Day 13-Montana
We stayed in Butte last night and decided to visit the World Museum of Mining, which is on the “Hill”. Butte was once called the “Richest Hill on Earth”. The new part of the city is below the hill and as you move up the hill, the city gets older and the top is full of mining head-frames. The higher part is a National Historic District and I was intrigued by the architecture as we went to the museum, so I had Scott drive up and down the streets uptown to look at the businesses, homes, and churches. And I fell in love with historic Butte. The buildings are awesome! What a treasure trove of late 19th and early 20th century Western architecture. We finally made it to the museum, which is right next to Montana Tech and sits on the site of the Orphan Girl Mine with a 100 foot head-frame.
In the museum entrance building there is a doll museum which was donated by a woman who dedicated much effort to getting the museum started. She spent her whole life setting up dollhouses and collecting dolls. There were intricate and detailed houses and replicas of Butte buildings, as well as a huge replica of Sherlock Holmes’ 221 Baker Street digs. Displayed there were tons of action figure dolls of almost every 1970’s TV show you can name, plus all the comic book series, and a huge collection of Star Trek figures. The picture shows half of them. We had a ball going through looking at everything and all the kids who came through were entranced. There was also a great collection of minerals that included a phosphorescent room with minerals that glowed.
There was a mine tour and Scott went on that so he could go underground and see all the cool stuff in the mine. I wandered some around the grounds where there are all kinds of machines and ore cars displayed for visitors to see what it was like during the heyday of copper mining.
The museum also has an entire town, Hell Roarin’ Gulch, set up around the mine’s head-frame. The buildings are all authentic Butte buildings that have been moved there, restored, and furnished in the time period. We thoroughly enjoyed wandering the streets and looking in the windows, and the buildings were packed with period details inside.
We spent much longer there than we planned because it turned out to be so awesome! Next we visited Virginia City which is a real town of restored buildings with stores and restaurants, plus other fun stuff to see and do. We bought some candy at the candy store and I got some glass earrings of white daisies that are really unique. It was fun to wander around the streets and then we headed to Gardiner for our trip to Yellowstone the next day.
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