1978 – 2021 McGill Smelter
Courtesy of Matt Liverani
In today’s edition, we see a 1978 view looking north at the Kennecott smelter in McGill versus what the property looked like in 2021.
Originally built in 1907, the first shipment of blister copper was sent out only one year later. Over the years, the smelter complex grew as smelting processes improved and technologies changed, then in 1933, the complex changed hands from Nevada Consolidated Copper Corporation to Kennecott (though the name wouldn’t officially change until 1943) who ran the facility until it closed in June 1983. The mines that fed the concentrator and smelter had closed 5 years earlier, but trains still delivered stockpiled ore until it ran out.
Demolition of the smelter began in 1989 with the last piece of the complex, the 750-foot smoke stack (tallest of the three), coming down on September 4, 1993 with a large crowd looking on.
I was a witness to the demolition, and although I had been an Ely resident for about 15 months at that time, having moved here from Texas in 1992, I felt the same sense of loss the rest of the community did once the dust finally settled. A local icon was no more.
My photo, taken December 8, 2021, shows how very little is left. Only a few scattered buildings remain down on the west side of the property, some of which have recently been turned over to the Nevada Northern Railway Museum.
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