Exploring Montana!

We have spent the past week exploring southwestern Montana and avoiding the wildfires that are raging all over the western part of the state! Southwest Montana has many old mine towns, ghost towns, and gem mines and we managed to see a lot of them!
Our first stop was Garnet Ghost Town which is about 10 miles down a dirt road. It was a mining town back in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. At one time there were over a 1,000 people in the town where gold was found. As quickly as the townspeople had arrived, they disappeared when the gold became difficult to mine. The town was abandoned and much of it still looks just as they left it back in 1917. The cool thing about these ghost towns is that although the state now owns the property and allows visitors, there has been no restoration done, meaning everything looks just as it was left (with the exception of new roofs on some buildings to preserve the inside of the buildings)

After mining for gold in Garnet and finding a very small amount, we had the itch to do more mining so we went to Phillipsburg Montana to mine for sapphires. We did manage to find a few that were worthy to be cut and enjoyed an afternoon touring this historic  town.  We also mined a few garnets while in Nevada City!

 

In Butte Montana we visited the Mining museum where you can take a tour that takes you 100 feet down into the old “Orphan Girl” Mine. This was a very interesting and educational tour and gives you a newfound appreciation for all the miners past and present.

We travelled to Lewis and Clark Caverns to see the caves that were not discovered by Lewis and Clark, just named after them as it is a short distance from the Missouri headwaters where they did explore.  We hiked about a mile to the entrance to the caves and then travelled down 628 stairs often on our hands and knees or even having to slide on our butts to get to the next opening!  It was a bit claustrophobic at times and it was cold and damp,  but the sights were amazing.  Some of the more colorful formations were from the areas were there is more humidity so they have different lighting to preserve the formations.  Also in some areas you were not allowed to use the flash on our camera as it was disruptive to the bats that live there! The location of the park is a bit out of the way, but it was definitely worth the stop if you are ever in southwestern Montana!