Southwest Montana (May 24 - May 30, 2021)
“I love Montana” - Charley Smales
Following our snowy escape from Yellowstone, Charley and I made our way about three and a half hours northwest to Butte, Montana. Butte might seem like an odd place to stop, especially for six days but we chose that location for two reasons – 1) It’s about halfway between Grand Teton/Yellowstone National Parks and Glacier National Park (our next, anxiously awaited National Park) and 2) the city of Butte played a role in one of my very favorite (nonfiction) books Empty Mansions by Bill Dedman. A tour of the Copper King Mansion in Butte was a must-see for me but as it turns out there were tons of other fun and interesting things to do in Butte and the surrounding areas.
We stayed at the Butte KOA Journey. It was predictable as KOAs are – level site, friendly staff, clean laundry, and restrooms. This particular location had a wonderful nature trail nearby so we got back into our walking routine and even managed to do some bird watching along the way. The weather was nice (spring-like) for the most part during our stay. We were surprised at how few campers there were considering it was a holiday weekend. We had to remind ourselves that we were in Montana and that some areas of Montana had several inches of snow just a few weeks prior to our visit.
Because of its rich history of copper, gold, and silver mining, Butte is known as “The Richest Hill on Earth”. Although mining operations in Butte officially ceased in 1983, several headframes can still be seen throughout the city. Charley and I visited the World Museum of Mining and for an extra fee, we were able to take an underground tour of the Orphan Girl mine. Our tour guide Walker, a geologist, was a wealth of information on mining, rocks, and the history of Butte. After our underground tour, we spent a few hours wandering the above-ground exhibits which included replicas of mining camp buildings filled with local artifacts.
I’m going to admit that our tour of The Copper King Mansion was just a smidge disappointing. It’s currently privately owned and being run as a bed and breakfast so the guest rooms were relatively authentic and they were beautiful. However, it was difficult to see many of the other rooms because the owners have them full of their private collections of things. One of the rooms housed their penguin collection, another their doll collection, and the ballroom was full of mannequins and a dress collection. Full to the point that you couldn’t even see the windows, moldings, wall covering, etc. The collections were fun to look at but I would have preferred to be able to look out the third-story windows that overlook the city of Butte. The very best thing to come out of our Copper King Mansion tour was meeting the nice couple who were on the tour with us, David and Linda from Idaho. We learned pretty quickly that we have a lot in common. They took a 6-month tour of the US in their RV. She likes African violets as do I. David restores singer sewing machines. Charley loves to sew and appreciates a good Singer. We’ve since been in touch with David and Linda and they’ve made arrangements for us to visit and tour a unique place while we’re in Oregon in a few weeks. More on that in a future blog.
While in Butte we also toured a second home loosely related to Empty Mansions, The Clark Chateau. It is currently owned by the city of Butte and the nonprofit organization that runs it opens the home to tours provides space for private events and music lessons for children. The house is small and our tour was quick but we very much enjoyed our visit. Our walk around the city of Butte included visits to the public library (in search of used books for sale), a used book store (because we struck out at the library), and a stop at the local distillery Headframe Spirits. Headframe Spirits is definitely one of the nicest distilleries we’ve ever been to with cocktails just as good. After our tasting, we bought a bottle of Orphan Girl Bourbon Cream Liquor (delicious!) to add to our collection of wine and spirits gathered as we travel.
Our Southwest Montana visit also included a day trip to Deer Lodge Montana, located about 35 miles from Butte. There we visited Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site. Grant-Kohrs is a working cattle ranch run by the National Park Service and as with anything the NPS touches, it was incredibly well done. We learned the when, where, how, and why of Montana cattle ranching, cattle drives, and chuck-wagons. The cattlemen, even though they were actually working, were willing to take as much time with us as we needed and answered all of our questions. It was an awesome experience and at zero cost. There’s no admission charged at Grant-Kohrs so if you’re ever in the area, please stop by. I think Charley and I agree that it was the highlight of our Southwest Montana visit.
Not as much a highlight but interesting nonetheless was our tour of the Old Montana Prison and Auto Museum also in Deer Lodge. It’s a strange museum combo but we really enjoyed both museums which were connected in the middle by a gift shop. Touring the Prison museum was like stepping back in time. It was closed in 1979 and appears to have been untouched since then. Many of the offices, cells, etc are still intact. It was cold, dark, and creepy. We explored underground tunnels and walkways, prisoner isolation cells, the cafeteria, bathroom, and showers. It was a good reminder for me that I never, ever want to go to prison and I’m pretty sure I couldn’t even work in one. I spent most of my time at the auto museum connecting with some friends back home and I wasn’t really paying much attention as we passed through. Charley seemed to enjoy and appreciate the scope of the collection. One thing I did notice was that the vehicles were displayed in chronological order, something I haven’t noticed at any of the other 1000 auto museums that we’ve toured.
Some locations we visit are more touristy than others and to our surprise, there was a lot to do in Southwest Montana. There were actually a few other things we would have like to do while we were there but unfortunately had to take some time to get ready for our Glacier National Park visit. We’ve learned along the way that it’s best to start a National Park visit with our fridge and pantry completely stocked and all of our laundry done. Plus, we had visitors meeting us in Glacier and we wanted to be able to spend as much time with them as possible. We’ll just have to plan to visit the Butte area again in the future.
