During the early years of smelting in Anaconda, each furnace at the Old Works required its own stack, but later the stacks were connected through flues to a large central stack. When the first Washoe Smelter stack was constructed in 1902, it stood 285 feet high. As the smelter's production capacity grew, one enormous stack was designed and built to handle the large volumes of flue gas. In May 1918, the 30-foot-high octagonal base for the Big Stack was completed using 20,891 sacks of cement, 50 railroad cars of sand, and 118 railroad cars of crushed rock. The Washoe Smelter stack was completed in an extremely short time, requiring 142 actual working days of 8-hour shifts with an average of 12 bricklayers per shift. The first block was set in place on May 23, 1918, and the last block was set a little over six months later on November 30, 1918. Rising 585 feet from its 30-foot base at elevation 5,754 feet, the stack was built of 2,464,652 locally manufactured tile blocks, the equivalent of 6,672,214 ordinary bricks, bringing the elevation at the top to 6,339 feet. Its mortar required 41,350 sacks of cement, 77 railroad cars of sand at 50 tons per car, and 37 railroad cars of fire clay, and more than 300,000 feet of lumber were used in construction. By May 5, 1919, the flue and stack were placed into operation, and the first smoke from the Washoe Smelter emerged from the stack.