For most of the twentieth century, a brick chimney taller than the Washington Monument stood over a few hundred houses on the Missouri River, and the families underneath it measured their lives by the color of its smoke. The chimney has been gone since 1982. The town is still there.
TL;DR
- Black Eagle is a small unincorporated community of 949 people (2020 census) on the northeastern edge of Great Falls, across the Missouri River and only about two miles from downtown.
- Visitors come for three things: the falls and dam that gave the town its name, the story of the 506-foot Big Stack, and a plain look at one of Montana’s major smelter towns.
- The smelter site is part of an active Superfund cleanup. The visitor-friendly parts of town are the overlook, the main street and a few local restaurants, not the old smelter grounds.
- There is no lodging in town. Most visitors stay in Great Falls and give Black Eagle one to two hours.
Black Eagle is not a destination in the usual travel-guide sense. It has no visitor center, no hotel and no souvenir shops. What it has is a layered story that explains how Great Falls became the “Electric City,” why Butte copper ended up here, and what a company town leaves behind when the company is gone.
That story is easy to miss. Most people reach it by accident, usually at the overlook on River Drive North, and leave without realizing that the neighborhood across the road was the center of a major copper operation. This guide is meant to fix that: what the falls and dam actually look like, how the Big Stack was built and brought down, what the cleanup means in practice, and how to fit a respectful visit into a Great Falls trip.
Black Eagle is one of the places profiled in the Montana cities and towns directory, and it sits inside the Central Montana region, so it pairs naturally with the larger Great Falls guide, the Rocky Mountain Front and the Little Belt Mountains.
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A Town Named for an Eagle and Built Around a Smelter
Black Eagle takes its name from the falls on the Missouri River, and the falls take theirs from an eagle. Local accounts say the Lewis and Clark expedition noted an eagle in a tree on a river island near the falls. Reference works also credit Thomas P. Roberts with formally naming the falls in 1872, so the exact origin of the name depends on the source. Either way, the name stuck to the town only in 1917, when a post office opened. Before that, the settlement went by other names.
Little Milwaukee and Little Chicago
The first hamlet appeared around 1890 to 1892 in Nelson Coulee, on land owned by the smelter company, and local history accounts say families paid the company a few cents a month in rent. A flood threat in 1903 and the smelter’s expansion pushed people out. Some moved to North Great Falls. Others built a new neighborhood that residents called Little Chicago, partly a joke about its smoke and industry, and partly a reference to the Burlingame Addition where it grew.
The People Who Came to Work
The jobs were the draw. The Boston and Montana company, and later the Anaconda Company, needed hundreds of workers for the smelter, refinery and wire mill. Early immigrants came from Italy, Croatia, Czechoslovakia, Greece and Scandinavian countries, often after stints in Milwaukee, Chicago or Minneapolis. Local accounts describe as many as twenty nationalities living in town at one time.
Families kept backyard gardens, chickens and small livestock. Some made wine and grappa from grapes shipped in by the railcar. Children grew up speaking English at school and another language at home. The Civic Club’s long-discussed ethnic cookbook, mentioned in local reporting, is a reminder that the food is part of the heritage.
The Falls and the Dam
The one thing in Black Eagle that every visitor can see in ten minutes is also the reason the town exists. Black Eagle Falls is the first, and closest to Great Falls, of the five falls that gave the city its name. Before dams, the river dropped roughly 26 feet here. Today the falls are a broad, low sheet of water spilling over a ledge beside Black Eagle Dam.
What Is Actually There
Black Eagle Dam is a run-of-the-river hydroelectric dam about 34.5 feet high and 782 feet long. The first dam on this spot opened in December 1890 as a timber-and-rock crib structure, widely described as the first hydroelectric dam on the Missouri River and in Montana. It was built to power the smelter. The current concrete dam went up between 1926 and 1927 under the Montana Power Company and is now operated by NorthWestern Energy, which bought it in 2014.
The first dam was never removed. It lies under the reservoir, along with a good part of the pre-dam falls.
Where to View It
The main viewing area is a roadside overlook along River Drive North (Black Eagle Memorial Island Park is listed at 5401 River Drive North). The walk from the parking area is a few hundred feet, there is no fee, and the view takes in the falls, the dam and the river corridor. Spring and early summer carry the most water. In winter, access can be limited by snow and ice.
