MURRAY — With one big boom it was over. The ground shook, people cheered and Murray's twin stacks crumpled in a huge cloud of red dust.
The horizon where the stacks once dominated the skyline was empty.
Doug Carlson, for a few moments, was overcome.
"We're devastated. The worst thing you ever could have seen happened here. There was so much history and it's gone now."
Five minutes before the blast, sirens wailed. People started checking their watches. In the silent hush of anticipation, all eyes were pinned on the stacks.
A few seconds after a giant blast, the 455-foot-high north stack leaned like a tired old man and then simply collapsed into the ditches crews had dug to catch the demolished towers. A few seconds more and the smaller 295-foot-high companion followed, crumpling to the ground.
"I'm surprised because I thought it would fall right over. This was more of a tipping bash type thing," Carlson said.
The sprinkling system designed to dampen the dust created by the collapse seemed outmatched by the large red cloud that drifted slowly to the north, ominously sweeping through the city before it faded away.
EPA's Eleanor Dwight was quick to say the asbestos covering on the north stack stayed in tact and wasn't in the cloud.
"It did not fly and break up. It stayed in big hunks of concrete. The demolition went just about like we said: it was picture perfect."
Dwight said the EPA would continue its air monitoring throughout Sunday and Monday, paying careful attention to the areas where the dust was heaviest.
Depending on the results, Dwight said the monitoring would either be increased or it would start to taper off.
Mayor Daniel Snarr saw the red dust cloud like everyone else, and chased it on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
He drove north along 300 West and looped up to Vine and followed the cloud for as long as he could.
"My shirt is still pure white," he said. "I'm not worried."
Snarr said he's been in worse dust storms before at the smelter site.
"At times I've been blinded. I've seen a lot worse."
The fact that the stacks crumpled and didn't fall like trees has Snarr believing it was right that the stacks come down like they did, instead of brick by brick.
"It proved to me more than ever that they were in really bad shape."
The crowds officials feared could be a problem Sunday didn't materialize.
Snarr estimated 10,000 people were scattered throughout the city to watch the demolition. Many sat on the hill next to the ice rink, while others milled near store fronts along State Street. And many expressed mixed feelings over the decision to rid the valley of a landmark that had become a safety hazard.
The stacks were erected at the turn-of-the-century as part of an existing smelting plant that employed many residents. After the plant shut down in 1949, the stacks remained as a central valley landmark. In 1998, voters rejected rejected a proposed $3.4 million bond to preserve the stacks. On Friday, a federal judge rejected a last ditch effort to save the stacks, ruling that to delay the demolition would be a safety hazard.
Charlene McGrew and her group were perched on the roof of Blosche Sales, a door manufacturing business on the west side of State.
They came prepared.
They had orange juice, coffee, doughnuts and dust masks.
"It was so fast," Laura Mauer said, marveling. "It was over too fast."
McGrew walked out to the street afterward, gazing to the south were the stacks once stood.
"It looks real strange. Those stacks were something that were always there, but you never saw before. Now there's nothing to see at all."
Clark Prince sat atop a Dumpster in a car wash to watch the demolition.
"I'm going to miss them. They were like a monument to Murray. My wife's brother climbed that thing as a child."
A trio of Murray High School students were on duty Sunday for the police department, participating in the cadet program and helping guard the yellow tape where no one could cross.
They said it's been a high school tradition for years for some brave Murray senior, usually a guy, to climb the north stack and put an "M" there. Now, they will have to come up with a new tradition.
"It's sad not to see them any more," Sarah Squires said.
City Council member John Christensen felt the same way.
"They knocked down 129 years of history. Gone in 15 seconds."
To Snarr, the felling of the smokestacks means good things for Murray. The proposed $100 million Chimney Ridge commercial-retail development is to be built on the site
"It was pretty spectacular without a doubt," Snarr said. "I thought of it as they fell, that today marks the rebirth of beginning of a new era for the soon-to-be-beautiful smelter site. Now something will actually happen there."
E-MAIL: amyjoi@desnews.com