Anaconda, New Mexico: The Cold War Uranium Town That Vanished Completely

Today there is no evidence a town ever existed there.

Anaconda, New Mexico is a completely vanished Cold War-era ghost town in Cibola County, created by the Anaconda Copper Company to support Cold War uranium production at the Jackpile-Paguate Mine on nearby Laguna Pueblo land.

01Why Was Anaconda Founded?

Anaconda was founded because the United States needed uranium. The early Cold War atomic weapons program and the emerging nuclear energy industry required massive amounts of uranium ore. The Jackpile Mine, located on Laguna Pueblo tribal land in the Laguna uranium district west of Albuquerque, opened in 1953 as one of the largest uranium operations in the world.

The Anaconda Copper Company — already one of America's largest mining corporations, based in Butte, Montana — opened a uranium ore processing plant 10 miles northwest of Grants to handle the Jackpile output. The company built a town next to the plant: approximately 100 homes for supervisors and management, constructed in three phases. The first phase of about 35 houses used cinderblock walls with exposed beam ceilings.

02The Clinic

One of Anaconda's distinctive features was its company clinic. Built to serve Anaconda employees and their families, it became the only medical facility on the 150-mile stretch of Route 66 between Albuquerque and Gallup. The clinic served the surrounding rural and tribal communities — an unintended public service that made the company town more important to the region than its population would suggest.

03What Happened to Anaconda?

The Jackpile Mine operated until 1982. As the Cold War uranium boom faded — the government reduced purchases, Three Mile Island damaged the nuclear industry's reputation, and cheaper uranium sources were found in Kazakhstan and Canada — the Jackpile Mine closed. The processing plant at Anaconda shut down.

The housing was demolished. The plant was dismantled. Environmental remediation removed the visible structures. Unlike mining ghost towns that simply decay and crumble, Anaconda was actively erased.

04What Remains of Anaconda Today

Nothing. The site has been so thoroughly cleared that, as one historian wrote, "there is basically no evidence that a village ever existed with the name of Anaconda." No foundations, no roads, no debris. The Grants area preserves some Cold War uranium history at the New Mexico Mining Museum in downtown Grants, but the Anaconda townsite itself offers nothing to see.