A flag worth noticing: NorthWestern Energy raised a 30-by-60-foot American flag on a 105-foot pole beside the dam as a tribute to veterans, directly across the river from the Montana Veterans Memorial. The company has described the dam as one of the most photographed spots in the state.
One practical warning. Local reporting notes that some visitors climb over the guard rail for better photos, and the city has considered a contract to improve the view and the access. The current is strong near the dam and swimming is not allowed. Stay behind the rail.
For the full picture of all five falls, see the Great Falls guide and the statewide Montana waterfalls page.
The Big Stack: 506 Feet of Brick, Start to Finish
No object defined Black Eagle like its chimney. Residents still call it the Big Stack, and banners along Smelter Avenue still show it.
Building It
The Boston and Montana smelter became a subsidiary of Amalgamated Copper in 1906, and the company set aside $1.5 million for improvements, including a stack tall enough to carry smelter fumes far from town. The contract went to the Alphons Custodis Construction Company of New York, which built a brick plant on site that produced radial brick by the ton.
The stack was 506 feet tall: a 46-foot octagonal brick base topped by a 460-foot round column. The structure weighed roughly 18,500 tons above its foundation. Crews of about 100 men, including specialists in high-chimney work, laid the first brick on April 7, 1908, and the last on October 23 of that year. Two workers died in falls during the work. The stack first smoked on June 12, 1909.
It was the tallest smokestack in the world from 1908 until 1914, when a smelter stack in Japan passed it.
The Timeline at a Glance
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 1890 | First Black Eagle Dam opens to power the smelter |
| 1891 | Construction begins on the Boston and Montana smelter |
| 1906 | Smelter becomes part of Amalgamated Copper |
| April to October 1908 | Brick laid on the Big Stack |
| June 12, 1909 | First smoke |
| 1910 | Operations come under Anaconda Copper Mining Company ownership |
| August 7, 1972 | Last smoke from the stack |
| 1977 | ARCO buys the smelter |
| September 29, 1980 | Smelter closes |
| September 18, 1982 | Big Stack demolished |
Bringing It Down
After the smelter closed, the company judged the stack unstable. Residents of Black Eagle and Great Falls organized to save it, hoping to raise several hundred thousand dollars for repairs, and failed. A demolition contractor bored hundreds of holes in the base and packed them with explosives. On September 18, 1982, only half the stack fell at first, and crews had to find more dynamite to finish the job.
Today there is no stack and no formal monument. The Great Falls History Museum notes that a monument may be built someday.
Life in a Company Town
The Big Stack tells the industrial story. The rest of Black Eagle tells the human one.
Schooling mattered early. After the first school burned in 1909, local voters approved a bond for a brick replacement by a margin of 99 to 3. The school later took the name Fannie B. Collins Elementary after its longtime teacher and principal, who served from 1909 to 1942. Evening classes taught English to parents. Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church served as a second gathering place.
Geography shaped daily life. Until the Tenth Street Bridge opened in 1920, Black Eagle was a world apart from downtown Great Falls. Afterward, residents increasingly shopped across the river.
War shaped the next generation. Local accounts say about 140 sons and daughters of the community served in World War II. Actor and director George Montgomery, who grew up in Black Eagle after his family arrived in 1927, went on to a Hollywood career.
When the smelter closed in 1980, the company transferred the community center to the town for a token sum, along with a water and sewer district and land for a golf course. A history book written by residents, titled In the Shadow of the Big Stack, captures the mood of those years. Longtime residents describe a place that kept going because people refused to leave.
The Smelter and Butte
The link to Butte is the key to understanding the town. Ore was dug in Butte, shipped north, and smelted and refined here, including into copper wire. A local historian credits the operation with making wire for early electric lighting and for both world wars, though those claims come from her account rather than a documented source. For the wider story, see the guides to Butte, Anaconda and Montana history.
After the Smelter: Cleanup, Honestly
A fair visitor guide to Black Eagle has to include the Superfund site. It affects residents daily, and it explains why parts of the old industrial area are off the visitor map.
What the EPA Says
The ACM Smelter and Refinery site was added to the EPA’s National Priorities List in March 2011. The site covers about 2,400 acres plus a 40-mile stretch of the Missouri River. Roughly eight decades of refinery operations left slag, tailings, arsenic, lead and other metals in soil, groundwater and surface water, according to the agency.
