Montana - Day 4 - south to Bannack Ghost Town

Bannack State Park, Bannack

Thursday, 4 August 2022

today's route

Google told me I had a 3-hour drive to tonight's campground (which meant at least 5 hours), but I took a little extra time to do a few errands in Missoula before I left.

In Missoula

I happened to pass the Missoula County Courthouse, which was beautiful enough to take me by surprise.  This is an internet photo because there was too much traffic for me to get a good angle on it.

Built 1908-10 -
they sure could design some fancy ones back then.

It turned out not to be far from the main campus of the University of Montana, which was an attractive place.  I saw a striking building from a distance and have learned it's the Main Hall of the school.  I think that's Mt. Sentinel that protects its back.

Main Hall
University of Montana

Near campus I saw a food truck called the Pattie Wagon.

The neighborhoods surrounding the campus were very attractive, and I guessed the houses were owned mostly by faculty members, though I did pass some that looked like the kind of places I lived when I was a student.  We called them student slums, though I can see now they were slums only in the eyes of kids who had grown up in middle-class suburban America.

Missoula's main intersections were well-marked, though the street signs off the main roads were hard to find or hidden entirely behind unpruned trees.

Gasoline was $4.29 all over town, all brands, all locations - substantially less than I'd been paying in Idaho.

I'd intended to get started early enough to stop at a laundromat, but it was 8:30 before I left the campground, and with a long drive ahead, I decided I had enough clean clothes to wait.  I did stop at Rosauer's Market, a local grocery store that boasted "72 local products today," and then we took off.

On the road

For miles out of town I were accompanied by a paved hike-and-bike path with sheltered seats here and there, on both sides of the highway.

At the town of Florence, I passed a building labeled "Bread and Roses," and they had a sign that said "Google! Montana Google!"  I did and came up with nothing interesting.

The road took me through some lovely scenery, and I saw very tall mountains along the road on my right that may have been the Crag Mountains, per the AAA map, and more big mountains not far away on my left, which were probably the Sapphire Mountains.  I looked these up to see if there were really sapphires there, and yes, there are a lot of sapphires there.  As far as I can tell, they're still mined; they're of gem quality and so far 190 million carats of them have been produced.  They've taken garnets from there too.  Sapphires from Montana are in England's royal crown jewels, so these are nothing to sneeze at.

I saw campaign signs for "Zinke for Congress" and "Zinke for Public Lands."  That name sounded familiar for some reason, so I looked him up and found out why.  He was Secretary of the Interior under Pres. Trump and resigned from that position during an Inspector General's investigation into him allegedly misusing that position to promote a development project in his hometown.  An unrelated IG investigation has just concluded that, in essence, he lied to IG investigators about permits for a proposed casino in Connecticut.  If you're interested, here's a link to a news report about that IG conclusion.   https://www.nbcnews.com/zinke-knowingly-misled-federal-investigators  And though he has Trump's endorsement and a lot more campaign money to spend than his opponents, he barely won his primary by 1.9% of the votes.  Though this congressional race has been seen as a probable win for Republicans (in a state that voted heavily for Trump), the primary result has emboldened the Democrats to consider it a possible chance.  Here's a (biased) article about that.   https://www.huffpost.com/mt-gop-primary-ryan-zinke-wins 

In the town of Victor, I saw a log home company with the sign "May The Forest Be With You."

I passed several towns without signs identifying them, though they had posted speed limits and businesses, which is why I thought they were towns.

Montana has a town named Corvallis.

The town of Hamilton, which says its elevation is 4,006', is the Ravalli County seat.  I thought the courthouse was unusual enough to show here.

Ravalli County Courthouse,
built 1900.

Hamilton also has the headquarters for the Bitterroot National Forest, which I'd been driving through all morning, crossing the Bitterroot River several times here and there.  Hamilton advertised their Celtic Games, coming up on August 20th and 21st.  And I passed Bandit Brewing, which claims to be Montana's smallest brewery.

A biker waved thanks for pulling over - my first thanks in Montana.

I passed a ranch with a sign for Gold Creek Arabians, though I didn't see any horses.  I've been seeing quite a few in other places on the drive though.  I did see a large flock of Canada geese at a stock tank.

