blackfoot Milling Company and the Bitter Root Development Company were created as allied companies to provide Anaconda with needed timber. The Castner Coal and Coke Company, with Daly as a minor stockholder, provided the company with coal. The Tuttle Manufacturing and Supply Company was formed to meet the smelter's foundry and hardware needs. When a larger smelter was needed to meet increased treatment requirements at Anaconda, the Washoe Copper Company was created to build the New Reduction Works, which was then operated by Anaconda under a lease arrangement.

In 1895 the company was again reorganized, this time as the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, with a capitalization of $30,000,000. Haggin's trust-held properties were transferred to the new company and, over the next year, several of the allied companies were brought in as subsidiaries.

In 1899 H.H. Rogers and A.C. Burrage, officers of the Standard Oil Company and stockholders in the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, urged the union of all Butte mining operations under one holding company. In April 1899 the Amalgamated Copper Company was formed to acquire the stock of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company and its subsidiary companies including the Big Blackfoot Milling Company, the Bitter Root Development Company, the Diamond Coal and Coke Company, the Tuttle Manufacturing and Supply Company, and the Washoe Copper Company. In addition, the Amalgamated acquired several other previously unallied Butte mining companies including the Boston and Montana Consolidated Copper and Silver Mining Company and the Parrot Silver and Copper Company. The Amalgamated Copper Company was simply a holding company and was not involved in management of the various companies, which continued to operate independently. The most important of the companies brought under the Amalgamated umbrella was the Boston and Montana. It owned several important mining claims in Butte (including the Mountain View and East Colusa) and a smelter in Great Falls. This smelter, built in 1892, duplicated many of the facilities in Anaconda, handling all levels of ore processing from concentration to refining.

In 1910 the Anaconda Copper Mining Company took over most of the other companies in the Amalgamated Copper Company, all Amalgamated subsidiaries becoming departments within Anaconda. One of the most important results of this reorganization was that it allowed the two major reduction works at Anaconda and Great Falls to coordinate their operations. Anaconda continued to handle the early stages of concentrating and smelting, while Great Falls gradually phased out these operations and specialized in refining. All stages prior to refining were finally eliminated from Great Falls in 1919. At the same time, Great Falls increased its refining capacity by the addition of an electrolytic zinc plant. In 1915 the Amalgamated Copper Company ended its corporate existence.

During the period that Anaconda Copper Mining Company was consolidating its Montana operations, it was also expanding towards its goal of controlling copper "from mine to consumer." In 1913 the company acquired the International Smelting and Refining Company, which owned smelters at Tooele, Utah, and Miami, Arizona, as well as the Raritan Copper Works in New Jersey. In 1922 Anaconda bought the American Brass Company in Waterbury, Connecticut, one of the major producers of finished copper products. Also in the early 192Os, Anaconda invested in Chile, acquiring the Chuquicamata copper mine from the Guggenheim family, as well as the smaller, but important, Potrerillos mine. It acquired from the heirs of Georg von Giesche a large zinc treatment plant at Katowice, Poland. In 1928 W.A. Clark's heirs sold his Montana companies to Anaconda. In 1955, in recognition of the wide range of corporate operations, the company name was changed to The Anaconda Company.

The company prospered during World War II and the years following. Several ambitious projects, including the Greater Butte Project to expand underground operations and the Berkeley Pit to commence surface mining, were undertaken. In 1971, however, Chile nationalized the Chuquicamata and other American-owned mines. This, along with low copper prices brought about a financial crisis. Forced to meet financial deadlines in New York, the company sold its entire lumber operation, including thousands of square miles of Montana timber land and the Bonner mill, to Champion International. This liquidation, however, did not solve the company's financial problems, and in 1979 the company was purchased by the Atlantic-Richfield Company (ARCO). Over the next few years, ARCO shut down its entire Montana operation, including the Berkeley Pit in Butte, the Anaconda Smelter, and the Great Falls Refinery.