The cleanup is organized into three parts:
- Homes and businesses in Black Eagle. This is the only area in active cleanup. Since 2024, crews have replaced up to two feet of topsoil at hundreds of residential properties.
- The former smelter grounds. Risk assessment and investigation continue, including two arsenic dump sites that need evaluation for groundwater.
- The Missouri River. Reporting indicates that river assessments have not begun. Recent coverage says the smelter and its predecessor dumped up to 31 million cubic yards of waste into the river between 1893 and 1915, with reduced dumping continuing into the 1970s.
Earlier milestones include a 2011 removal action that cleared soil and made room for a residential subdivision, a 2020 removal coordinated with a water and sewer main replacement, and a proposed 2023 consent decree under which Atlantic Richfield would pay roughly $2.3 million to address community soils.
What It Means for a Visitor
The EPA’s site page does not issue visitor-specific health guidance. Its emphasis is on residential yards, and it describes the site as in active reuse, with housing, a golf course, parks, a recycling center and other businesses. The overlook, the restaurants and the main street are all ordinary public places.
Sensible habits apply. Stay on roads, sidewalks and developed paths, respect private yards, and do not dig or remove slag as a souvenir. Slag, a dark glassy byproduct, remains visible in places around town. Visitors with health questions or interest in a particular property can contact the EPA through its site profile page.
A multi-use trail along the old rail lines has been requested by residents and is in design, intended to fit the cleanup plan.
What to Do in Black Eagle Today
The honest list is short, which is part of the town’s character.
- Black Eagle Falls overlook and Memorial Island Park. Ten minutes to an hour, depending on the light.
- Smelter Avenue. The main street carries banners of the Big Stack and gives the clearest sense of the old company town.
- The River’s Edge Trail. The city’s 53-mile trail system passes through the falls area and ties Black Eagle to Giant Springs and downtown. See the Giant Springs State Park guide.
- Anaconda Hills Golf Course. The city-run course began as an amenity for smelter families.
- The Great Falls History Museum. The museum hosts Black Eagle programs, including a film on the Anaconda Company era built from an oral history with the smelter’s last operations manager. The best museums in Montana page has more.
- Community events. A spring cleanup each April and a quarterly local newsletter, the Black Eagle Times, are part of civic life.
The old smelter grounds are not a visitor attraction. They are part of the active Superfund investigation, and the best way to see the site’s scale is from public roads and from the overlook.
Where to Eat and Drink
Black Eagle’s dining list is brief and local.
- Borrie’s (1800 Smelter Avenue): a family-run steak and Italian restaurant. Longtime locals and Great Falls diners alike treat it as a destination.
- 3-D International Restaurant and Lounge (1825 Smelter Avenue): a neighborhood lounge and restaurant on the main street.
- Black Eagle Brewing (25th Avenue Northeast, listed at 1600 or 1602): a small brewery that draws beer drinkers out from Great Falls.
Hours vary and several places keep short schedules. Call ahead on weekdays and in winter.
Where to Stay
Black Eagle has no hotels or motels. Great Falls lodging is two miles away, and the hotel zones, from downtown to the riverfront to the airport corridor, are covered in the Great Falls guide. RV travelers can look at the RV parks in Great Falls page.
A 90-Minute Black Eagle Loop
This short plan fits between a museum visit and dinner in Great Falls.
- Start at the overlook (20 to 30 minutes). Read the river first: where the water spills, where the old dam lies underneath, where the flag stands.
- Drive Smelter Avenue (10 minutes). Look for the banners and the smaller details of the old company housing.
- Walk a short stretch of the River’s Edge Trail (30 minutes). Stay on the developed path.
- Eat at Borrie’s or Black Eagle Brewing. Reserve if the visit falls on a weekend.
- Add context in Great Falls. The History Museum and the Giant Springs State Park visit complete the picture.
When to Visit Black Eagle
Spring and early summer bring the highest river flow, and the falls look their fullest. April’s community cleanup is a good time to see the town at work.
Late summer and fall offer the best light and the quietest overlook. Cottonwoods turn along the river in October.
Winter is cold and windy, and the overlook can be icy. The restaurants stay open, but short days make the loop less appealing.