A sign told me the litter crew for that area was "Grace Luthern Church."  I'm surprised this typo hasn't been fixed yet (I hope it was a typo).  Farther along, cleanup was provided by "Bitterroot Climate Group."  I looked that group up, but they've put all their information on their Facebook page, so I'm no wiser.

We took a break at Darby, where the elementary, junior high and high schools are all in the same building.  The campground we're staying in tonight doesn't provide electricity, which means we won't be able to use fans, let alone the AC.  Because of that, I didn't want to turn on the AC now, though the day was getting quite warm when the sun was out, because I didn't want us to get used to manufactured temperatures.

Darby had a very old fashioned downtown area.  There were still signs up for their strawberry festival they had in July, their annual fundraiser for the fire department.

The Forest Service said fire danger today was "Extreme."  They've been having real drought problems around here.

I came to a historical marker for Trapper Peak that had this inscription:

At 10,157 feet in elevation, magnificent Trapper Peak rises higher than any other peak in the 200 mile-long Bitterroot Mountain Range that extends along the Idaho-Montana border from the Snake River Valley in Idaho to the Clark Fork River in Montana. The Range included howling wilderness, yawning canyons, and towering mountains covered with a heavy growth of pine and fir. Huge sheets of ice carved the granite mountain and left glacial landforms known as horns, cirques, moraines and aretes. These give the massive mountain its jagged form and distinctive profile.

And this is Trapper Peak itself.

Trapper Peak at 10,157' elevation

This is an internet photo - I didn't stop but could see it through the pass.

I finally gave in and turned on the AC.  Even though it was only about 80° outside, it was just getting too warm in this metal box for comfort.

The road began a very long very steep climb.  There were almost constant s-curves and 1 switchback, some with signs recommending a speed of 25 mph or 35 mph, when the actual speed limit was 70 mph.  I was on the downhill side of the road and a very strong crosswind had been blowing all morning, so this part of the drive was a little scary.

At the top of the pass (for which there was no sign), there was a rest area, and I was glad to have the chance to take a break after that nerve-wracking drive.  And it turned out to be a good thing I did.

Signs in the rest area told me I was at Lost Trail Pass, so called by the Montana Geographic Board in 1935 "in recognition of Lewis and Clark's Expedition."  Although I'm not sure who is supposed to have lost the trail.  This sign says historians think it was the explorers who got lost, but since it also says historians don't know which way they went, they may be the ones who lost the trail, not Lewis and Clark.  You can see for yourself on this sign.

the sign - details enlarged

enlarged details

This pass marked the line between Idaho and Montana - if I turn left, I'll be staying in Montana (which was my plan), but I could go straight and be in Idaho north of the Moose Fire, that wildfire that was burning when I was in Challis 2 weeks ago, and is still burning.  I learned that from 2 Idaho rangers who were assigned to be at this rest stop to inform incoming tourists about the fire situation.  They said the fire was still only 20% contained because they're having to battle 50 mph gusts in a dry forest.  They were evacuating residents when I was still in that area.

Another traveler there said he was retired from that same Idaho agency but was now living in Montana.  He said there's no sales tax in Montana because the residents don't have a lot of money and don't buy enough to make a sales tax worthwhile.  Much of the state's income comes from the summer tax on motels and such, but summers aren't very long up here, so the state of Montana doesn't have much money.

Leaving the rest area, I did turn left to stay in Montana and started seeing a lot of white †s, showing where highway deaths have occurred.  If one of the purposes of those is to make other motorists more careful, they succeeded with me - seeing so many in one area makes me extra cautious in that area, which I figure must be dangerous.

I saw lots of dead trees, many of them burned.  Sometimes whole hillsides, sometimes just patches here and there.

The road took me through the Beaverhead-Deer Lodge National Forest, and a sign told me the Beaverhead Mountains were somewhere around, though almost none were visible.  Instead, when we emerged from the mountain pass we'd been in, we were suddenly in a huge flat treeless plain with cows grazing.

Montana has special highway signs showing access points for fishing.

By the town of Wisdom there was a definite haze in the area and I could smell smoke.  My guess was these were a gift from the Moose Fire in Idaho.

