About 20 miles southeast of Dillon, MT, where we spent a couple days, is Bannack State Park. This is an amazingly preserved ghost town from the 1860's when this small gold camp became the Territorial Capital of Montana!! We drove up from Dillon across Badger Pass (at 8,000+ feet) and then down to the ghost town itself. Over 3,000 people lived here at one time, and tons of gold were mined from the Grasshopper Creek. There was a brick courthouse (that later became a hotel), post office, church, lots of other buildings, and even a school with the Masonic Lodge on the second floor. Over 60 building are still there, like a moment in time, frozen there in the mountains of Montana, along the Continental Divide. The mining faded away with advances in mining equipment, and then died out completely after WWII. But today you can walk through this quiet spot of our preserved Western history as we did, and marvel at the way of life of the people who lived here so long ago.
About 20 miles southeast of Dillon, MT, where we spent a couple days, is Bannack State Park. This is an amazingly preserved ghost town from the 1860's when this small gold camp became the Territorial Capital of Montana!! We drove up from Dillon across Badger Pass (at 8,000+ feet) and then down to the ghost town itself. Over 3,000 people lived here at one time, and tons of gold were mined from the Grasshopper Creek. There was a brick courthouse (that later became a hotel), post office, church, lots of other buildings, and even a school with the Masonic Lodge on the second floor. Over 60 building are still there, like a moment in time, frozen there in the mountains of Montana, along the Continental Divide. The mining faded away with advances in mining equipment, and then died out completely after WWII. But today you can walk through this quiet spot of our preserved Western history as we did, and marvel at the way of life of the people who lived here so long ago.
0 comments:
Post a Comment