Holidays matter in one way: Memorial Day brings veterans’ observances to the area around the dam and the flag.
Getting to Black Eagle and Getting Around
Black Eagle sits roughly two miles from downtown Great Falls, on the northeast side, across the Missouri River. The drive is a few minutes, and Great Falls International Airport is a short ride beyond. A car is the practical way to reach it. Neighboring communities include Sand Coulee, Ulm and Vaughn, between about 10 and 13 miles out. South of Great Falls, Belt, Cascade and Sluice Boxes State Park make good add-ons.
What Visitors Often Miss
Black Eagle is a residential community, not a theme park. It has fewer than 1,000 residents and no town government. A volunteer fire department, a civic club and a water and sewer district keep it running. Visitors who treat it like a neighborhood, not an exhibit, get the best reception.
The town has no formal edge. Black Eagle blends into Great Falls and into industrial and agricultural land. A map helps.
The story is easier to understand with a plan. Read the Big Stack timeline first, then visit the overlook, then drive Smelter Avenue. The order makes the place legible.
Do not trespass on smelter property. The grounds are part of an active federal cleanup.
Ask before photographing people or yards. Many residents have lived here for generations and have strong feelings about how the town is portrayed.
Expect rough edges. Some buildings are well kept and others are not. New construction has been rare. That is part of the picture, and it is also a reason to spend money locally when possible.
Black Eagle Practical Info
| Item | Details |
|---|---|
| Population | 949 (2020 census) |
| Status | Unincorporated community in Cascade County |
| Location | Northeast edge of Great Falls, across the Missouri River, about 2 miles from downtown |
| Elevation | Roughly 3,400 feet |
| Best seasons | Late spring for river flow; fall for light and quiet |
| Time needed | 1 to 2 hours |
| Entry fees | None at the overlook |
| Lodging | None in town; use Great Falls |
| Getting around | Car recommended |
| Dining | Borrie’s, 3-D International, Black Eagle Brewing |
| What to bring | Camera, layers, windbreaker, binoculars for birds |
| Nearby | Great Falls, Giant Springs, River’s Edge Trail, Sand Coulee, Ulm |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Black Eagle, Montana worth visiting?
Yes, for travelers interested in industrial history, the Missouri River falls and an unvarnished look at a former company town. Plan one to two hours as part of a Great Falls trip.
What was the Big Stack in Black Eagle?
A 506-foot brick smokestack built for the Boston and Montana smelter in 1908, first smoked in 1909 and demolished on September 18, 1982. It was the tallest smokestack in the world from 1908 to 1914.
When did the Black Eagle smelter close?
The smelter closed on September 29, 1980. The stack’s last smoke came earlier, on August 7, 1972.
Is Black Eagle a Superfund site?
Yes. The ACM Smelter and Refinery site was added to the EPA’s National Priorities List in March 2011. The site covers about 2,400 acres plus a 40-mile river stretch, and cleanup of residential yards is underway.
Is it safe to visit Black Eagle?
The overlook, restaurants and main street are ordinary public places. The EPA’s site page does not give visitor-specific guidance and focuses on residential yards. Stay on developed paths, avoid smelter property, and contact the EPA with specific health questions.
How far is Black Eagle from Great Falls?
About two miles from downtown. Black Eagle sits on the northeast side of the city, across the Missouri River.
Where can you see Black Eagle Falls?
From the roadside overlook along River Drive North and from Black Eagle Memorial Island Park. There is no fee, and swimming is not allowed.
Are there hotels in Black Eagle?
No. Visitors stay in Great Falls, two miles away.
What does the name Black Eagle mean?
It comes from the falls. Local accounts describe an eagle noted by the Lewis and Clark expedition near the river. The town adopted the name in 1917.
Final Thoughts
Black Eagle does not ask for much time, and it rewards the time given. The falls are the entry point, the Big Stack is the story, and the town itself, still small and still proud, is the answer to what happens when a place built by a company outlasts it.
Pin this guide for a Great Falls trip, and explore more small-town profiles in the Montana cities and towns directory. For the wider region around the Missouri River corridor, the Central Montana guide covers the Rocky Mountain Front, the Hi-Line and the Missouri Breaks. Corrections and local knowledge are welcome in the comments.