I smelled a skunk and wondered whether there are skunks in every state and looked it up.  And there are skunks in all Lower 48 states - just not all 50.

I was still fighting that strong crosswind that seemed almost worse in this flat area with nothing to stop it.

Jackson sits at 6,475' and the Jackson Hot Springs was nearby.

We came to a road paving zone, and while I was waiting for the pilot car I took these photos to show what I'd been looking at in this part of the drive.

looking west

looking east

I'd passed huge fields with round bales of grain scattered here and there.  But in this area, instead of bales the grain was piled in huge wire frames that were wider than a dump truck and taller than 4 or 5 people.  I know because I saw 3 guys standing on top of a pile, and they looked so small that I looked 3 times before I saw them.

We came to Big Hole Pass, elev. 7,400'.  I saw 12 or 15 horses all huddled together in the corner of a fence.  The corner wasn't near a gate so I wondered what was going on.

Bannack State Park

We got to our campsite, which was as primitive as advertised, but it was also so small a campground there wasn't any place for me to walk Dext.  Instead we headed down the road a little farther to the ghost town that was the main reason the campground was established here.

I talked to the very nice park ranger in Bannack Ghost Town, who told me the park is open every day and they get visitors every day, even when there's lots of snow on the ground.  She said in the winter usually it's locals who say they want to get out of the house and this place made a nearby destination for them.  But once she talked to folks from Florida who had decided to visit during the winter (and claimed they were prepared for the weather they found).

She also told me a lot about the ghost town.  The town of Bannack was established in 1868 and still had residents into the 1970s.  As the population dwindled, the remaining folks didn't want the town to become so dilapidated it fell apart, so they took care of the empty buildings.  Then the town got bought for the state, and the whole place is now a historic site and the rangers aren't even allowed to put up signs.  The state restored the condition of the buildings to the 1860s-1890s, but anything that was built later than that period was just left.

Bannack had 3,000 residents at one time and was the territorial capital for Montana until the state was formed.  It was originally a part of the Idaho Territory but only one territorial ranger had been assigned to police the whole area.  So the local sheriff became the head of a gang that robbed and murdered with impunity, and finally the townspeople lynched the sheriff.  That situation was how they got themselves unassigned to Idaho and became part of Montana Territory.  Besides becoming the territorial capital, Bannack was the county seat and an important way station for travelers and supply wagons.  But the railroad was routed through nearby Dillon instead, and the county seat was moved and residents were siphoned off.  And that's how it ended up a ghost town.  (Why do people think history is boring?)

a view of the one street

And the following were individual buildings I thought were interesting.

see front door detail at right

detail from the front door

a false front on a strange building

Hotel Meade (on the right)

I liked the trim.

a building of many uses

sign above door reads:
First Floor - School House
Second Floor - Masonic Temple

A sign told me rattlesnakes had been sighted in the area.  And I saw a bluebird - always a welcome sight.

Walking back to the campground, I saw a sign I hadn't seen before.  They really don't want anybody coming in when it's closed.

Back in the campground, my thermometer said it was 86° in the shade, which granted isn't a high temperature, but it's not a cool one either.  I put the awning out to block some of the sun coming in from that side of the RV, and I hung towels over the doorway (to block out more of the sun), which cut off some of the breeze, though some could still get in underneath.

I couldn't find a list of rules anywhere, and the camp host was never visible.  What I wanted to know was whether I could use my generator, but there weren't even any quiet hours posted.  Finally I noticed one of the other RVs here turned on their generator, so I turned on ours too because Dexter was beginning to look like he was starting to suffer.  With the AC and a fan turned directly on him on high for 30 or 40 minutes, the inside temp came down from 85° to 73°.

Even though nothing was posted, I still figured I had to turn off the generator and open the windows.  The problem there was the sun still pouring in, but I couldn't pull down the shades because that would cut off the breeze.  But I did have to close the door because I figured there'd be nocturnal animals around (deer, raccoon, bear, skunk were all possible).  Dext would be bound to sense them, and the last thing I wanted was for him to crash through the screen door to chase them.

And I stayed up until almost sunset (8:54), just because there seemed no point in trying to sleep in these conditions.  I can't say I really appreciate modern conveniences until I don't have them - but tonight was a real reminder.