Today was a travel day and at the end of it we find we are still in Montana. Montana is a big (and beautiful) state. We did make a few stops along the way today.
In Butte, whose claim to fame is the richest mountain in the world, we visited a mining museum. This was basically all the abandoned mining equipment left in town brought together so they can charge an admission to tourists to view it. We did learn a lot about mining but it was creepy looking at the city maps that showed there was a honeycomb of mining tunnels directly beneath the streets and houses. The mines have been closed for a few years now and the town seems to be closing as well. It was strange seeing one of the worlds largest open pit mines just a couple blocks off Main Street.
We also detoured to visit Bannack Mt which was a gold rush town in the 1860s of 4000 and is now the largest ghost town in America. It is a state park, but they want it to be a real ghost town so there is no restoration being done to the buildings. There are about 65 buildings in the town and you can just walk in to most of them and look around. It is Ironic that during its boom years, Bannick was the territory capital and now it is completely deserted. It was interesting that all the shops had scales as all business was conducted by buying and selling gold.
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| They used gunny sacks for insulation |
The school house had some good rules for teachers.
Oh yes, Karla went postal yesterday so I'm suppose to show the waterfall pics from our last hike in Glacier. Probably more interesting was seeing a large prairie dog village. These dogs were very comfortable with humans.
I am getting old, so I read "Money Pot" instead of "Honey Pot" and was wreaking brain to figure out why they call it that! The ghost town is cool. "you must not marry", is that why most of the teachers look like old maids in the movies? You mean they actually obeyed that rule or was that a requirement to keep their jobs?
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