Old Works Golf Course, Montana

Some golf courses, especially municipal ones, are built on landfills or other unstable, undevelopable land. The Old Works course, in Anaconda, was built on the site of a copper smelter, the Upper Works plant, which processed ore from the mine at Butte, Montana. After a new smelter opened in town, this old one was idled, abandoned, and ultimately became a superfund waste site. In 1994, after years of planning, ground was broken on a Jack Nicklaus-designed course, themed around the old industrial site. The sand in the bunkers is black slag and old machinery is peppered about.